Lycopene and preclinical carotid atherosclerosis

Evidence from epidemiological and clinical studies suggests a possible correlation between serum antioxidant levels and cardiovascular disease risk. High plasma concentrations of lycopene have been associated with reduced prevalence of cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study is to compare plasma concentrations of lycopene in subjects with or without ultrasonic evidence of asymptomatic carotid atherosclerosis. One hundred and twenty subjects underwent physical examination, ultrasonic measurement of common carotid artery intima-media thickness and serum profile analysis. Logistic regression methods and analysis of variance were used to determine whether differences existed between participants with or without evidence of carotid atherosclerosis. Of the 120 participants, 58 exhibited evidence of carotid atherosclerosis. Participants with ultrasonic evidence of carotid atherosclerosis exhibited significantly higher serum concentrations of total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides. In contrast, participants with ultrasonic evidence of carotid atherosclerosis exhibited significantly lower plasma concentrations of lycopene. These data suggest that higher serum levels of lycopene may play a protective role versus cardiovascular diseases, in particular carotid atherosclerosis.

The application of visual census on Mediterranean rocky habitats

In this study we examined the effect of: observer presence; observer speed; and the impact that multiple surveys had on the number of counted fish in a visual census survey in a typical Mediterranean rocky habitat. SCUBA observer presence had no influence on the number of fish per survey. An improvement in the methodology to estimate the number of fish was demonstrated by using two different speeds: slow speed for benthic species and higher speed for epibenthic ones. No differences in the number of fish per survey were found among successive surveys along the same transects, even with the shortest time interval used: 5 min. We also examined the ability of observers to estimate fish length during visual census by using wooden fish models. Significant differences in size estimations were found using two different estimation methods (i.e. size-classes estimates and continuous measures). Estimating fish length to a size class was more accurate in estimating size, while transformed size to calculate biomass from length estimates was more accurate using continuous measures.