WorldWideScience

Sample records for newly recognized disease

  1. Cultural characters of a newly recognized group of hospital staphylococci.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jevons, M P; John, M; Parker, M T

    1966-07-01

    Members of a newly recognized group of hospital staphylococci, which are believed to have arisen from 83A staphylococci by lysogenization, differ from them in several cultural characters. Some but not all of these characters appear to be determined by the carriage of phage.

  2. A newly-recognized galactic supernova remnant with shell-type and filled-center features

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Barnes, D.J.; Turtle, A.J.

    1988-01-01

    While the number of galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) now known is fairly large (>150), the subset among these that are known to resemble the Crab Nebula is still distressingly small, about 15 or so. Thus any object that can be unambiguously included in this exclusive club forms a valuable addition to knowledge of this class. The authors report observations of a newly recognized nonthermal galactic object, G18.94-1.06, having all the hallmarks of the classical shell-type SNRs, while also appearing to have a filled-centre component located inside the shell. Among the known Crab-like remnants, about one third show this dual nature. This diagnosis of G18.94-1.06 is supported mainly by the variations in spectral index across the source, as seen between the two observation frequencies, 408 MHz and 5.0 GHz

  3. Clinical heterogeneity in newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Post, Bart; Speelman, Johannes D.; de Haan, Rob J.

    2008-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: To determine clinical heterogeneity in newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease using cluster analysis and to describe the subgroups in terms of impairment, disability, perceived quality of life, and use of dopaminergic therapy. METHODS: We conducted a k-means cluster analysis in a prospective

  4. Recognizing and managing sapstreak disease of sugar maple

    Science.gov (United States)

    David R. Houston; David R. Houston

    1993-01-01

    Sapstreak disease, a potentially serious problem of sugarbushes and forest stands, occurs when the causal fungus, Ceratocystis virescens, invades the sapwood of roots and bases of stems through wounds inflicted during logging, saphauling, or other activities. Describes how to recognize the disease, the factors that affect its occurrence and development, and management...

  5. A newly recognized syndrome of severe growth deficiency, microcephaly, intellectual disability, and characteristic facial features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vinkler, Chana; Leshinsky-Silver, Esther; Michelson, Marina; Haas, Dorothea; Lerman-Sagie, Tally; Lev, Dorit

    2014-01-01

    Genetic syndromes with proportionate severe short stature are rare. We describe two sisters born to nonconsanguineous parents with severe linear growth retardation, poor weight gain, microcephaly, characteristic facial features, cutaneous syndactyly of the toes, high myopia, and severe intellectual disability. During infancy and early childhood, the girls had transient hepatosplenomegaly and low blood cholesterol levels that normalized later. A thorough evaluation including metabolic studies, radiological, and genetic investigations were all normal. Cholesterol metabolism and transport were studied and no definitive abnormality was found. No clinical deterioration was observed and no metabolic crises were reported. After due consideration of other known hereditary causes of post-natal severe linear growth retardation, microcephaly, and intellectual disability, we propose that this condition represents a newly recognized autosomal recessive multiple congenital anomaly-intellectual disability syndrome. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  6. Visual System Involvement in Patients with Newly Diagnosed Parkinson Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arrigo, Alessandro; Calamuneri, Alessandro; Milardi, Demetrio; Mormina, Enricomaria; Rania, Laura; Postorino, Elisa; Marino, Silvia; Di Lorenzo, Giuseppe; Anastasi, Giuseppe Pio; Ghilardi, Maria Felice; Aragona, Pasquale; Quartarone, Angelo; Gaeta, Michele

    2017-12-01

    Purpose To assess intracranial visual system changes of newly diagnosed Parkinson disease in drug-naïve patients. Materials and Methods Twenty patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease and 20 age-matched control subjects were recruited. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted imaging) was performed with a 3-T MR imager. White matter changes were assessed by exploring a white matter diffusion profile by means of diffusion-tensor imaging-based parameters and constrained spherical deconvolution-based connectivity analysis and by means of white matter voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Alterations in occipital gray matter were investigated by means of gray matter VBM. Morphologic analysis of the optic chiasm was based on manual measurement of regions of interest. Statistical testing included analysis of variance, t tests, and permutation tests. Results In the patients with Parkinson disease, significant alterations were found in optic radiation connectivity distribution, with decreased lateral geniculate nucleus V2 density (F, -8.28; P Parkinson disease and that the entire intracranial visual system can be involved. © RSNA, 2017 Online supplemental material is available for this article.

  7. Pineapple Fruit Collapse: Newly Emerging Disease of Pineapple Fruit in Lampung, Indonesia

    OpenAIRE

    Joko Prasetyo; Titik Nur Aeny

    2014-01-01

    ABSTRACT Pineapple fruit collapse: newly emerging disease of pineapple fruit in Lampung, Indonesia Recently, a new disease on pineapple fruit has occurred in Lampung. Symptoms of the disease are complex. Fruits rotted and exuded copious liquid from the inter- fruitlet tissues accompanied by gas bubbles. Open spaces were formed inside the rotten fruit. Dissection of diseased fruit showed many cavities within its sceletal fibres and bad odour was exerted from the rotten tissues. A bacterial...

  8. A changing trend in the management of patients with newly diagnosed Crohn's disease.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Qasim, A

    2012-02-01

    BACKGROUND: Epidemiologic shift with rising incidence of Crohn\\'s disease (CD) has been reported in recent studies. AIMS: To determine disease behaviour and therapeutic interventions undertaken in newly diagnosed patients with CD. METHODS: Patients diagnosed with CD between January 2006 and June 2008 were included. Disease type, location, degree of involvement and type of therapeutic interventions were recorded. RESULTS: A total of 78 patients were included. Colonic, ileo-colonic, terminal ileal and isolated small bowel disease were present in 37, 27, 9 and 5 patients, respectively. Disease phenotype was inflammatory, stenosing and fistulising in 42, 30 and 6 patients, respectively. Surgery was required in 22 patients, including right hemicolectomy (n = 8), subtotal colectomy (n = 4), segmental colonic resection (n = 2), segmental small bowel resection (n = 2), appendectomy (n = 2) and perianal surgery (n = 4). Fourteen patients underwent surgery at the time of diagnosis. Laparoscopic surgery was performed in 14 patients. CONCLUSIONS: A significant proportion of newly diagnosed patients with CD underwent surgical intervention on their first admission to hospital. This may signify a changing trend in the management approach.

  9. Enterocolic lymphocytic phlebitis as a newly recognized manifestation of IgG4-related disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laco, Jan; Örhalmi, Július; Bártová, Jolana; Zimandlová, Dana

    2015-04-01

    Herein we present a case of a 65-year-old woman with enterocolic lymphocytic phlebitis (ELP) who presented with anemic syndrome and in whom severe stenosis of the right flexure of large bowel was detected. The microscopic examination revealed fibrosis of the submucosa and lymphoplasmacytic phlebitis of small veins and venules, whereas arteries were spared. There were 110 IgG4-positive and 160 IgG-positive plasma cells in 1 high-power field, respectively, with corresponding IgG4/IgG ratio of 0.69. The IgG4 serum level was 2.42 g/L. According to the currently proposed criteria, this ELP case is the first that may be diagnosed as definite IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD). Although based on the sole case description, taken together with a recent review and a case report, we presume that a subset of ELPs is a manifestation of IgG4-RD. © The Author(s) 2014.

  10. Disease surveillance among newly arriving refugees and immigrants--Electronic Disease Notification System, United States, 2009.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Deborah; Philen, Rossanne; Wang, Zanju; McSpadden, Pamela; Posey, Drew L; Ortega, Luis S; Weinberg, Michelle S; Brown, Clive; Zhou, Weigong; Painter, John A

    2013-11-15

    Approximately 450,000 legal permanent immigrants and 75,000 refugees enter the United States annually after receiving required medical examinations by overseas panel physicians (physicians who follow the CDC medical screening guidelines provided to the U.S. Department of State). CDC has the regulatory responsibility for preventing the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases into the United States as well as for developing the guidelines, known as technical instructions, for the overseas medical examinations. Other conditions that are not infectious might preclude an immigrant or refugee from entering the United States and also are reported as part of the medical examination. After arrival in the United States, all refugees are recommended to obtain a medical assessment by a health-care provider or a health department within 30 days. In addition, immigrants with certain medical conditions such as noninfectious tuberculosis at the time of the original medical examination are recommended to be evaluated after arrival to ensure that appropriate prevention or treatment measures are instituted. Health departments need timely and accurate notifications of newly arriving immigrants, refugees, and persons with other visa types to facilitate these evaluations. Notifications for all newly arriving refugees (with or without medical conditions) and immigrants with medical conditions are provided by CDC's Electronic Disease Notification (EDN) system. This is the first report describing EDN. This report summarizes notifications by the EDN system during January-December 2009. The EDN system is a centralized electronic reporting system that collects health information on newly arriving refugees and immigrants with Class A and Class B medical conditions. Class A conditions render applicants inadmissible and require a waiver for entry; Class B conditions are admissible but might require treatment or follow-up. Information in the EDN system is used to notify

  11. Pineapple Fruit Collapse: Newly Emerging Disease of Pineapple Fruit in Lampung, Indonesia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joko Prasetyo

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT Pineapple fruit collapse: newly emerging disease of pineapple fruit in Lampung, Indonesia Recently, a new disease on pineapple fruit has occurred in Lampung. Symptoms of the disease are complex. Fruits rotted and exuded copious liquid from the inter- fruitlet tissues accompanied by gas bubbles. Open spaces were formed inside the rotten fruit. Dissection of diseased fruit showed many cavities within its sceletal fibres and bad odour was exerted from the rotten tissues. A bacterial entity was isolated  from the diseased materials. In a pathogenicity test, the isolated bacteria caused the same symptom as mentioned. In the growing-on test the crown of the heavily infected fruit  showed  heart rot symptom.  Those  indicated that the disease was pineapple fruit collapse. Both symptoms were known related to the same causal agent, Erwinia chrysanthemi (pineapple strain Dickeya sp.. In our opinion, this is the first report of pineapple fruit collapse in Indonesia.

  12. Morbilliviruses and morbillivirus diseases of marine mammals.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    R.L. de Swart (Rik); T.C. Harder (Timm); P.S. Ross (Peter); H.W. Vos (Helma); A.D.M.E. Osterhaus (Albert)

    1995-01-01

    textabstractIn recent years, serious disease outbreaks among seals and dolphins were attributed to infection with established or newly recognized morbilliviruses. The first identification of a morbillivirus as causative agent of mass mortality among marine mammals was in 1988, when the previously

  13. Serum selenium is low in newly diagnosed Graves´disease: a population-based study

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bülow Pedersen, Inge; Knudsen, Nils; Carle, Allan

    2013-01-01

    by a fluorimetric method. Patients with newly diagnosed Graves’ disease (GD) (n = 97) or autoimmune overt hypothyroidism (AIH) (n = 96), euthyroid subjects with high serum levels of thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPO‐Ab) (TPO‐Ab > 1500 U/ml, n = 92) and random controls (n = 830). Differences in s‐Se values. S...

  14. CTSH regulates β-cell function and disease progression in newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fløyel, Tina; Brorsson, Caroline; Nielsen, Lotte B

    2014-01-01

    expression and increased insulin secretion. Additionally, islets from Ctsh(-/-) mice contained less insulin than islets from WT mice. Importantly, the TT genotype was associated with higher daily insulin dose and faster disease progression in newly diagnosed T1D patients, indicating agreement between...

  15. Keratitis due to microfilariae in dogs: a newly recognized disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morales, Adriana; Perlmann, Eduardo; Abelha, Aline Nayara Vechiato; Levy, Carlos Emilio; de Goes, Ana Carolina Almeida; Safatle, Angélica M V

    2017-05-15

    Parasitic agents have been associated with keratitis, but a diagnosis of parasitic keratitis has not been commonly made in domestic animals. The purpose of this study was to describe the clinical and histopathological findings in seven dogs with chronic keratitis caused by microfilariae diagnosed in Brazil. All dogs presented with superficial corneal opacities of varying degrees affecting the perilimbal and central regions of the cornea, with other opaque areas appearing as crystalline deposits and corneal vascularization. The lesions were bilateral and were associated with mild-to-moderate conjunctival hyperemia. There was no history of blepharospasm or pruritus, and no subjects presented with epithelial erosions. Corneal biopsy revealed free microfilariae in the corneal stroma, with varying degrees of inflammation and collagen fiber destruction. The microfilariae were also found in skin lesions by skin snip technique. No adult worms were found in these dogs, and no dogs were on heartworm preventative before diagnosis. Monthly doses of oral ivermectin improved ocular and dermal lesions. One dog showed complete remission with the treatment. The species of the microfilariae was not identified. © 2017 American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists.

  16. Kulanaokuaiki Tephra (ca, A.D. 400-1000): Newly recognized evidence for highly explosive eruptions at Kilauea Volcano, Hawai'i

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fiske, R.S.; Rose, T.R.; Swanson, D.A.; Champion, D.E.; McGeehin, J.P.

    2009-01-01

    K??lauea may be one of the world's most intensively monitored volcanoes, but its eruptive history over the past several thousand years remains rather poorly known. Our study has revealed the vestiges of thin basaltic tephra deposits, overlooked by previous workers, that originally blanketed wide, near-summit areas and extended more than 17 km to the south coast of Hawai'i. These deposits, correlative with parts of tephra units at the summit and at sites farther north and northwest, show that K??lauea, commonly regarded as a gentle volcano, was the site of energetic pyroclastic eruptions and indicate the volcano is significantly more hazardous than previously realized. Seventeen new calibrated accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon ages suggest these deposits, here named the Kulanaokuaiki Tephra, were emplaced ca. A.D. 400-1000, a time of no previously known pyroclastic activity at the volcano. Tephra correlations are based chiefly on a marker unit that contains unusually high values of TiO2 and K2O and on paleomagnetic signatures of associated lava flows, which show that the Kulanaokuaiki deposits are the time-stratigraphic equivalent of the upper part of a newly exhumed section of the Uw??kahuna Ash in the volcano's northwest caldera wall. This section, thought to have been permanently buried by rockfalls in 1983, is thicker and more complete than the previously accepted type Uw??kahuna at the base of the caldera wall. Collectively, these findings justify the elevation of the Uw??kahuna Ash to formation status; the newly recognized Kulanaokuaiki Tephra to the south, the chief focus of this study, is defined as a member of the Uw??kahuna Ash. The Kulanaokuaiki Tephra is the product of energetic pyroclastic falls; no surge- or pyroclastic-flow deposits were identified with certainty, despite recent interpretations that Uw??kahuna surges extended 10-20 km from K??lauea's summit. ?? 2009 Geological Society of America.

  17. Generational differences among newly licensed registered nurses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keepnews, David M; Brewer, Carol S; Kovner, Christine T; Shin, Juh Hyun

    2010-01-01

    Responses of 2369 newly licensed registered nurses from 3 generational cohorts-Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y-were studied to identify differences in their characteristics, work-related experiences, and attitudes. These responses revealed significant differences among generations in: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work motivation, work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, distributive justice, promotional opportunities, supervisory support, mentor support, procedural justice, and perceptions of local job opportunities. Health organizations and their leaders need to anticipate intergenerational differences among newly licensed nurses and should provide for supportive working environments that recognize those differences. Orientation and residency programs for newly licensed nurses should be tailored to the varying needs of different generations. Future research should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of orientation and residency programs with regard to different generations so that these programs can be tailored to meet the varying needs of newly licensed nurses at the start of their careers. Copyright 2010 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Two Newly Discovered Plants in Taiwan

    OpenAIRE

    Tian-Chuan Hsu; Jia-Jung Lin; Shih-Wen Chung

    2009-01-01

    Two herbs are newly discovered in Taiwan. Limnophila fragrans (G. Forst.) Seem. (Scrophulariaceae), native in SE Asia, is recognized from southern lowlands. Anagallis minima (L.) E. H. L. Krause (Primulaceae), native in N America and Europe, was found from northern mountainous region at low altitudes. In this study, descriptions, line drawings, color photos and a distribution map of the two species are provided.

  19. Central nervous system infectious diseases mimicking multiple sclerosis: recognizing distinguishable features using MRI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Antonio Jose da Rocha

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available The current diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis (MS confirm the relevant role of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI, supporting the possibility of characterizing the dissemination in space (DIS and the dissemination in time (DIT in a single scan. To maintain the specificity of these criteria, it is necessary to determine whether T2/FLAIR visible lesions and the gadolinium enhancement can be attributed to diseases that mimic MS. Several diseases are included in the MS differential diagnosis list, including diseases with exacerbation, remitting periods and numerous treatable infectious diseases, which can mimic the MRI features of MS. We discuss the most relevant imaging features in several infectious diseases that resemble MS and examine the primary spatial distributions of lesions and the gadolinium enhancement patterns related to MS. Recognizing imaging "red flags" can be useful for the proper diagnostic evaluation of suspected cases of MS, facilitating the correct differential diagnosis by assessing the combined clinical, laboratory and MR imaging information.

  20. Two Newly Discovered Plants in Taiwan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tian-Chuan Hsu

    2009-11-01

    Full Text Available Two herbs are newly discovered in Taiwan. Limnophila fragrans (G. Forst. Seem. (Scrophulariaceae, native in SE Asia, is recognized from southern lowlands. Anagallis minima (L. E. H. L. Krause (Primulaceae, native in N America and Europe, was found from northern mountainous region at low altitudes. In this study, descriptions, line drawings, color photos and a distribution map of the two species are provided.

  1. FEATURES OF CLINICAL COURSE OF GASTROESOPHAGEAL REFLUX DISEASE IN NEWLY RECRUITED WITH CONNECTIVE TISSUE UNDIFFERENTIATED DYSPLASIA SYNDROME

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E.I. Kashkina

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available The presence of connective tissue undifferentiated dysplasia syndrome against a background of psychological stress at newly recruited can promote the risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease occurrence. To the utmost, correlation between the gastroesophageal reflux disease and such manifestations of connective tissue undifferentiated dysplasia syndrome as asthenic constitution, chest deformation, Gothic palate and hypermobility of joints was found

  2. IgG4-related retroperitoneal fibrosis: a newly characterized disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lian, Linjuan; Wang, Cong; Tian, Jian-Li

    2016-11-01

    Retroperitoneal fibrosis (RPF) is a rare disease characterized by chronic, nonspecific inflammatory and sclerotic or fibrotic tissue in the periaortic or periiliac retroperitoneum that encases adjacent structures. There will be a series of clinical manifestations once the proliferated fibrous tissues encase the abdominal aorta, iliac arteries and urinary duct. RPF is generally divided into two types: idiopathic retroperitoneal fibrosis (IRPF) without identified pathogenesis, making up about two-thirds of cases, and secondary retroperitoneal fibrosis. Recent studies on Immunoglobulin G4-related disease (IgG4-RD) reveal that abundant infiltration of IgG4 positive plasma cells is found in biopsies on the mass of RPF of some IRPF patients, which is identified as one spectrum of IgG4-RD and is named IgG4-related RPF. IgG4-related RPF is often misdiagnosed as retroperitoneal visceral malignancy and is treated with surgery. In addition, because of its good response to glucocorticoid, early detection and treatment is important. We review the definition, epidemiology, clinical features, diagnostic criteria, treatment and prognosis of IgG4-related RPF in this article to raise awareness of this newly characterized disease. © 2016 Asia Pacific League of Associations for Rheumatology and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

  3. The role of infections and coinfections with newly identified and emerging respiratory viruses in children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Debiaggi Maurizia

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Acute respiratory infections are a major cause of morbidity in children both in developed and developing countries. A wide range of respiratory viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV, influenza A and B viruses, parainfluenza viruses (PIVs, adenovirus, rhinovirus (HRV, have repeatedly been detected in acute lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI in children in the past decades. However, in the last ten years thanks to progress in molecular technologies, newly discovered viruses have been identified including human Metapneumovirus (hMPV, coronaviruses NL63 (HcoV-NL63 and HKU1 (HcoV-HKU1, human Bocavirus (HBoV, new enterovirus (HEV, parechovirus (HpeV and rhinovirus (HRV strains, polyomaviruses WU (WUPyV and KI (KIPyV and the pandemic H1N1v influenza A virus. These discoveries have heavily modified previous knowledge on respiratory infections mainly highlighting that pediatric population is exposed to a variety of viruses with similar seasonal patterns. In this context establishing a causal link between a newly identified virus and the disease as well as an association between mixed infections and an increase in disease severity can be challenging. This review will present an overview of newly recognized as well as the main emerging respiratory viruses and seek to focus on the their contribution to infection and co-infection in LRTIs in childhood.

  4. Hospital-based prevalence of chronic kidney disease among the newly registered patients with diabetes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    P A Khanam

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Chronic kidney disease (CKD is proved to be a major public health issue worldwide and an important contributor to the overall non-communicable disease burden. It increases risk of mortality, end-stage renal disease and accelerated cardiovascular disease (CVD. Diabetes is the biggest contributor to CKD and end stage renal disease (ESRD. In Bangladesh, very few data on CKD is available. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of CKD among the newly registered diabetic patients at BIRDEM (Bangladesh Institute of Research and Rehabilitation in Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders, a referral center for diabetes in Bangladesh. Methods: The study included all diabetic patients aged 18 - 80 years and were registered in the year 2012. Socio-demographic (age, sex, residence, income, literacy, clinical (obesity, blood pressure and biochemical (blood glucose, lipids, eGFR information were collected from the BIRDEM registry. CKD was defined according to the K/ DOQI guidelines. Results: A total of 1317 type 2 diabetic patients of age 18 to 80 years were studied. Of them, men and women were 54.7% and 45.3%, respectively. The overall prevalence of CKD (eGFR ≤60 (ml/min/m2 was 13.9%. The prevalence was significantly higher in women than men (21.3 v. 7.8%, p50y, higher sBP (≥140mmHg and taking oral hypoglycemic agent (OHA were significant. Conclusions: Thus, the study concludes that the prevalence of CKD among the newly registered diabetic patients is quite high in Bangladesh. The female diabetic patients with older age and with higher SBP bear the brunt of CKD. Considering high prevalence of CKD with severe lifelong complications it is of utmost importance for early detection and intervention at the primary health care (PHC level.

  5. Consensus statement on the pathology of IgG4-related disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Deshpande, Vikram; Zen, Yoh; Chan, John Kc; Yi, Eunhee E.; Sato, Yasuharu; Yoshino, Tadashi; Klöppel, Günter; Heathcote, J. Godfrey; Khosroshahi, Arezou; Ferry, Judith A.; Aalberse, Rob C.; Bloch, Donald B.; Brugge, William R.; Bateman, Adrian C.; Carruthers, Mollie N.; Chari, Suresh T.; Cheuk, Wah; Cornell, Lynn D.; Fernandez-del Castillo, Carlos; Forcione, David G.; Hamilos, Daniel L.; Kamisawa, Terumi; Kasashima, Satomi; Kawa, Shigeyuki; Kawano, Mitsuhiro; Lauwers, Gregory Y.; Masaki, Yasufumi; Nakanuma, Yasuni; Notohara, Kenji; Okazaki, Kazuichi; Ryu, Ji Kon; Saeki, Takako; Sahani, Dushyant V.; Smyrk, Thomas C.; Stone, James R.; Takahira, Masayuki; Webster, George J.; Yamamoto, Motohisa; Zamboni, Giuseppe; Umehara, Hisanori; Stone, John H.

    2012-01-01

    IgG4-related disease is a newly recognized fibro-inflammatory condition characterized by several features: a tendency to form tumefactive lesions in multiple sites; a characteristic histopathological appearance; and-often but not always-elevated serum IgG4 concentrations. An international symposium

  6. Serum lipid profile of newly diagnosed hypertensive patients in nnewi, South-East Nigeria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osuji, Charles U; Omejua, Emeka G; Onwubuya, Emmanuel I; Ahaneku, Gladys I

    2012-01-01

    Abnormalities in serum lipid and lipoprotein levels are recognized major modifiable cardiovascular disease and essential hypertension risk factors. The objective of this study was to examine the serum lipid patterns of newly diagnosed hypertensive patients attending a tertiary healthcare centre in South East Nigeria. Methods. Two hundred and fifty newly diagnosed adult hypertensive patients and an equal number of age- and sex-matched controls without hypertension were consecutively recruited from the Medical and General Outpatient Clinics of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi. Result. 126 males and 124 females were in each of the two groups. Mean age was comparable in both groups. Hypertensives had significantly higher mean systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, body mass index, waist circumference, waist-hip ratio, and fasting blood sugar than the controls. The mean TC, TG, and LDL-C were significantly higher among the hypertensives. The mean HDL-C was comparable; P = 0.8. Among the hypertensive subjects, there was statistically significant positive correlation between BMI and TC; LDL-C and TG; WC and TG; FBS and TC; LDL-C and TG. HDL-C showed a statistically significant inverse correlation with WHR in hypertensives. Conclusion. This study showed that lipid abnormalities are highly prevalent among newly diagnosed hypertensives in South-East Nigeria.

  7. A Mild Version of Danon Disease Caused by a Newly Recognized Mutation in the Lysosome-associated Membrane Protein-2 Gene.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kyaw, Htoo; Shaik, Fatima; Lin, Aung Naing; Shinnar, Meir

    2018-02-04

    We present the case of a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy caused by a novel mutation in the lysosome-associated membrane protein-2 (LAMP-2) gene. Patients with pathogenic mutations of this gene typically suffer from Danon disease - a condition that leads to cognitive decline, severe skeletal myopathy, and severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Our patient's presentation and clinical course, however, is different and much less severe than other patients with this disease. He did not suffer from neurologic and musculoskeletal complications. He is also possibly the longest-known survivor of this disease without a heart transplant. This disease is unfamiliar to many physicians, and our case highlights the importance of an awareness of this disorder, particularly because of its implications for both the patient and his family.

  8. Community-acquired Legionnaires' Disease in a Newly Constructed Apartment Building.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ryu, Sukhyun; Yang, Kyungho; Chun, Byung Chul

    2017-07-01

    Legionnaires' disease (LD) is a severe type of pneumonia caused by inhalation of aerosols contaminated with Legionella . On September 22, 2016, a single case of LD was reported from a newly built apartment building in Gyeonggi province. This article describes an epidemiologic investigation of LD and identification of the possible source of infection. To identify the source of LD, we interviewed the patient's husband using a questionnaire based on the Legionella management guidelines from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Water samples from the site were collected and analyzed. An epidemiological investigation of the residents and visitors in the apartment building was conducted for 14 days before the index patient's symptoms first appeared to 14 days after the implementation of environmental control measures. Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 was isolated from the heated-water samples from the patient's residence and the basement of the apartment complex. Thirty-two suspected cases were reported from the apartment building during the surveillance period, yet all were confirmed negative based on urinary antigen tests. The likely source of infection was the building's potable water, particularly heated water. Further study of effective monitoring systems in heated potable water should be considered.

  9. A lower baseline glomerular filtration rate predicts high mortality and newly cerebrovascular accidents in acute ischemic stroke patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dong, Kai; Huang, Xiaoqin; Zhang, Qian; Yu, Zhipeng; Ding, Jianping; Song, Haiqing

    2017-02-01

    Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is gradually recognized as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular and cardio-/cerebrovascular disease. This study aimed to examine the association of the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and clinical outcomes at 3 months after the onset of ischemic stroke in a hospitalized Chinese population.Totally, 972 patients with acute ischemic stroke were enrolled into this study. Modified of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) equations were used to calculate eGFR and define CKD. The site and degree of the stenosis were examined. Patients were followed-up for 3 months. Endpoint events included all-cause death and newly ischemic events. The multivariate logistic model was used to determine the association between renal dysfunction and patients' outcomes.Of all patients, 130 patients (13.4%) had reduced eGFR (<60 mL/min/1.73 m), and 556 patients had a normal eGFR (≥90 mL/min/1.73 m). A total of 694 patients suffered from cerebral artery stenosis, in which 293 patients only had intracranial artery stenosis (ICAS), 110 only with extracranial carotid atherosclerotic stenosis (ECAS), and 301 with both ICAS and ECAS. The patients with eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73m had a higher proportion of death and newly ischemic events compared with those with a relatively normal eGFR. Multivariate analysis revealed that a baseline eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m increased the risk of mortality by 3.089-fold and newly ischemic events by 4.067-fold. In further analysis, a reduced eGFR was associated with increased rates of mortality and newly events both in ICAS patients and ECAS patients. However, only an increased risk of newly events was found as the degree of renal function deteriorated in ICAS patients (odds ratio = 8.169, 95% confidence interval = 2.445-14.127).A low baseline eGFR predicted a high mortality and newly ischemic events at 3 months in ischemic stroke patients. A low baseline eGFR was also a strong independent predictor for newly

  10. Celiac crisis: a rare or rarely recognized disease

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Waheed, N.; Cheema, H.A.; Suleman, H.; Fayyaz, Z.; Mushtaq, I.

    2017-01-01

    Celiac crisis is a serious life threatening complication of celiac disease characterized by profuse diarrhoea, severe dehydration and metabolic disturbances leading to neuromuscular weakness, cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death. It has been described as rare condition and not well documented in the literature. To improve awareness and facilitate diagnosis of this condition, we studied risk factors, pattern of presentation and management plans of celiac crisis. Methods: It was a descriptive cross sectional study. Patients presenting in emergency room(ER) with profuse diarrhoea leading to severe dehydration, neuromuscular weakness, and metabolic acidosis and electrolyte abnormalities enrolled in the studies after positive serology and small bowel biopsy suggestive of celiac disease. Results: Total 126 patients out of 350 fulfilled the criteria including 54 (42.8 percent) male and 71 (56.3 percent) female. The mean age at presentation was 5.25+-1.18 years. Risk factors were poor social status (97.60 percent), consanguinity (96.77 percent), early weaning with gluten contained diet (93.54 percent), and Presenting complaints were loose motion (100 percent), loss of neck holding (96.77 percent), dehydration (96.77 percent), polyuria (95.96 percent), inability to walk (67.74 percent), abdominal distension (85.86 percent). Electrolytes imbalances were hypokalaemia (2.4+-0.55), hypocalcaemia (7.29+-0.66), hypomagnesaemia (1.89+-0.50), hypophosphatemia (2.8+-0.68), hypoalbuminemia (3.05+-0.48) and metabolic acidosis (96 percent). One hundred and twenty patients were stabilized with GFD and correction of dehydration, acidosis and electrolyte imbalance. Six patients needed parenteral steroids ant total parenteral nutrition (TPN). Recovery time from crisis was mean 5.4+-2.73 days (range 3-20 days). Conclusion: Celiac crisis is a common but under recognized problem in developing countries. Commonest presenting feature is neuromuscular paralysis and biochemical abnormality is

  11. High acceptability of a newly developed urological practical skills training program.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vries, A.H. de; Luijk, S.J. van; Scherpbier, A.J.J.A.; Hendrikx, A.J.M.; Koldewijn, E.L.; Wagner, C.; Schout, B.M.A.

    2015-01-01

    Background: Benefits of simulation training are widely recognized, but its structural implementation into urological curricula remains challenging. This study aims to gain insight into current and ideal urological practical skills training and presents the outline of a newly developed skills

  12. High acceptability of a newly developed urological practical skills training program

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Vries, A.H.; van Luijk, S.J.; Scherpbier, A.J.J.A.; Hendrikx, A.J.M.; Koldewijn, E.L.; Wagner, C.; Schout, B.M.A.

    2015-01-01

    Background: Benefits of simulation training are widely recognized, but its structural implementation into urological curricula remains challenging. This study aims to gain insight into current and ideal urological practical skills training and presents the outline of a newly developed skills

  13. Maximum standard uptake value on pre-chemotherapeutic FDG-PET is a significant parameter for disease progression of newly diagnosed lymphoma

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Eo, Jae Seon; Lee, Won Woo; Chung, June Key; Lee, Myung Chul; Kim, Sang Eun

    2005-01-01

    F-18 FDG-PET is useful for detection and staging of lymphoma. We investigated the prognostic significance of maximum standard uptake (maxSUV) value of FDG-PET for newly diagnosed lymphoma patients before chemotherapy. Twenty-seven patients (male: female = 17: 10: age: 49±19 years) with newly diagnosed lymphoma were enrolled. Nine-teen patients suffered from B cell lymphoma, 6 Hodgkins disease and 2 T cell lymphoma. One patient was stage I, 9 stage II, 3 stage III, 1 stage IV and 13 others. All patients underwent FDG-PET before initiation of chemotherapy. MaxSUV values using lean body weight were obtained for main and largest lesion to represent maxSUV of the patients. The disease progression was defined as total change of the chemotherapeutic regimen or addition of new chemotherapeutic agent during follow up period. The observed period was 389±224 days. The value of maxSUV ranged from 3 to 18 (mean±SD = 10.6±4.4). The disease progressions occurred in 6 patients. Using Cox proportional-hazard regression analysis, maxSUV was identified as a significant parameter for the disease progression free survival (p=0.044). Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis revealed that the group with higher maxSUV (=10.6, n=5) suffered from shorter disease progression free survival (median 299 days) than the group with lower maxSUV (<10.6, n = 22) (median 378 days, p=0.0146). We found that maxSUV on pre-chemotherapeutic F-18 FDG-PET for newly diagnosed lymphoma patients is a significant parameter for disease progression. Lymphoma patients can be stratified before initiation of chemotherapy in terms of disease progression by the value of maxSUV 10.6

  14. Cluster of Legionnaires' disease in a newly built block of flats, Denmark, December 2008-January 2009

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Krøjgaard, Louise Hjelmar; Krogfelt, K. A.; Albrechtsen, Hans-Jørgen

    2011-01-01

    During December 2008 to January 2009, two persons contracted Legionnaires' disease in a newly built block of flats in a suburb of Copenhagen in Denmark. Polymerase chain reaction and culture was used to diagnose Legionnaires' disease in this cluster. Isolates from both patients tested positive...... for Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 subgroup Philadelphia sequence type 1 and the same strain was detected in hot water samples taken from the residential area indicating that the hot water supply system was the most likely source of infection. Legionella was not detected in the cold water. Two interventions...

  15. Localization of foot-and-mouth disease - RNA synthesis on newly formed cellular smooth membranous vacuoles

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Polatnick, J.; Wool, S.H.

    1982-01-01

    Viral RNA synthesis in foot-and-mouth disease infected bovine kidney cell cultures was associated throughout the infectious period with newly formed smooth membranous vacuoles. Membrane formation was measured by choline uptake. The site of RNA synthesis was determined by electron microscopic examination of autoradiograms of incorporated [ 3 H] uridine. Both membrane formation and RNA synthesis became signifcant at 2.5 hours postinfection, but membrane formation increased steadily to 4.5 hours while RNA synthesis peaked at 3.5 hours. Percent density distributions of developed silver grains on autoradiograms showed that almost all RNA synthesis was concentrated on the smooth vacuoles of infected cells. Histogram analysis of grain density distributions established that the site of RNA synthesis was the vacuolar membrane. The newly formed smooth membrane-bound vacuoles were not seen to coalesce into the large vacuolated areas typical of poliovirus cytopathogenicity. (Author)

  16. Localization of foot-and-mouth disease - RNA synthesis on newly formed cellular smooth membranous vacuoles

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Polatnick, J.; Wool, S.H. (United States Department of Agriculture, Science and Education, Greenport, New York (USA). Agricultural Research, Plum Island Animal Disease Center)

    1982-01-01

    Viral RNA synthesis in foot-and-mouth disease infected bovine kidney cell cultures was associated throughout the infectious period with newly formed smooth membranous vacuoles. Membrane formation was measured by choline uptake. The site of RNA synthesis was determined by electron microscopic examination of autoradiograms of incorporated (/sup 3/H) uridine. Both membrane formation and RNA synthesis became signifcant at 2.5 hours postinfection, but membrane formation increased steadily to 4.5 hours while RNA synthesis peaked at 3.5 hours. Percent density distributions of developed silver grains on autoradiograms showed that almost all RNA synthesis was concentrated on the smooth vacuoles of infected cells. Histogram analysis of grain density distributions established that the site of RNA synthesis was the vacuolar membrane. The newly formed smooth membrane-bound vacuoles were not seen to coalesce into the large vacuolated areas typical of poliovirus cytopathogenicity.

  17. Association of Thiazolidinedione with a Lower Risk of Parkinson's Disease in a Population with Newly-Diagnosed Diabetes Mellitus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Hsiu-Li; Lin, Hsiu-Chen; Tseng, Yuan-Fu; Chao, Jane Chen-Jui; Hsu, Chien-Yeh

    2018-06-11

    We investigated the association of thiazolidinedione and its dose effect with the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). This study enrolled 38,521 patients with newly-diagnosed DM between 2001 and 2013 and compared them to matched subjects without DM. The hazard ratios (HRs) for PD were compared between the thiazolidinedione-treated and non-thiazolidinedione-treated groups of the study cohort, and between subgroups who received different cumulative dosages of thiazolidinedione. We observed 544 (1.4%) patients with PD during the follow up of median duration of 6.2 years in patients with newly-diagnosed DM who had a higher risk for PD than patients without DM (HR = 1.150). In the study cohort, the risk of PD was significantly lower in the thiazolidinedione-treated group (HR = 0.399) compared to the non-thiazolidinedione-treated group. Thiazolidinedione reduced the risk of PD in a dose-dependent manner, with HRs ranging from 0.613 to 0.081 with defined daily doses of 0-90 to > 720, respectively. Thiazolidinedione use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of PD in patients with newly-diagnosed DM. Further studies to elucidate the common mechanism of PD and DM may provide novel therapies for these two diseases.

  18. Mycophenolate mofetil embryopathy: A newly recognized teratogenic syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perez-Aytes, Antonio; Marin-Reina, Purificacion; Boso, Virginia; Ledo, Ana; Carey, John C; Vento, Maximo

    2017-01-01

    Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) is probably the most common employed immunosuppressant drug in recipients of solid organ transplant and in many autoimmune diseases. In vitro studies, a significant number of single clinical observations and a recent study from a group of different European teratogen information services, have provided very consistent data supporting the existence of a specific MMF embryopathy. The typical malformative pattern of MMF embryopathy includes external ear anomalies ranging from hypoplastic pinna (microtia) to complete absence of pinna (anotia); cleft lip, with or without cleft palate, and ocular anomalies as iris or chorioretinal coloboma and anophthalmia/microphthalmia. Other less frequent features are congenital heart defects, distal limbs anomalies, esophageal atresia, vertebral malformations, diaphragmatic hernia, and kidney and central nervous system anomalies. Neurodevelopmental outcome seems favorable in the small number of patients where information about this issue is available, but neurological deficits have been documented. Physicians in charge of women under MMF therapy should be aware of the potential risk of this drug to cause a specific embryopathy and the need of interrupting the treatment at least six weeks before becoming pregnant. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  19. Cerebral glucose metabolism and cognition in newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease: ICICLE-PD study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Firbank, M J; Yarnall, A J; Lawson, R A; Duncan, G W; Khoo, T K; Petrides, G S; O'Brien, J T; Barker, R A; Maxwell, R J; Brooks, D J; Burn, D J

    2017-04-01

    To assess reductions of cerebral glucose metabolism in Parkinson's disease (PD) with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET), and their associations with cognitive decline. FDG-PET was performed on a cohort of 79 patients with newly diagnosed PD (mean disease duration 8 months) and 20 unrelated controls. PD participants were scanned while on their usual dopaminergic medication. Cognitive testing was performed at baseline, and after 18 months using the Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) and Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) computerised batteries, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). We used statistical parametric mapping (SPM V.12) software to compare groups and investigate voxelwise correlations between FDG metabolism and cognitive score at baseline. Linear regression was used to evaluate how levels of cortical FDG metabolism were predictive of subsequent cognitive decline rated with the MMSE and MoCA. PD participants showed reduced glucose metabolism in the occipital and inferior parietal lobes relative to controls. Low performance on memory-based tasks was associated with reduced FDG metabolism in posterior parietal and temporal regions, while attentional performance was associated with more frontal deficits. Baseline parietal to cerebellum FDG metabolism ratios predicted MMSE (β=0.38, p=0.001) and MoCA (β=0.3, p=0.002) at 18 months controlling for baseline score. Reductions in cortical FDG metabolism were present in newly diagnosed PD, and correlated with performance on neuropsychological tests. A reduced baseline parietal metabolism is associated with risk of cognitive decline and may represent a potential biomarker for this state and the development of PD dementia. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

  20. IgG4-Related Disease in a Urachal Tumor

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Travis W. Dum

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available IgG4-related disease is a newly recognized fibroinflammatory disorder that has the ability to affect nearly every organ system. It is characterized by tumefactive lesions and fibrosis and closely mimics neoplasms. Only one case of IgG4-related bladder mass has been reported in the literature, but there are no reports of IgG4-related disease in a urachal mass. Herein, we report a 26-year-old male who initially presented with symptoms of recurrent UTI. Work-up revealed a 6 cm urachal tumor, a 1.4 cm pulmonary lesion, and mediastinal lymphadenopathy; all metabolically active on PET scan and suspicious for urachal adenocarcinoma. Lung lesion fine needle aspiration and TURBT pathology revealed inflammation but no evidence of malignancy. The patient underwent a partial cystectomy and umbilectomy with pathology demonstrating dense plasmacytic cells, a high rate of immunohistochemistry staining positive for IgG4 plasma cells, a storiform pattern of fibrosis, and an obliterative phlebitis. Furthermore, the patient had an elevated serum IgG4 level of 227 mg/dL (range 2.4–121 mg/dL. IgG4-related disease is a newly recognized fibroinflammatory disorder that can mimic neoplastic processes and a high index of suspicion and accurate tissue pathology is necessary for an accurate diagnosis.

  1. Newly Discovered Ebola Virus Associated with Hemorrhagic Fever Outbreak in Uganda

    Science.gov (United States)

    Towner, Jonathan S.; Sealy, Tara K.; Khristova, Marina L.; Albariño, César G.; Conlan, Sean; Reeder, Serena A.; Quan, Phenix-Lan; Lipkin, W. Ian; Downing, Robert; Tappero, Jordan W.; Okware, Samuel; Lutwama, Julius; Bakamutumaho, Barnabas; Kayiwa, John; Comer, James A.; Rollin, Pierre E.; Ksiazek, Thomas G.; Nichol, Stuart T.

    2008-01-01

    Over the past 30 years, Zaire and Sudan ebolaviruses have been responsible for large hemorrhagic fever (HF) outbreaks with case fatalities ranging from 53% to 90%, while a third species, Côte d'Ivoire ebolavirus, caused a single non-fatal HF case. In November 2007, HF cases were reported in Bundibugyo District, Western Uganda. Laboratory investigation of the initial 29 suspect-case blood specimens by classic methods (antigen capture, IgM and IgG ELISA) and a recently developed random-primed pyrosequencing approach quickly identified this to be an Ebola HF outbreak associated with a newly discovered ebolavirus species (Bundibugyo ebolavirus) distantly related to the Côte d'Ivoire ebolavirus found in western Africa. Due to the sequence divergence of this new virus relative to all previously recognized ebolaviruses, these findings have important implications for design of future diagnostic assays to monitor Ebola HF disease in humans and animals, and ongoing efforts to develop effective antivirals and vaccines. PMID:19023410

  2. Prevalence and predictors of chronic kidney disease in newly diagnosed human immunodeficiency virus patients in Owerri, Nigeria

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E N Anyabolu

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV infection is a common cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study aims at identifying the prevalence and predictors of CKD in newly diagnosed HIV patients in Owerri, South East Nigeria. This was a cross-sectional study consisting of 393 newly diagnosed HIV-seropositive subjects and 136 age- and sex-matched seronegative subjects as controls. CKD was defined as 24-hour urine protein (24-HUP ≥0.3 g and/or glomerular filtration rate (GFR < 60 ml/min. Subjects were recruited from the HIV clinic and the Medical Outpatient Department of Federal Medical Centre, Owerri. Clinical and anthropometric data were collected. Relevant investigations were performed, including HIV screening and relevant urine and blood investigations. The mean age of the HIV subjects was 38.84 ± 10.65 years. CKD was present in 86 (22.9% HIV subjects and 11 (8.l % controls. Low waist circumference (WC, high serum creatinine, high spot urine protein/creatinine ratio (SUPCR, high 24-HUP/creatinine Ratio (24-HUPCR, high 24-HUP/osmolality Ratio (24-HUPOR predicted CKD in HIV subjects. CKD prevalence is high (22.9% among newly diagnosed HIV patients in South East Nigeria. The predictors of CKD included WC, serum creatinine, SUPCR, 24-HUPCR, and 24-HUPOR.

  3. Left ventricular functions in children with newly diagnosed Graves' disease. A single-center study from Upper Egypt.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Metwalley, Kotb Abbass; Farghaly, Hekma Saad; Abdelhamid, Abdelrahman

    2018-01-01

    This study aimed to evaluate the left ventricular (LV) functions in a cohort of children with Graves' disease (GD). This is a cross-sectional case-control study. It included 36 children with GD and 36 healthy children matched for age and gender. Thyroid hormones (TSH, FT4, and FT3) and anti-thyroid autoantibodies [anti-thyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO), thyrotropin receptor (TRAbs), and thyroglobulin antibodies] were measured. Conventional and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) echocardiographies were used to assess left ventricular systolic and diastolic functions. LV mass index (LVMI) and myocardial performance index (MPI) were also measured. Compared to healthy children, conventional echocardiography of patients with GD revealed higher LVMI (P = 0.001) indicating LV hypertrophy but normal LV functions while TDI revealed lower Em/Am ratio indicating LV diastolic dysfunction (P = 0.001). Significant correlations were reported between FT4 with LVMI (P = 0.05), Em/Am (P = 0.01), and MPI (P = 0.01). In multivariate analysis, a positive correlation was identified between FT4 with MPI (OR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.09-1.15; P = 0.001). Children with newly diagnosed GD may have significant subclinical changes in LV structure and function (diastolic and global). TDI is more sensitive than conventional Doppler in detecting LV dysfunction. These findings highlight the importance of early monitoring of children with GD for left ventricular mass index and diastolic function. What is Known: • There is an increased risk for cardiac abnormalities in children with Graves' disease (GD). • Limited studies assessed left ventricular function in patients with GD. What is New: • Children with newly diagnosed GD may have significant subclinical changes in left ventricular structure and functions. • Children with newly diagnosed GD should be monitored for left ventricular mass index and diastolic function.

  4. Newly diagnosed rheumatic heart disease among indigenous populations in the Pacific.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mirabel, Mariana; Tafflet, Muriel; Noël, Baptiste; Parks, Tom; Axler, Olivier; Robert, Jacques; Nadra, Marie; Phelippeau, Gwendolyne; Descloux, Elodie; Cazorla, Cécile; Missotte, Isabelle; Gervolino, Shirley; Barguil, Yann; Rouchon, Bernard; Laumond, Sylvie; Jubeau, Thierry; Braunstein, Corinne; Empana, Jean-Philippe; Marijon, Eloi; Jouven, Xavier

    2015-12-01

    Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remains the leading acquired heart disease in the young worldwide. We aimed at assessing outcomes and influencing factors in the contemporary era. Hospital-based cohort in a high-income island nation where RHD remains endemic and the population is captive. All patients admitted with newly diagnosed RHD according to World Heart Federation echocardiographic criteria were enrolled (2005-2013). The incidence of major cardiovascular events (MACEs) including heart failure, peripheral embolism, stroke, heart valve intervention and cardiovascular death was calculated, and their determinants identified. Of the 396 patients, 43.9% were male with median age 18 years (IQR 10-40)). 127 (32.1%) patients presented with mild, 131 (33.1%) with moderate and 138 (34.8%) with severe heart valve disease. 205 (51.8%) had features of acute rheumatic fever. 106 (26.8%) presented with at least one MACE. Among the remaining 290 patients, after a median follow-up period of 4.08 (95% CI 1.84 to 6.84) years, 7 patients (2.4%) died and 62 (21.4%) had a first MACE. The annual incidence of first MACE and of heart failure were 59.05‰ (95% CI 44.35 to 73.75) and 29.06‰ (95% CI 19.29 to 38.82), respectively. The severity of RHD at diagnosis (moderate vs mild HR 3.39 (0.95 to 12.12); severe vs mild RHD HR 10.81 (3.11 to 37.62), pdisease and no secondary prophylaxis. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

  5. Age-Dependent Fecal Bacterial Correlation to Inflammatory Bowel Disease for Newly Diagnosed Untreated Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Felix Chinweije Nwosu

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The knowledge about correlation patterns between the fecal microbiota and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD—comprising the two subforms Crohn's disease (CD and ulcerative colitis (UC—for newly diagnosed untreated children is limited. To address this knowledge gap, a selection of faecal specimens (CD, n=27 and UC, n=16 and non-IBD controls (n=30 children (age < 18 years was analysed utilising bacterial small subunit (SSU rRNA. We found, surprising age dependence for the fecal microbiota correlating to IBD. The most pronounced patterns were that E. coli was positively (R2=0.16, P=0.05 and Bacteroidetes, negatively (R2=0.15, P=0.05 correlated to age for CD patients. For UC, we found an apparent opposite age-related disease correlation for both Bacteroides and Escherichia. In addition, there was an overrepresentation of Haemophilus for the UC children. From our, results we propose a model where the aetiology of IBD is related to an on-going immunological development in children requiring different age-dependent bacterial stimuli. The impact of our findings could be a better age stratification for understanding and treating IBD in children.

  6. Assessment for markers of nephropathy in newly diagnosed type 2 ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Objective: To assess for markers of nephropathy in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics, using blood pressure levels, endogenous creatinine clearance and urinary protein excretion as markers of renal disease. Study design: Ninety newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics were studied within 6 weeks of diagnosis. They were in ...

  7. Evaluation of prolactin levels in patients with newly diagnosed pemphigus vulgaris and its correlation with pemphigus disease area index.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lajevardi, Vahideh; Hallaji, Zahra; Daneshpazhooh, Maryam; Ghandi, Narges; Shekari, Peyman; Khani, Sepideh

    2016-06-01

    Prolactin is a hormone; in addition to it known roles, it has immunomodulatory effects on lymphocytes maturation and immunoglobulins production. Hyperprolactinemia has been demonstrated in various autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, type I diabetes mellitus, and Graves' disease. In view of the prolactin immunomodulatory roles, studying prolactin levels in pemphigus as an autoimmune blistering disease may introduce new ways of understanding disease etiology and developing treatment strategies. Our purpose was to determine the prolactin levels in patients with newly diagnosed pemphigus vulgaris and study its correlation with pemphigus disease area index. Our study was limited by the lack of a control group. In this cross-sectional study, prolactin and anti-desmoglein 1 and 3 autoantibodies levels were measured in 50 patients with newly diagnosed pemphigus vulgaris in Razi Dermatology Hospital. Pemphigus severity and extent was estimated using the Pemphigus Disease Area Index. Of the 50 patients, 18 were male and 32 were female with a mean age of 41.56 ± 13.66 years. Mean prolactin (PRL) level was 15.60 ± 11.72 ng/ml (10.68 in males and 18.37 in females). Mean anti-desmoglein 1 and 3 autoantibodies were 135.8 ± 119.8 and 245.8 ± 157.4 U/ml, respectively. Eleven out of 50 patients had a higher than normal prolactin range. No relation was found between prolactin level and disease activity ( p = .982). Also, correlation studies show no relation between prolactin and anti-desmoglein 1 and 3 autoantibodies levels (respectively, p = .771 and .738). In comparing the extent of the disease between the two groups with normal and high prolactin, paired t-test showed no significance ( p = .204). In our study, 22% of patients had hyperprolactinemia, which was greater among females. The highest PRL level was detected in mucocutaneous group. Although serum PRL levels were higher in patients with a greater Pemphigus Disease Area Index

  8. Screening for thyroid cancer according to French recommendations with thyroid ultrasound in newly diagnosed Graves' disease without palpable nodule is not useful.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nys, Pierre; Cordray, Jean-Pierre; Sarafian, Véronique; Lefort-Mossé, Ève; Merceron, Robert-Édouard

    2015-02-01

    The aim of the study was to evaluate systematic thyroid ultrasonography (US) relevance in newly diagnosed Graves' disease among patients presenting without palpable nodules. We consecutively recruited 208 cases of Graves' disease without palpable nodule. All patients were screened for thyroid antibodies and underwent a thyroid US. Ultrasonically guided biopsy was proposed for the assessment of all nodules upper or equal to 10mm in diameter. Two third of patients had an abnormal thyroid at palpation requiring an US. One third of patients had a normal thyroid at palpation and US was consequently unwarranted. Among all patients, US detected non-palpable nodules in 26% of cases. We found no smears suspected to be cancerous. In newly diagnosed Graves' disease, the US relevance is only questionable in patients without abnormal thyroid at palpation. Ultrasonography detected non-palpable nodules and none was suspected to be cancerous. These data suggest that US is not useful in patients without abnormal thyroid at palpation. Nevertheless, the recent Thyroid Imaging-Reporting And Data System classification (TI-RADS) might change our conclusions. The TI-RADS classification indeed improves the selection of nodules lower than 10mm in diameter requiring a biopsy. Nodules lower than 10mm in diameter were not biopsied in the present study. The other US data presented herein (echogenicity, vascularisation) provide no further relevance for systematic US in newly diagnosed patients. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  9. Prediction of complicated disease course for children newly diagnosed with Crohn's disease: a multicentre inception cohort study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kugathasan, Subra; Denson, Lee A; Walters, Thomas D; Kim, Mi-Ok; Marigorta, Urko M; Schirmer, Melanie; Mondal, Kajari; Liu, Chunyan; Griffiths, Anne; Noe, Joshua D; Crandall, Wallace V; Snapper, Scott; Rabizadeh, Shervin; Rosh, Joel R; Shapiro, Jason M; Guthery, Stephen; Mack, David R; Kellermayer, Richard; Kappelman, Michael D; Steiner, Steven; Moulton, Dedrick E; Keljo, David; Cohen, Stanley; Oliva-Hemker, Maria; Heyman, Melvin B; Otley, Anthony R; Baker, Susan S; Evans, Jonathan S; Kirschner, Barbara S; Patel, Ashish S; Ziring, David; Trapnell, Bruce C; Sylvester, Francisco A; Stephens, Michael C; Baldassano, Robert N; Markowitz, James F; Cho, Judy; Xavier, Ramnik J; Huttenhower, Curtis; Aronow, Bruce J; Gibson, Greg; Hyams, Jeffrey S; Dubinsky, Marla C

    2017-04-29

    Stricturing and penetrating complications account for substantial morbidity and health-care costs in paediatric and adult onset Crohn's disease. Validated models to predict risk for complications are not available, and the effect of treatment on risk is unknown. We did a prospective inception cohort study of paediatric patients with newly diagnosed Crohn's disease at 28 sites in the USA and Canada. Genotypes, antimicrobial serologies, ileal gene expression, and ileal, rectal, and faecal microbiota were assessed. A competing-risk model for disease complications was derived and validated in independent groups. Propensity-score matching tested the effect of anti-tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) therapy exposure within 90 days of diagnosis on complication risk. Between Nov 1, 2008, and June 30, 2012, we enrolled 913 patients, 78 (9%) of whom experienced Crohn's disease complications. The validated competing-risk model included age, race, disease location, and antimicrobial serologies and provided a sensitivity of 66% (95% CI 51-82) and specificity of 63% (55-71), with a negative predictive value of 95% (94-97). Patients who received early anti-TNFα therapy were less likely to have penetrating complications (hazard ratio [HR] 0·30, 95% CI 0·10-0·89; p=0·0296) but not stricturing complication (1·13, 0·51-2·51; 0·76) than were those who did not receive early anti-TNFα therapy. Ruminococcus was implicated in stricturing complications and Veillonella in penetrating complications. Ileal genes controlling extracellular matrix production were upregulated at diagnosis, and this gene signature was associated with stricturing in the risk model (HR 1·70, 95% CI 1·12-2·57; p=0·0120). When this gene signature was included, the model's specificity improved to 71%. Our findings support the usefulness of risk stratification of paediatric patients with Crohn's disease at diagnosis, and selection of anti-TNFα therapy. Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, Cincinnati

  10. Clinical and imaging diagnosis of IgG4-related disease in the head and neck

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yu Changliang; Liu Bin; Yu Yongqiang

    2013-01-01

    IgG4-related disease in the head and neck is a newly recognized multi-organ system disease characterized by elevated serum IgG4, infiltration of numerous IgG4-positive plasma cells, tissue fibrosis, and dramatic response to corticosteroid treatment. IgG4-related disease of the head and neck has some relative characteristics on CT and MRI, which can provide valuable information for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis, and are helpful for the clinical treatment, evaluation of therapeutic effects and prediction of prognosis. (authors)

  11. Treatment of hyperthyroidism with antithyroid drugs corrects mild neutropenia in Graves' disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aggarwal, N; Tee, S A; Saqib, W; Fretwell, T; Summerfield, G P; Razvi, S

    2016-12-01

    Neutropenia secondary to antithyroid drug (ATD) therapy in Graves' disease (GD) is well recognized. However, the effect of hyperthyroidism, prior to and after ATD therapy, on neutrophil counts in patients with GD is unclear. To study the prevalence of neutropenia in newly diagnosed untreated GD and the effect of ATD on the neutrophil count. Prospective study from August 2010 to December 2014. Endocrinology outpatient clinic in a single centre. Consecutive patients (n = 206) with newly diagnosed GD. ATD therapy. Prevalence and factors predicting neutropenia (treatment with ATD and are related to reduction in thyroid hormone concentrations. It is therefore important to check neutrophil levels in newly diagnosed patients with GD prior to commencing ATD therapy as otherwise low levels may incorrectly be attributed to ATD therapy. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  12. Newly recognized Leptospira species ("Leptospira inadai" serovar lyme) isolated from human skin.

    OpenAIRE

    Schmid, G P; Steere, A C; Kornblatt, A N; Kaufmann, A F; Moss, C W; Johnson, R C; Hovind-Hougen, K; Brenner, D J

    1986-01-01

    Leptospira strain 10, which represents a new Leptospira species, was isolated from a skin biopsy of a patient with Lyme disease. Although pathogenic for laboratory animals, the organism was not considered to have a significant role in the patient's illness.

  13. Health problems of newly arrived migrants and refugees in Europe.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pavli, Androula; Maltezou, Helena

    2017-07-01

    The number of migrants and refugees in Europe in the past few years has increased dramatically due to war, violence or prosecutions in their homeland. Migration may affect physical, mental and social health. The objective of this article is to assess migrants and refugees' health problems, and to recommend appropriate interventions. A PubMed search of published articles on health problems of newly arrived migrants and refugees was conducted from 2003 through 2016, focusing on the current refugee crisis in Europe. In addition to communicable diseases, such as respiratory, gastrointestinal and dermatologic infections, non-communicable diseases, including chronic conditions, mental and social problems, account for a significant morbidity burden in newly arrived migrants and refugees. Vaccine-preventable diseases are also of outmost importance. The appropriate management of newly arrived refugees and migrants' health problems is affected by barriers to access to health care including legal, communication, cultural and bureaucratic difficulties. There is diversity and lack of integration regarding health care provision across Europe due to policy differences between health care systems and social services. There is a notable burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases among newly arrived migrants and refugees. Provision of health care at reception and temporary centres should be integrated and provided by a multidisciplinary team Appropriate health care of migrants and refugees could greatly enhance their health and social status which will benefit also the host countries at large. © International Society of Travel Medicine, 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  14. Chronic interstitial lung disease in nylon flocking industry workers--Rhode Island, 1992-1996.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1997-09-26

    Interstitial lung disease (ILD) occurs infrequently; some cases are attributed to sarcoidosis, pulmonary hemorrhage syndromes, connective tissue diseases, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, drugs, radiation, and mineral dusts (e.g., silica or asbestos). However, most cases of ILD are of uncertain classification or etiology. This report describes preliminary findings of the investigation in Rhode Island of an outbreak of ILD among workers involved in the manufacture of finely cut nylon (flock) and flocked fabric (used for upholstery, clothing, and automobiles); the findings provide evidence of a newly recognized occupational illness.

  15. Assessment by Employers of Newly Graduated Civil Engineers from the Islamic University of Gaza

    Science.gov (United States)

    Enshassi, Adnan; Hassouna, Ahmed

    2005-01-01

    The evaluation process is very important to identify and recognize the strengths and the weaknesses of graduated students. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the newly graduated civil engineers from the Islamic University of Gaza in Palestine. The methodology was based on questionnaires and informal interview. The…

  16. Newly Diagnosed Meniere's Disease: Clinical Course With Initiation of Noninvasive Treatment Including an Accounting of Vestibular Migraine.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sbeih, Firas; Christov, Florian; Gluth, Michael B

    2018-05-01

    To describe the course of Meniere's disease with noninvasive treatment during the first few years after initial diagnosis. A retrospective review of consecutive patients with newly diagnosed definite Meniere's disease between 2013 and 2016 and a minimum follow-up of 1 year. Patients received a written plan for low sodium, water therapy, and treatment with a diuretic and/or betahistine. Subjects were screened and treated for vestibular migraine as needed. Vertigo control and hearing status at most recent follow-up were assessed. Forty-four subjects had an average follow up of 24.3 months. Thirty-four percent had Meniere's disease and vestibular migraine, and 84% had unilateral Meniere's disease. Seventy-five percent had vertigo well controlled at most recent follow-up, with only noninvasive treatments. Age, gender, body mass index, presence of vestibular migraine, bilateral disease, and duration of follow-up did not predict noninvasive treatment failure. Worse hearing threshold at 250 Hz and lower pure tone average (PTA) at the time of diagnosis did predict failure. Fifty-two percent of ears had improved PTA at most recent visit, 20% had no change, and 28% were worse Conclusions: Encountering excellent vertigo control and stable hearing after a new diagnosis of Meniere's disease is possible with noninvasive treatments. Worse hearing status at diagnosis predicted treatment failure.

  17. A novel Botrytis species is associated with a newly emergent foliar disease in cultivated Hemerocallis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert T Grant-Downton

    Full Text Available Foliar tissue samples of cultivated daylilies (Hemerocallis hybrids showing the symptoms of a newly emergent foliar disease known as 'spring sickness' were investigated for associated fungi. The cause(s of this disease remain obscure. We isolated repeatedly a fungal species which proved to be member of the genus Botrytis, based on immunological tests. DNA sequence analysis of these isolates, using several different phyogenetically informative genes, indicated that they represent a new Botrytis species, most closely related to B. elliptica (lily blight, fire blight which is a major pathogen of cultivated Lilium. The distinction of the isolates was confirmed by morphological analysis of asexual sporulating cultures. Pathogenicity tests on Hemerocallis tissues in vitro demonstrated that this new species was able to induce lesions and rapid tissue necrosis. Based on this data, we infer that this new species, described here as B. deweyae, is likely to be an important contributor to the development of 'spring sickness' symptoms. Pathogenesis may be promoted by developmental and environmental factors that favour assault by this necrotrophic pathogen. The emergence of this disease is suggested to have been triggered by breeding-related changes in cultivated hybrids, particularly the erosion of genetic diversity. Our investigation confirms that emergent plant diseases are important and deserve close monitoring, especially in intensively in-bred plants.

  18. The Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein, FMRP, Recognizes G-Quartets

    Science.gov (United States)

    Darnell, Jennifer C.; Warren, Stephen T.; Darnell, Robert B.

    2004-01-01

    Fragile X mental retardation is a disease caused by the loss of function of a single RNA-binding protein, FMRP. Identifying the RNA targets recognized by FMRP is likely to reveal much about its functions in controlling some aspects of memory and behavior. Recent evidence suggests that one of the predominant RNA motifs recognized by the FMRP…

  19. Learning with distribution of optimized features for recognizing common CT imaging signs of lung diseases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Ling; Liu, Xiabi; Fei, Baowei

    2017-01-01

    Common CT imaging signs of lung diseases (CISLs) are defined as the imaging signs that frequently appear in lung CT images from patients. CISLs play important roles in the diagnosis of lung diseases. This paper proposes a novel learning method, namely learning with distribution of optimized feature (DOF), to effectively recognize the characteristics of CISLs. We improve the classification performance by learning the optimized features under different distributions. Specifically, we adopt the minimum spanning tree algorithm to capture the relationship between features and discriminant ability of features for selecting the most important features. To overcome the problem of various distributions in one CISL, we propose a hierarchical learning method. First, we use an unsupervised learning method to cluster samples into groups based on their distribution. Second, in each group, we use a supervised learning method to train a model based on their categories of CISLs. Finally, we obtain multiple classification decisions from multiple trained models and use majority voting to achieve the final decision. The proposed approach has been implemented on a set of 511 samples captured from human lung CT images and achieves a classification accuracy of 91.96%. The proposed DOF method is effective and can provide a useful tool for computer-aided diagnosis of lung diseases on CT images.

  20. Overweight and obesity in children with newly diagnosed inflammatory bowel disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pituch-Zdanowska, Aleksandra; Banaszkiewicz, Aleksandra; Dziekiewicz, Marcin; Łazowska-Przeorek, Izabella; Gawrońska, Agnieszka; Kowalska-Duplaga, Kinga; Iwańczak, Barbara; Klincewicz, Beata; Grzybowska-Chlebowczyk, Urszula; Walkowiak, Jarosław; Albrecht, Piotr

    2016-03-01

    Determination of overweight and obesity prevalence in children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) at the time of diagnosis. This was a multicenter retrospective study. The study group consisted of children with new cases of IBD diagnosed in 2005-2013 according to the Porto criteria. Hospital admission records were reviewed for demographic and clinical characteristics. BMI-for-age and gender percentile charts were used to define overweight as ≥85th BMI percentile and obesity as ≥95th BMI percentile. 675 patients were evaluated: 368 with Crohn's disease (CD) and 307 with ulcerative colitis (UC). Of these, 54.8% were boys and 45.2% were girls. There were no statistically significant differences in age, weight, height and disease activity between the CD and UC patients. The UC patients had higher BMI values than the CD patients. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was higher in the UC than the CD patients (4.89% CI95 2.76-7.93 vs. 2.45% CI95 1.12-4.59 and 8.47% CI95 5.61-12.16 vs. 1.9% CI95 0.77-3.88, respectively); the differences were statistically significant (-2.44% CI95 -5.45 to 0.49 and -6.57% CI95 -10 to -3.1, respectively). The risk of overweight/obesity was 3.5 times higher for patients with UC (OR=0.272, CI95 0.14-0.49, p=0.0004). The prevalence of overweight and obesity in newly diagnosed children with IBD was 8.4% and was higher in patients with UC than in patients with CD. The results of this study have shown that not only malnourished children may suffer from IBD but also children who are overweight or obese at the time of diagnosis. Copyright © 2015 Medical University of Bialystok. Published by Elsevier Urban & Partner Sp. z o.o. All rights reserved.

  1. EYE DISEASE IN NEWLY-DIAGNOSED LEPROSY PATIENTS IN EASTERN NEPAL

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    LUBBERS, WJ; SCHIPPER, A; HOGEWEG, M; DESOLDENHOFF, R

    To determine the magnitude of eye lesions in newly diagnosed leprosy patients we examined their eyes. The Eastern Leprosy Control Project was supported by The Netherlands Leprosy Relief Association; we used the regional clinic in Biratnagar and 5 mobile clinics in surrounding districts as our survey

  2. Prevalence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Pediatrics Patients Newly Diagnosed with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Effatpanah

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Background: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD is associated with a number of comorbidities in pediatrics. However, its association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD has not been reported. The aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of ADHD in pediatric patients newly diagnosed with GERD. Materials and Methods: Sixty newly-diagnosed treatment naive GERD patients and sixty healthy controls aging between 5 to 12 years referring to the Children and Adolescent’s medical center, Tehran, Iran were recruited in a case-control study during the year 2015. Then patients were evaluated for ADHD by a psychiatrist according to the DSM-IV criteria. The revised Conners' Parent Rating Scale (CPRS-R was used for assessment of the symptoms of ADHD. To screen for psychiatry disorders other than ADHD, the Kiddie-Sads-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL questionnaire was used. Logistic regression analysis was used for modeling the association between GERD and ADHD in the study sample. Results: The mean age of GERD patients was 5.77±2.27 and for non-GERD controls was 6.03±2.52 (P= 0.543. Thirty-three out of 60 (55% GERD patients and 37 out of 60(61.66% non-GERD controls were male (P: 0.579. Prevalence of ADHD was 33.60 (55% in GERD patients and 10.60 (16.66% in non-GERD (P

  3. A newly identified protein of Leptospira interrogans mediates binding to laminin.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Longhi, Mariana T; Oliveira, Tatiane R; Romero, Eliete C; Gonçales, Amane P; de Morais, Zenaide M; Vasconcellos, Silvio A; Nascimento, Ana L T O

    2009-10-01

    Pathogenic Leptospira is the aetiological agent of leptospirosis, a life-threatening disease that affects populations worldwide. The search for novel antigens that could be relevant in host-pathogen interactions is being pursued. These antigens have the potential to elicit several activities, including adhesion. This study focused on a hypothetical predicted lipoprotein of Leptospira, encoded by the gene LIC12895, thought to mediate attachment to extracellular matrix (ECM) components. The gene was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 Star (DE3)pLys by using the expression vector pAE. The recombinant protein tagged with N-terminal hexahistidine was purified by metal-charged chromatography and characterized by circular dichroism spectroscopy. The capacity of the protein to mediate attachment to ECM components was evaluated by binding assays. The leptospiral protein encoded by LIC12895, named Lsa27 (leptospiral surface adhesin, 27 kDa), bound strongly to laminin in a dose-dependent and saturable fashion. Moreover, Lsa27 was recognized by antibodies from serum samples of confirmed leptospirosis specimens in both the initial and the convalescent phases of the disease. Lsa27 is most likely a surface protein of Leptospira as revealed in liquid-phase immunofluorescence assays with living organisms. Taken together, these data indicate that this newly identified membrane protein is expressed during natural infection and may play a role in mediating adhesion of L. interrogans to its host.

  4. Prediction of complicated disease course for children newly diagnosed with Crohn’s disease: a multicentre inception cohort study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kugathasan, Subra; Denson, Lee A; Walters, Thomas D; Kim, Mi-Ok; Marigorta, Urko M; Schirmer, Melanie; Mondal, Kajari; Liu, Chunyan; Griffiths, Anne; Noe, Joshua D; Crandall, Wallace V; Snapper, Scott; Rabizadeh, Shervin; Rosh, Joel R; Shapiro, Jason M; Guthery, Stephen; Mack, David R; Kellermayer, Richard; Kappelman, Michael D; Steiner, Steven; Moulton, Dedrick E; Keljo, David; Cohen, Stanley; Oliva-Hemker, Maria; Heyman, Melvin B; Otley, Anthony R; Baker, Susan S; Evans, Jonathan S; Kirschner, Barbara S; Patel, Ashish S; Ziring, David; Trapnell, Bruce C; Sylvester, Francisco A; Stephens, Michael C; Baldassano, Robert N; Markowitz, James F; Cho, Judy; Xavier, Ramnik J; Huttenhower, Curtis; Aronow, Bruce J; Gibson, Greg; Hyams, Jeffrey S; Dubinsky, Marla C

    2017-01-01

    Summary Background Stricturing and penetrating complications account for substantial morbidity and health-care costs in paediatric and adult onset Crohn’s disease. Validated models to predict risk for complications are not available, and the effect of treatment on risk is unknown. Methods We did a prospective inception cohort study of paediatric patients with newly diagnosed Crohn’s disease at 28 sites in the USA and Canada. Genotypes, antimicrobial serologies, ileal gene expression, and ileal, rectal, and faecal microbiota were assessed. A competing-risk model for disease complications was derived and validated in independent groups. Propensity-score matching tested the effect of anti-tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) therapy exposure within 90 days of diagnosis on complication risk. Findings Between Nov 1, 2008, and June 30, 2012, we enrolled 913 patients, 78 (9%) of whom experienced Crohn’s disease complications. The validated competing-risk model included age, race, disease location, and antimicrobial serologies and provided a sensitivity of 66% (95% CI 51–82) and specificity of 63% (55–71), with a negative predictive value of 95% (94–97). Patients who received early anti-TNFα therapy were less likely to have penetrating complications (hazard ratio [HR] 0·30, 95% CI 0·10–0·89; p=0·0296) but not stricturing complication (1·13, 0·51–2·51; 0·76) than were those who did not receive early anti-TNFα therapy. Ruminococcus was implicated in stricturing complications and Veillonella in penetrating complications. Ileal genes controlling extracellular matrix production were upregulated at diagnosis, and this gene signature was associated with stricturing in the risk model (HR 1·70, 95% CI 1·12–2·57; p=0·0120). When this gene signature was included, the model’s specificity improved to 71%. Interpretation Our findings support the usefulness of risk stratification of paediatric patients with Crohn’s disease at diagnosis, and selection of

  5. Body composition as an indicator of the nutritional status in children with newly diagnosed ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease – a prospective study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paweł Więch

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Introduction : The prevalence of nutritional status disorders in children with ulcerative colitis (UC is much lower than in the case of Crohn’s disease (CD. The largest variability in the components of body composition occurs at the time of a new diagnosis and in periods of disease exacerbation. Aim: Assessment of body composition in children with UC and CD. Material and methods: The preliminary study included 59 children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD (34 children with UC vs. 25 children with CD aged 4–18 years. The final analysis included 26 newly diagnosed children (16 children with UC vs. 10 children with CD. The evaluation of body composition was conducted by means of BIA-101 bioimpedance analyser. Results : Decreased values of lean mass were found in children with newly diagnosed IBD (UC: 41.13 kg vs. control group: 42.06 kg; CD: 35.50 kg vs. control group: 45.50 kg. After a year interval, an increase in fat (UC 1: 7.67 kg vs. UC 2: 10.33 kg; CD 1: 7.36 kg vs. CD 2: 9.47 kg as well as lean body mass (UC 1: 35.22 kg vs. UC 2: 39.00 kg; CD 1: 35.99 kg vs. CD 2: 42.41 kg was found in children. Conclusions : Children with newly diagnosed IBD were highly vulnerable to nutritional status disturbances. The increase in fat and lean body mass in an annual interval may be due to the treatment regime and control of the children.

  6. Dry Eye Disease in Patients with Newly Diagnosed Depressive Disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tiskaoglu, Nesime Setge; Yazıcı, Alper; Karlıdere, Tunay; Sari, Esin; Oguz, Elif Yilmaz; Musaoglu, Musa; Aslan, Seyda; Samet Ermiş, Sıtkı

    2017-05-01

    Psychiatric conditions and not just the treatments themselves might be involved in the pathophysiology of dry eye disease (DED). The aim of our study was to evaluate the association between depression and DED using objective and subjective tests in patients with newly diagnosed depressive disorder who were not using any medication which may help us to determine the sole effect of depression on dry eye. Thirty-six patients from the psychiatry clinic with a new diagnosis of depressive disorder and 32 controls were included in the study. All met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV criteria for depression. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used to measure depression severity and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Stai1, Stai2) for concomitant anxiety symptoms. The Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) and Visual Functioning Questionnaires (VFQ25) were completed and used to confirm diagnosis of DED in conjunction with the tear break up time (TBUT), ocular surface vital dye staining, and Schirmer's test. The comparison of depressive and control groups revealed significantly lower Schirmer (20.3 ± 9.9 vs. 25.7 ± 9.3 mm) and TBUT (7.8 ± 5.7 vs. 12.5 ± 7.8 s) scores with a consistently higher Oxford score (1.8 ± 3.2 vs. 0.2 ± 0.4) in the depressive group. Although the parameters were affected in the depressive group, this did not influence OSDI (86.1 ± 13.6 vs. 86.6 ± 13.3) and VFQ25 (30.8 ± 21.6 vs. 38.5 ± 29.1) scores. In both groups, the three psychological test scores (Stai1-2 and BDI) were correlated to each other but none of these tests were correlated to OSDI, VRQL, Schirmer, TBUT, and Oxford staining scores. Our study shows a definite association between depression and DED. We feel that it is important that psychiatrists take this into account especially while prescribing antidepressants which may aggravate dry eye signs.

  7. Historical biogeography and diversification of truffles in the Tuberaceae and their newly identified Southern hemisphere sister lineage

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gregory Bonito; Matthew E. Smith; Michael Nowak; Rosanne A. Healy; Gonzalo Guevara; Efren Cazares; Akihiko Kinoshita; Eduardo R. Nouhra; Laura S. Dominguez; Leho Tedersoo; Claude Murat; Yun Wang; Baldomero Arroyo Moreno; Donald H. Pfister; Kazuhide Nara; Alessandra Zambonelli; James M. Trappe; Rytas. Vilgalys

    2013-01-01

    In this study we reassessed the biogeography and origin of the Tuberaceae and their relatives using multiple loci and a global sampling of taxa. Multiple independent transitions from an aboveground to a belowground truffie fruiting body form have occurred in the Tuberaceae and in its newly recognized sister lineage...

  8. Atypical Celiac Disease: From Recognizing to Managing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B. Admou

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The nonclassic clinical presentation of celiac disease (CD becomes increasingly common in physician’s daily practice, which requires an awareness of its many clinical faces with atypical, silent, and latent forms. Besides the common genetic background (HLA DQ2/DQ8 of the disease, other non-HLA genes are now notably reported with a probable association to atypical forms. The availability of high-sensitive and specific serologic tests such as antitissue transglutuminase, antiendomysium, and more recent antideamidated, gliadin peptide antibodies permits to efficiently uncover a large portion of the submerged CD iceberg, including individuals having conditions associated with a high risk of developing CD (type 1 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, Down syndrome, family history of CD, etc., biologic abnormalities (iron deficiency anemia, abnormal transaminase levels, etc., and extraintestinal symptoms (short stature, neuropsychiatric disorders, alopecia, dental enamel hypoplasia, recurrent aphtous stomatitis, etc.. Despite the therapeutic alternatives currently in developing, the strict adherence to a GFD remains the only effective and safe therapy for CD.

  9. Perivascular fibrosis and IgG4-related disease: a case report

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Monti

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Immunoglobulin G4-related disease (IgG4-RD is a newly recognized fibroinflammatory condition which can potentially involve any organ. Some characteristic histopathologic features with lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate, an increased number of IgG4+ cells, storiform fibrosis and obliterative phlebitis are the mainstay for diagnosis. Serum IgG4 levels often increase. We report the case of a patient with perivascular fibrotic lesions involving the aortic arch and the splenic hilum, with a surgical biopsy-proven diagnosis of IgG4-related disease. The patient is now undergoing a low-dose corticosteroid maintenance therapy without evidence of new localizations of the disease. This case highlights the need for increasing awareness and recognition of this new, emerging clinical condition.

  10. Chromosome preference of disease genes and vectorization for the prediction of non-coding disease genes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peng, Hui; Lan, Chaowang; Liu, Yuansheng; Liu, Tao; Blumenstein, Michael; Li, Jinyan

    2017-10-03

    Disease-related protein-coding genes have been widely studied, but disease-related non-coding genes remain largely unknown. This work introduces a new vector to represent diseases, and applies the newly vectorized data for a positive-unlabeled learning algorithm to predict and rank disease-related long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes. This novel vector representation for diseases consists of two sub-vectors, one is composed of 45 elements, characterizing the information entropies of the disease genes distribution over 45 chromosome substructures. This idea is supported by our observation that some substructures (e.g., the chromosome 6 p-arm) are highly preferred by disease-related protein coding genes, while some (e.g., the 21 p-arm) are not favored at all. The second sub-vector is 30-dimensional, characterizing the distribution of disease gene enriched KEGG pathways in comparison with our manually created pathway groups. The second sub-vector complements with the first one to differentiate between various diseases. Our prediction method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets for prioritizing disease related lncRNA genes. The method also works well when only the sequence information of an lncRNA gene is known, or even when a given disease has no currently recognized long non-coding genes.

  11. Abnormalities in lung volumes and airflow in children with newly diagnosed connective tissue disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peradzyńska, Joanna; Krenke, Katarzyna; Szylling, Anna; Kołodziejczyk, Beata; Gazda, Agnieszka; Rutkowska-Sak, Lidia; Kulus, Marek

    2016-01-01

    Connective tissue diseases (CTDs) of childhood are rare inflammatory disorders, involving various organs and tissues including respiratory system. Pulmonary involvement in patients with CTDs is uncommon but may cause functional impairment. Data on prevalence and type of lung function abnormalities in children with CTDs are scarce. Thus, the aim of this study was to asses pulmonary functional status in children with newly diagnosed CTD and follow the results after two years of the disease course. There were 98 children (mean age: 13 ± 3; 76 girls), treated in Department of Pediatric Rheumatology, Institute of Rheumatology, Warsaw and 80 aged-matched, healthy controls (mean age 12.7 ± 2.4; 50 girls) included into the study. Study procedures included medical history, physical examination, chest radiograph and PFT (spirometry and whole body-plethysmography). Then, the assessment of PFT was performed after 24 months. FEV₁, FEV₁/FVC and MEF50 were significantly lower in CTD as compared to control group, there was no difference in FVC and TLC. The proportion of patients with abnormal lung function was significantly higher in the study group, 41 (42%) vs 9 (11%). 24-months observation didn't reveal progression in lung function impairment. Lung function impairment is relatively common in children with CTDs. Although restrictive ventilatory pattern is considered typical feature of lung involvement in CTDs, airflow limitation could also be an initial abnormality.

  12. A newly developed snack effective for enhancing bone volume

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hayashi Hidetaka

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The incidence of primary osteoporosis is higher in Japan than in USA and European countries. Recently, the importance of preventive medicine has been gradually recognized in the field of orthopaedic surgery with a concept that peak bone mass should be increased in childhood as much as possible for the prevention of osteoporosis. Under such background, we have developed a new bean snack with an aim to improve bone volume loss. In this study, we examined the effects of a newly developed snack on bone volume and density in osteoporosis model mice. Methods Orchiectomy (ORX and ovariectomy (OVX were performed for C57BL/6J mice of twelve-week-old (Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbar, ME, USA were used in this experiment. We prepared and given three types of powder diet e.g.: normal calcium diet (NCD, Ca: 0.9%, Clea Japan Co., Tokyo, Japan, low calcium diet (LCD, Ca: 0.63%, Clea Japan Co., and special diet (SCD, Ca: 0.9%. Eighteen weeks after surgery, all the animals were sacrified and prepared for histomorphometric analysis to quantify bone density and bone mineral content. Results As a result of histomorphometric examination, SCD was revealed to enhance bone volume irrespective of age and sex. The bone density was increased significantly in osteoporosis model mice fed the newly developmental snack as compared with the control mice. The bone mineral content was also enhanced significantly. These phenomena were revealed in both sexes. Conclusion It is shown that the newly developed bean snack is highly effective for the improvement of bone volume loss irrespective of sex. We demonstrated that newly developmental snack supplements may be a useful preventive measure for Japanese whose bone mineral density values are less than the ideal condition.

  13. Recognizing and Treating Malaria in U.S. Residents

    Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

    This podcast is an overview of the Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) Call: It's a Small World After All: Dengue and Malaria in U.S. Residents - Recognizing and Treating These Mosquito-borne Diseases. CDC's David Townes discusses clinical presentation, transmission, prevention strategies, new treatments, and malaria resources available to health care providers.

  14. On the Matching of Seen and Felt Shape by Newly Sighted Subjects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John Schwenkler

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available How do we recognize identities between seen shapes and felt ones? Is this due to associative learning, or intrinsic connections these sensory modalities? We can address this question by testing the capacities of newly sighted subjects to match seen and felt shapes, but only if the subjects can see the objects well enough to form adequate visual representations of their shapes. In light of this, a recent study by R. Held and colleagues fails to demonstrate that their newly sighted subjects' inability to match seen and felt shape was due to a lack of intermodal connections rather than a purely visual deficit, as the subjects may not have been able visually to represent 3D shape in the perspective-invariant manner required for intermodal matching. However, the study could be modified in any of several ways to help avoid this problem.

  15. Predicting first fall in newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease: Insights from a fall-naïve cohort.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lord, Sue; Galna, Brook; Yarnall, Alison J; Coleman, Shirley; Burn, David; Rochester, Lynn

    2016-12-01

    Falls are common and associated with reduced independence and mortality in Parkinson's disease. Previous research has been conducted on falls-prevalent or advanced disease cohorts. This study identifies risk factors for first fall for 36 months in a newly diagnosed, falls-naïve cohort. A total of 121 consecutive Parkinson's disease patients were recruited. Falls data were collected prospectively during 36 months from diagnosis via monthly falls diaries and telephone follow-up for 117 participants. Assessment comprised a comprehensive battery of clinical, gait, and cognitive measures. Significant predictors were identified from decision-tree analysis and survival analysis with time to first fall during 36 months as the dependent variable. At baseline, 26 (22%) participants reported retrospective falls. At 36 months, the remaining cohort (n = 91) comprised 47 fallers (52%) and 30 (33%) nonfallers and 14 (15%) participants with incomplete diaries. Fallers presented with a significantly higher disease severity, poorer ability to stand on one leg, slower gait speed, increased stance time variability, and higher swing time asymmetry. Median time to first fall was 847 days. Gait speed, stance time, and Hoehn & Yahr III stage emerged as significant predictors of first fall, hazard ratio 3.44 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.58 to 7.48), 3.31(95% CI 1.40 to 7.80), and 2.80 (95% CI 1.38 to 5.65), respectively. The hazard ratio for risk factors combined was 7.82 (CI 2.80 to 21.84). Interventions that target gait deficit and postural control in early Parkinson's disease may limit the potential for first fall. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

  16. Recognizing flu-like symptoms from videos.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thi, Tuan Hue; Wang, Li; Ye, Ning; Zhang, Jian; Maurer-Stroh, Sebastian; Cheng, Li

    2014-09-12

    Vision-based surveillance and monitoring is a potential alternative for early detection of respiratory disease outbreaks in urban areas complementing molecular diagnostics and hospital and doctor visit-based alert systems. Visible actions representing typical flu-like symptoms include sneeze and cough that are associated with changing patterns of hand to head distances, among others. The technical difficulties lie in the high complexity and large variation of those actions as well as numerous similar background actions such as scratching head, cell phone use, eating, drinking and so on. In this paper, we make a first attempt at the challenging problem of recognizing flu-like symptoms from videos. Since there was no related dataset available, we created a new public health dataset for action recognition that includes two major flu-like symptom related actions (sneeze and cough) and a number of background actions. We also developed a suitable novel algorithm by introducing two types of Action Matching Kernels, where both types aim to integrate two aspects of local features, namely the space-time layout and the Bag-of-Words representations. In particular, we show that the Pyramid Match Kernel and Spatial Pyramid Matching are both special cases of our proposed kernels. Besides experimenting on standard testbed, the proposed algorithm is evaluated also on the new sneeze and cough set. Empirically, we observe that our approach achieves competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-arts, while recognition on the new public health dataset is shown to be a non-trivial task even with simple single person unobstructed view. Our sneeze and cough video dataset and newly developed action recognition algorithm is the first of its kind and aims to kick-start the field of action recognition of flu-like symptoms from videos. It will be challenging but necessary in future developments to consider more complex real-life scenario of detecting these actions simultaneously from

  17. How Newcomers Learn the Social Norms of an Organization: A Case Study of the Socialization of Newly Hired Engineers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Korte, Russell F.

    2009-01-01

    Current scholarship views organizational socialization as a learning process that is primarily the responsibility of the newcomer. Yet recent learning research recognizes the importance of the social interactions in the learning process. This study investigated how newly hired engineers at a large manufacturing company learned job-related tasks…

  18. Recognizing and Treating Malaria in U.S. Residents

    Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

    2010-06-09

    This podcast is an overview of the Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) Call: It's a Small World After All: Dengue and Malaria in U.S. Residents - Recognizing and Treating These Mosquito-borne Diseases. CDC's David Townes discusses clinical presentation, transmission, prevention strategies, new treatments, and malaria resources available to health care providers.  Created: 6/9/2010 by Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, Center for Global Health and Emergency Communication System (ECS)/Joint Information Center (JIC); Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR).   Date Released: 6/15/2010.

  19. Comparison of Newly Diagnosed Ocular Hypertension and Open-Angle Glaucoma: Ocular Variables, Risk Factors, and Disease Severity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yvonne M. Buys

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Purpose. To describe the distribution of ocular variables, risk factors, and disease severity in newly diagnosed ocular hypertension (OH or open-angle glaucoma (OAG. Methods. Eligible subjects underwent a complete history and examination. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs and 95% confidence intervals (CIs obtained from multiple logistic regression models were used to compare OAG to OH and advanced to early/moderate OAG. Results. 405 subjects were enrolled: 292 (72.1% with OAG and 113 (27.9% with OH. 51.7% had early, 27.1% moderate, and 20.9% advanced OAG. The OR for OAG versus OH was 8.19 (P<0.0001 for disc notch, 5.36 (P<0.0001 for abnormal visual field, 1.45 (P=0.001 for worsening mean deviation, 1.91 (P<0.0001 for increased cupping, 1.03 for increased age (P=0.030, and 0.36 (P=0.010 for smoking. Conclusions. Increased age was a risk for OAG, and smoking decreased the risk of OAG compared to OH. Almost half of the OAG subjects had moderate/advanced disease at diagnosis.

  20. Coping strategies among patients with newly diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jakobsson Larsson, Birgitta; Nordin, Karin; Askmark, Håkan; Nygren, Ingela

    2014-11-01

    To prospectively identify different coping strategies among newly diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and whether they change over time and to determine whether physical function, psychological well-being, age and gender correlated with the use of different coping strategies. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a fatal disease with impact on both physical function and psychological well-being. Different coping strategies are used to manage symptoms and disease progression, but knowledge about coping in newly diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients is scarce. This was a prospective study with a longitudinal and descriptive design. A total of 33 patients were included and evaluation was made at two time points, one to three months and six months after diagnosis. Patients were asked to complete the Motor Neuron Disease Coping Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Physical function was estimated using the revised Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale. The most commonly used strategies were support and independence. Avoidance/venting and information seeking were seldom used at both time points. The use of information seeking decreased between the two time points. Men did not differ from women, but patients ≤64 years used positive action more often than older patients. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale was positively correlated with positive action at time point 1, but not at time point 2. Patients' psychological well-being was correlated with the use of different coping strategies. Support and independence were the most used coping strategies, and the use of different strategies changed over time. Psychological well-being was correlated with different coping strategies in newly diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients. The knowledge about coping strategies in early stage of the disease may help the nurses to improve and develop the care and support for these patients. © 2014 John Wiley

  1. Higher incidence of hip fracture in newly diagnosed schizophrenic ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Higher incidence of hip fracture in newly diagnosed schizophrenic patients in Taiwan. Hip fracture is a major public health concern due to its poor outcome and serious socioeconomic burden in older people (1). Evidence has shown that many factors are related to increased risk of hip fracture, but psychiatric diseases are ...

  2. A new checkerboard panel for testing bacterial markers in periodontal disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dahlén, G; Leonhardt, A

    2006-02-01

    Various microbiological methods have been used for testing bacterial markers for periodontitis and periodontal disease progression. Most studies have used only a limited number of well recognized bacterial species. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the association of 13 more recently identified bacterial species in a new panel in comparison with 12 previously more recognized periodontotopathogens ('old panel') using the 'checkerboard' DNA-DNA hybridization method. Fifty individuals were chosen who showed at least one site with a probing pocket depth of 6 mm or more (disease) and bleeding on probing and at least one site with a probing pocket depth of 3 mm and without bleeding on probing (health). One diseased and one healthy site on each individual were sampled with the paperpoint technique and the samples were processed in the checkerboard technique against deoxigenin-labeled whole genomic probes to 25 subgingival species representing 12 well recognized and 13 newly identified periodontitis associated species. Twenty-four (out of 25) species were detected more frequently in the subgingival plaque of diseased than healthy sites both at score 1 (> 10(4)) and score 3 (> 10(5)). A significant difference at the higher score (score 3) was noticed for all species of the old panel except for three (Streptococcus intermedius, Selenomonas noxia, and Eikenella corrodens). Of the species in the new panel only Prevotella tannerae, Filifactor alocis, and Porphyromonas endodontalis showed a statistical significant difference between diseased and healthy sites. It was concluded that P. tannerae, F. alocis, and P. endodontalis should be added to the 12 species used for routine diagnostics of periodontitis-associated bacterial flora.

  3. Association between age, IL-10, IFN¿, stimulated C-peptide and disease progression in children with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kaas, A; Pfleger, Claudia Christina; Kharagjitsingh, A V

    2012-01-01

    Aims: The relation of disease progression and age, serum interleukin 10 (IL-10) and interferon gamma (IFN¿) and their genetic correlates were studied in paediatric patients with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes. Methods: Two hundred and twenty-seven patients from the Hvidoere Study Group were...... classified in four different progression groups as assessed by change in stimulated C-peptide from 1 to 6 months. CA repeat variants of the IL-10 and IFN¿ gene were genotyped and serum levels of IL-10 and IFN¿ were measured at 1, 6 and 12 months. Results: IL-10 decreased (P...

  4. The prevalence of Helicobacter pylori gastritis in newly diagnosed children with inflammatory bowel disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roka, Kleoniki; Roubani, Aikaterini; Stefanaki, Kalliopi; Panayotou, Ioanna; Roma, Eleftheria; Chouliaras, Giorgos

    2014-10-01

    Recent studies have shown that patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are less likely to be infected with Helicobacter pylori compared with non-IBD patients. We aimed to study the prevalence of H. pylori-positive and H. pylori-negative gastritis in newly diagnosed children with IBD in comparison to those with non-IBD in Greece. All children who underwent first esophagogastroduodenal endoscopy between 2002 and 2011 were retrospectively included. Four groups were studied: patients with Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), IBD unclassified (IBDU), and non-IBD individuals (non-IBD). Helicobacter pylori infection was defined by positive culture or by positive histology and CLO test. Those children with negative or not available culture and only one positive test (histology or CLO) were further evaluated by urea breath test, and the positives were also included in the infected group. We studied 159 patients with IBD (66 CD, 34 UC, and 59 IBDU) and 1209 patients in non-IBD individuals. Helicobacter pylori gastritis was less frequent in the IBD group (3.8% vs 13.2% in the control group, p gastritis were 3.3 times more likely to belong in the IBD group compared with H. pylori-positive patients (p = .006). Occurrence of H. pylori gastritis is less frequent in children with IBD compared with controls. Our study confirms an inverse association between H. pylori and IBD. Future studies are needed to distinguish between a true protective role of H. pylori and a confounding effect due to previous antibiotic use in children with IBD. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  5. Seven newly identified loci for autoimmune thyroid disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cooper, Jason D; Simmonds, Matthew J; Walker, Neil M; Burren, Oliver; Brand, Oliver J; Guo, Hui; Wallace, Chris; Stevens, Helen; Coleman, Gillian; Franklyn, Jayne A; Todd, John A; Gough, Stephen C L

    2012-12-01

    Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD), including Graves' disease (GD) and Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT), is one of the most common of the immune-mediated diseases. To further investigate the genetic determinants of AITD, we conducted an association study using a custom-made single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array, the ImmunoChip. The SNP array contains all known and genotype-able SNPs across 186 distinct susceptibility loci associated with one or more immune-mediated diseases. After stringent quality control, we analysed 103 875 common SNPs (minor allele frequency >0.05) in 2285 GD and 462 HT patients and 9364 controls. We found evidence for seven new AITD risk loci (P test derived significance threshold), five at locations previously associated and two at locations awaiting confirmation, with other immune-mediated diseases.

  6. Risk assessment and monitoring of Legionella by culture and q-PCR in a newly built block of flats associated with a small outbreak of legionnaires´ disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Krøjgaard, Louise Hjelmar; Krogfelt, Karen A.; Albrechtsen, Hans-Jørgen

    2010-01-01

    During the investigation of a small outbreak of legionnaires’ disease in a newly built block of flats, several risk factors were uncovered. The outbreak encompassed two men (age 44 and 65) of which the oldest one died. Two interventions (heat treatments of 70ºC for 12 and 24 hours respectively...

  7. Recognize and classify pneumoconiosis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hering, K.G.; Hofmann-Preiss, K.

    2014-01-01

    In the year 2012, out of the 10 most frequently recognized occupational diseases 6 were forms of pneumoconiosis. With respect to healthcare and economic aspects, silicosis and asbestos-associated diseases are of foremost importance. The latter are to be found everywhere and are not restricted to large industrial areas. Radiology has a central role in the diagnosis and evaluation of occupational lung disorders. In cases of known exposure mainly to asbestos and quartz, the diagnosis of pneumoconiosis, with few exceptions will be established primarily by the radiological findings. As these disorders are asymptomatic for a long time they are quite often detected as incidental findings in examinations for other reasons. Therefore, radiologists have to be familiar with the pattern of findings of the most frequent forms of pneumoconiosis and the differential diagnoses. For reasons of equal treatment of the insured a quality-based, standardized performance, documentation and evaluation of radiological examinations is required in preventive procedures and evaluations. Above all, a standardized low-dose protocol has to be used in computed tomography (CT) examinations, although individualized concerning the dose, in order to keep radiation exposure as low as possible for the patient. The International Labour Office (ILO) classification for the coding of chest X-rays and the international classification of occupational and environmental respiratory diseases (ICOERD) classification used since 2004 for CT examinations meet the requirements of the insured and the occupational insurance associations as a means of reproducible and comparable data for decision-making. (orig.) [de

  8. IgG4-related disease: a systemic condition with characteristic microscopic features

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Detlefsen, Sönke

    2013-01-01

    that a significant proportion of the AIP patients had a variety of extrapancreatic fibroinflammatory lesions, and that AIP therefore was the pancreatic manifestation of a systemic disease. Among these extrapancreatic manifestations, the extrahepatic bile ducts, salivary glands, thyroid, lymph nodes......During the first decade of the 21st century, IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD), a fibroinflammatory condition occurring at multiple sites of the body, has been newly recognized. As indicated by its name, elevation of IgG4 in the serum and tissue is a common denominator of IgG4-RD. Since...... diseases on their own, others have been included under the umbrella of "multifocal fibrosclerosis". Biopsies or resection specimens from affected organs in IgG4-RD reveal several common microscopic features irrespective of the site of the lesion. Cellular and storiform fibrosis, lymphoplasmacytic...

  9. Recognizing Family Dynamics in the Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sperry, Len

    2012-01-01

    Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an increasingly common chronic medical condition that affects not only patients but also their families. Because family dynamics, particularly the family life cycle, can and does influence the disease process, those providing counseling to CFS patients and their families would do well to recognize these dynamics.…

  10. Identifying Malnutrition: Nutritional Status in Newly Diagnosed Patients With Cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krishnasamy, Karthikayini; Li Yoong, Tang; Mei Chan, Chong; Peng Choong, Lau; Chinna, Karuthan

    2017-02-01

    Malnutrition is common among patients with cancer, but little attention is given to its risks and consequences. The aim of this study is to assess the nutritional status and identify the factors associated with malnutrition among newly diagnosed patients with cancer. Patients admitted with newly diagnosed cancer at a teaching hospital in Malaysia were recruited from January to April 2015. Nutritional status was assessed before treatment initiation, and patients were classified into three categories. A total of 132 pretreatment patients were recruited into the study. About half were severely malnourished. Patients with stage III cancer had the highest prevalence of severe malnourishment. Clinical parameters and disease characteristics were significantly associated with nutritional status. Demographic variables were also statistically significantly associated with severe nutritional status.

  11. Getting a good night sleep? The importance of recognizing and treating nocturnal hypokinesia in Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bhidayasiri, Roongroj; Trenkwalder, Claudia

    2018-01-05

    When Parkinson's disease (PD) patients are asked about the quality of their sleep, their answers are dominated by difficulties associated with impaired mobility in bed, medically referred to as nocturnal hypokinesia. Nocturnal hypokinesia is symptomatic from the mid-stage of the disease, affecting up to 70% of PD patients, and contributes to poor sleep quality, and increased carer burden. Here we explore four areas of nocturnal hypokinesia that are relevant to clinical practice, namely: manifestations and definition; clinical assessment and objective monitoring; etiologies and contributing factors; and evidence-based therapeutic approaches. In addition, we provide an operational definition of what constitutes nocturnal hypokinesia and outline different methods of assessment, ranging from clinical interviews and rating scales to objective night-time monitoring with inertial sensors. Optimal management of nocturnal hypokinesia in PD begins with recognizing its manifestation by inquiring about cardinal symptoms and contributing factors from, not only patients, but also carers, followed by formal assessment, and the application of individualized evidence-based treatment. Night-time dopaminergic treatment is the primary therapy; however, careful clinical judgment is required to balance the benefits with the potential adverse events related to nocturnal dopaminergic stimulation. Future studies are needed to explore the practicality of home-based objective assessment of nocturnal hypokinesia, new therapeutic options not limited to dopaminergic medications, and non-pharmacologic approaches, including training on compensatory strategies and bedroom adaptations. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Meta-analysis: Coeliac disease and hypertransaminasaemia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sainsbury, A; Sanders, D S; Ford, A C

    2011-07-01

    There may be a positive association between coeliac disease and serum hypertransaminasaemia but evidence is conflicting. To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the prevalence of coeliac disease in adults presenting with cryptogenic serum hypertransaminasaemia and the prevalence of hypertransaminasaemia in patients with newly diagnosed coeliac disease. MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched up to August 2010. Case series and case-control studies recruiting adults with either cryptogenic hypertransaminasaemia that applied serological tests for coeliac disease and/or distal duodenal biopsy to participants or newly diagnosed biopsy-proven coeliac disease that assessed serum transaminases were eligible. The pooled prevalence of coeliac disease in individuals presenting with abnormal serum transaminases and the pooled prevalence of hypertransaminasaemia in newly diagnosed coeliac disease were calculated with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Eleven eligible studies were identified. Pooled prevalences of positive coeliac serology and biopsy-proven coeliac disease in cryptogenic hypertransaminasaemia were 6% (95% CI 3% to 10%) and 4% (95% CI 1% to 7%) respectively. Pooled prevalence of abnormal serum transaminases in newly diagnosed coeliac disease was 27% (95% CI 13% to 44%). Exclusion of gluten led to normalisation of serum transaminase levels in 63% to 90% of patients within 1 year. Undetected coeliac disease is a potential cause for cryptogenic hypertransaminasaemia in 3% to 4% of cases. More than 20% of individuals with newly diagnosed coeliac disease may have abnormal serum transaminases and these normalise on a gluten-free diet in the majority of cases. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  13. Pediatric rheumatology: An under-recognized subspecialty in India

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Akhila Kavirayani

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Pediatrics in India at the levels of both undergraduate and postgraduate training is often viewed upon as an acute disease specialty with little emphasis on chronic medical musculoskeletal diseases. Pediatric rheumatology is an under-recognized subspecialty of pediatrics which deals specifically with childhood arthritis, noninflammatory joint pains, connective tissue diseases, autoimmune diseases, vasculitis, and other rare inflammatory disorders. This article aims to give a bird's eye view of the repertoire of commonly encountered problems seen by a pediatric rheumatologist, via a classical case vignette for each topic followed by discussion. There is also mention of some rare diseases managed within pediatric rheumatology to give a flavor of the spectrum of diseases encountered. This is to raise awareness of the importance of pediatric rheumatology as a subspecialty within India and to prompt readers to seek specialist advice when encountering challenging cases. Pediatric rheumatologists network and work collaboratively with many other specialties such as ophthalmology, dermatology, neurology, orthopedics, nephrology, infectious diseases, immunology, and gastroenterology for combined care of diverse conditions. There is an unmet need in India to develop a training program for pediatric rheumatology so that shared care pathways with sensitized pediatricians and other specialists can be developed nationwide, to serve these children better to achieve optimal outcomes.

  14. Adding liraglutide to the backbone therapy of biguanide in patients with coronary artery disease and newly diagnosed type-2 diabetes (the AddHope2 study)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Anholm, Christian; Kumarathurai, Preman; Klit, Malene S

    2014-01-01

    INTRODUCTION: Newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) more than doubles the risk of death compared with otherwise matched glucose tolerant patients. The biguanide metformin is the drug of choice in treatment of T2DM and has shown to ameliorate...... cardiovascular morbidity in patients with T2DM and myocardial infarction (MI). The incretin hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) improves β-cell function, insulin sensitivity and causes weight loss and has been suggested to have beneficial effects on cardiac function. The GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA......), liraglutide, is currently used for treatment of T2DM but its potential effect on cardiac function has not been investigated in detail. We hypothesised that liraglutide added to metformin backbone therapy in patients with CAD and newly diagnosed T2DM will improve β-cell function and left ventricular systolic...

  15. TLR4, NOD1 and NOD2 mediate immune recognition of putative newly identified periodontal pathogens.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marchesan, Julie; Jiao, Yizu; Schaff, Riley A; Hao, Jie; Morelli, Thiago; Kinney, Janet S; Gerow, Elizabeth; Sheridan, Rachel; Rodrigues, Vinicius; Paster, Bruce J; Inohara, Naohiro; Giannobile, William V

    2016-06-01

    Periodontitis is a polymicrobial inflammatory disease that results from the interaction between the oral microbiota and the host immunity. Although the innate immune response is important for disease initiation and progression, the innate immune receptors that recognize both classical and putative periodontal pathogens that elicit an immune response have not been elucidated. By using the Human Oral Microbe Identification Microarray (HOMIM), we identified multiple predominant oral bacterial species in human plaque biofilm that strongly associate with severe periodontitis. Ten of the identified species were evaluated in greater depth, six being classical pathogens and four putative novel pathogens. Using human peripheral blood monocytes (HPBM) and murine bone-marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) from wild-type (WT) and Toll-like receptor (TLR)-specific and MyD88 knockouts (KOs), we demonstrated that heat-killed Campylobacter concisus, Campylobacter rectus, Selenomonas infelix, Porphyromonas endodontalis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Tannerella forsythia mediate high immunostimulatory activity. Campylobacter concisus, C. rectus, and S. infelix exhibited robust TLR4 stimulatory activity. Studies using mesothelial cells from WT and NOD1-specific KOs and NOD2-expressing human embryonic kidney cells demonstrated that Eubacterium saphenum, Eubacterium nodatum and Filifactor alocis exhibit robust NOD1 stimulatory activity, and that Porphyromonas endodontalis and Parvimonas micra have the highest NOD2 stimulatory activity. These studies allowed us to provide important evidence on newly identified putative pathogens in periodontal disease pathogenesis showing that these bacteria exhibit different immunostimulatory activity via TLR4, NOD1, and NOD2 (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01154855). © 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  16. TLR4, NOD1 and NOD2 Mediate Immune Recognition of Putative Newly-Identified Periodontal Pathogens

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schaff, Riley A.; Hao, Jie; Morelli, Thiago; Kinney, Janet S.; Gerow, Elizabeth; Sheridan, Rachel; Rodrigues, Vinicius; Paster, Bruce J.; Inohara, Naohiro; Giannobile, William V.

    2015-01-01

    SUMMARY Periodontitis is a polymicrobial inflammatory disease that results from the interaction between the oral microbiota and the host immunity. While the innate immune response is important for disease initiation and progression, the innate immune receptors that recognize both classical and putative periodontal pathogens that elicit an immune response have not been elucidated. By using the Human Oral Microbe Identification Microarray (HOMIM), we identified multiple predominant oral bacterial species in human plaque biofilm that strongly associate with severe periodontitis. Ten of the identified species were evaluated in greater depth, 6 being classical pathogens and 4 putative novel pathogens. Using human peripheral blood monocytes (HPBM) and murine bone marrow–derived macrophages (BMDM) from wild-type (WT) and toll-like receptor (TLR)-specific and MyD88 knockouts (KOs), we demonstrated that heat-killed Campylobacter concisus, Campylobacter rectus, Selenomonas infelix, Porphyromonas endodontalis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Tannerella forsythia mediate high immunostimulatory activity. C. concisus, C. rectus, and S. infelix exhibited robust TLR4 stimulatory activity. Studies using mesothelial cells from WT and NOD1-specific KOs and NOD2-expressing human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells demonstrated that Eubacterium saphenum, Eubacterium nodatum and Filifactor alocis exhibit robust NOD1 stimulatory activity, and that Porphyromonas endodontalis and Parvimonas micra have the highest NOD2-stimulatory activity. These studies allowed us to provide important evidence on newly-identified putative pathogens in periodontal disease pathogenesis showing that these bacteria exhibit different immunostimulatory activity via TLR4, NOD1, and NOD2 (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01154855). PMID:26177212

  17. Disease phenotype at diagnosis in pediatric Crohn's disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    de Bie, Charlotte I; Paerregaard, Anders; Kolacek, Sanja

    2013-01-01

    It has been speculated that pediatric Crohn's disease (CD) is a distinct disease entity, with probably different disease subtypes. We therefore aimed to accurately phenotype newly diagnosed pediatric CD by using the pediatric modification of the Montreal classification, the Paris classification....

  18. Costs and health care resource utilization among chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with newly acquired pneumonia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lin J

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Junji Lin,1 Yunfeng Li,2 Haijun Tian,2 Michael J Goodman,1 Susan Gabriel,2 Tara Nazareth,2 Stuart J Turner,2,3 Stephen Arcona,2 Kristijan H Kahler21Department of Pharmacotherapy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 2Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, East Hanover, NJ, USA; 3Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD are at increased risk for lung infections and other pathologies (eg, pneumonia; however, few studies have evaluated the impact of pneumonia on health care resource utilization and costs in this population. The purpose of this study was to estimate health care resource utilization and costs among COPD patients with newly acquired pneumonia compared to those without pneumonia. Methods: A retrospective claims analysis using Truven MarketScan® Commercial and Medicare databases was conducted. COPD patients with and without newly acquired pneumonia diagnosed between January 1, 2004 and September 30, 2011 were identified. Propensity score matching was used to create a 1:1 matched cohort. Patient demographics, comorbidities (measured by Charlson Comorbidity Index, and medication use were evaluated before and after matching. Health care resource utilization (ie, hospitalizations, emergency room [ER] and outpatient visits, and associated health care costs were assessed during the 12-month follow-up. Logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the risk of hospitalization and ER visits, and gamma regression models and two-part models compared health care costs between groups after matching. Results: In the baseline cohort (N=467,578, patients with newly acquired pneumonia were older (mean age: 70 versus [vs] 63 years and had higher Charlson Comorbidity Index scores (3.3 vs 2.6 than patients without pneumonia. After propensity score matching, the pneumonia cohort was nine times more likely

  19. Crayfish: a newly recognized vehicle for vibrio infections.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bean, N H; Maloney, E K; Potter, M E; Korazemo, P; Ray, B; Taylor, J P; Seigler, S; Snowden, J

    1998-10-01

    We conducted a 1-year case-control study of sporadic vibrio infections to identify risk factors related to consumption of seafood products in two coastal areas of Louisiana and Texas. Twenty-six persons with sporadic vibrio infections and 77 matched controls were enrolled. Multivariate analysis revealed that crayfish (P Vibrio parahemolyticus infection (OR 9.24, P vibrio infection.

  20. Assessment of Knowledge and Attitudes of Newly-Qualified Doctors Towards AIDS Infection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomais Kalogirou

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Health-care professionals are at a high risk of AIDS infection, among hospitalized HIV infectedpatients. Proper training and knowledge accompanied by necessary preventive measures are by all means, the mostsignificant factors which ensure low accident rates and furthermore lower contamination rates of the health-carepersonnel.Objective: Screening and assessment of knowledge and attitudes of newly-qualified doctors towards AIDSinfection.Methodology: We conducted a cohort study with a screening questionnaire, which included demographic data and16 questions associated with AIDS infection. 51 forms were filled in by specializing and rural doctors. Thestatistical analysis was conducted using the statistical program SPSS 13.Results: 25,5% (n=13 of the participants in this reserch have treated at least one patient for HIV infection, 19%(n=10, of them would willingly specialize in intense care of HIV patients and lastly 90.2%(n=46 believe that weshould preserve the medical confidential for HIV patients. 96.1% (n=49 of the participants doctors knew thatAIDS disease is caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV, 88.2%(n=45 is aware that HIV virus damagesthe immune system and finally 92% (n=47 recognize HIV symptomatology.The vast majority of the doctors(98%,n=50 is aware that HIV infection is spread through sexual intercourse, blood contact and by sharing needlesor syringes. Nevertheless, a percentage of 13.7% (n=7 believe that HIV transmission is feasible through kissingand 7.8% (n=15 through insects’ bites. At last 85-98% of the personnel refer that it’s familiar with the generalpreventive measures, which are usually applied to all HIV positive inpatients.Conclusions: Knowledge and attitude of new doctors towards AIDS infection is, in general terms satisfactory.Nevertheless, it’s imperative that we constantly inform and update newly-qualified doctors about AIDS infection,in order to minimize their inhibitions and compensate for the

  1. Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype-2 childhood meningitis in Bangladesh: a newly recognized pneumococcal infection threat.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Samir K Saha

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Streptococcus pneumoniae is a leading cause of meningitis in countries where pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV targeting commonly occurring serotypes are not routinely used. However, effectiveness of PCV would be jeopardized by emergence of invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD caused by serotypes which are not included in PCV. Systematic hospital based surveillance in Bangladesh was established and progressively improved to determine the pathogens causing childhood sepsis and meningitis. This also provided the foundation for determining the spectrum of serotypes causing IPD. This article reports an unprecedented upsurge of serotype 2, an uncommon pneumococcal serotype, without any known intervention. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Cases with suspected IPD had blood or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF collected from the beginning of 2001 till 2009. Pneumococcal serotypes were determined by capsular swelling of isolates or PCR of culture-negative CSF specimens. Multicenter national surveillance, expanded from 2004, identified 45,437 patients with suspected bacteremia who were blood cultured and 10,618 suspected meningitis cases who had a lumber puncture. Pneumococcus accounted for 230 culture positive cases of meningitis in children <5 years. Serotype-2 was the leading cause of pneumococcal meningitis, accounting for 20.4% (45/221; 95% CI 15%-26% of cases. Ninety eight percent (45/46 of these serotype-2 strains were isolated from meningitis cases, yielding the highest serotype-specific odds ratio for meningitis (29.6; 95% CI 3.4-256.3. The serotype-2 strains had three closely related pulsed field gel electrophoresis types. CONCLUSIONS: S. pneumoniae serotype-2 was found to possess an unusually high potential for causing meningitis and was the leading serotype-specific cause of childhood meningitis in Bangladesh over the past decade. Persisting disease occurrence or progressive spread would represent a major potential infection threat since serotype-2

  2. Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer: Comparison of Contrast-enhanced Spectral Mammography and Breast MR Imaging in the Evaluation of Extent of Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee-Felker, Stephanie A; Tekchandani, Leena; Thomas, Mariam; Gupta, Esha; Andrews-Tang, Denise; Roth, Antoinette; Sayre, James; Rahbar, Guita

    2017-11-01

    Purpose To compare the diagnostic performances of contrast material-enhanced spectral mammography and breast magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in the detection of index and secondary cancers in women with newly diagnosed breast cancer by using histologic or imaging follow-up as the standard of reference. Materials and Methods This institutional review board-approved, HIPAA-compliant, retrospective study included 52 women who underwent breast MR imaging and contrast-enhanced spectral mammography for newly diagnosed unilateral breast cancer between March 2014 and October 2015. Of those 52 patients, 46 were referred for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography and targeted ultrasonography because they had additional suspicious lesions at MR imaging. In six of the 52 patients, breast cancer had been diagnosed at an outside institution. These patients were referred for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography and targeted US as part of diagnostic imaging. Images from contrast-enhanced spectral mammography were analyzed by two fellowship-trained breast imagers with 2.5 years of experience with contrast-enhanced spectral mammography. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value were calculated for both imaging modalities and compared by using the Bennett statistic. Results Fifty-two women with 120 breast lesions were included for analysis (mean age, 50 years; range, 29-73 years). Contrast-enhanced spectral mammography had similar sensitivity to MR imaging (94% [66 of 70 lesions] vs 99% [69 of 70 lesions]), a significantly higher PPV than MR imaging (93% [66 of 71 lesions] vs 60% [69 of 115 lesions]), and fewer false-positive findings than MR imaging (five vs 45) (P contrast-enhanced spectral mammography depicted 11 of the 11 secondary cancers (100%) and MR imaging depicted 10 (91%). Conclusion Contrast-enhanced spectral mammography is potentially as sensitive as MR imaging in the evaluation of extent of disease in newly diagnosed

  3. Study of chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorders in newly detected advanced renal failure patients: A Hospital-based cross-sectional study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Praveen Kumar Etta

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available We aim to evaluate the disturbances in mineral metabolism, abnormalities in bone mineral density (BMD, and extraskeletal calcification in newly detected, untreated predialysis stage 4 and 5 chronic kidney disease (CKD patients at a tertiary care hospital in North India. This is cross-sectional observational study. A total of 95 (68 males, 27 females newly detected patients underwent clinical evaluation, biochemical assessment [serum calcium, phosphorus, alkaline phosphatase (ALP, albumin, creatinine, intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH, 25- hydroxyvitamin D (25(OHD], BMD measurement (at spine, hip, and forearm by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA, lateral abdominal radiograph [for abdominal aortic calcification (AAC], skeletal survey (to look for any abnormality including fractures, and echocardiography [for any cardiac valvular calcification (CVC]. Symptoms related to CKD-mineral bone disorder were seen in 33.6% of the study patients. Prevalence of hypocalcemia, hyperphosphatemia, hyperparathyroidism, and hypovitaminosis D was 64.2%, 81.1%, 49.5%, and 89.5%, respectively. CVC was seen in 22.1% of patients on echocardiography, mostly involving the mitral valve. Patients with CVC were more likely to be males and smokers. There was no significant difference in iPTH levels between patients with or without CVC. AAC was seen in 10.5% of patients on lateral abdominal X-ray. Patients with AAC had higher levels of iPTH, phosphorus, and ALP and lower levels of calcium compared to patients without AAC. BMD by DXA showed a low bone mass in 41.05% of our patients and was more prevalent in CKD stage 5. Most of the study patients had hyperparathyroidism and low 25(OHD levels. Our study shows that newly detected, naïve Indian CKD patients have a high prevalence of disturbances of mineral metabolism including hyperparathyroidism, Vitamin D deficiency, abnormal BMD, and valvular and vascular calcification, even before initiating dialysis.

  4. Number of deaths due to lung diseases: How large is the problem?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wagener, D.K.

    1990-01-01

    The importance of lung disease as an indicator of environmentally induced adverse health effects has been recognized by inclusion among the Health Objectives for the Nation. The 1990 Health Objectives for the Nation (US Department of Health and Human Services, 1986) includes an objective that there should be virtually no new cases among newly exposed workers for four preventable occupational lung diseases-asbestosis, byssinosis, silicosis, and coal workers' pneumoconiosis. This brief communication describes two types of cause-of-death statistics- underlying and multiple cause-and demonstrates the differences between the two statistics using lung disease deaths among adult men. The choice of statistic has a large impact on estimated lung disease mortality rates. The choice of statistics also may have large effect on the estimated mortality rates due to other chromic diseases thought to be environmentally mediated. Issues of comorbidity and the way causes of death are reported become important in the interpretation of these statistics. The choice of which statistic to use when comparing data from a study population with national statistics may greatly affect the interpretations of the study findings

  5. 99 mTc antigranulocyte monoclonal antibody imaging for the detection and assessment of inflammatory bowel disease newly diagnosed by colonoscopy in children

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Charron, M.; Hickeson, M.P.

    2001-01-01

    Objective: This prospective study evaluated a 99m Tc antigranulocyte monoclonal antibody Fab' imaging agent (Sulesomab) in children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) newly diagnosed by colonoscopy. Materials and methods: Ten children (4 boys, 6 girls; mean age 14 years) with newly diagnosed Crohn's disease (n = 6) or ulcerative colitis (n = 4) were studied. Colonoscopy was performed in all of these patients. Within 24 h after colonoscopy, they underwent scintigraphy with 99 m Tc-Sulesomab. Abdominal/pelvic images were acquired at 30 min (planar) and 2-4 h (planar and SPECT) after injection of Sulesomab. Eighty bowel segments were evaluated semi-quantitatively by the investigators, using these three sets of images. The Pediatric Disease Activity (PDA) was correlated with the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), white blood cell (WBC) count, albumin, Kirschner's score, the Sulesomab bowel segment with maximum uptake, and the sum of Sulesomab score in each segment. Results: The median PDA score was 26 (range 12.5-40). Three children had normal ESR and six normal WBC counts. All patients had at least one positive mucosal biopsy for IBD. While using the Kirschner's scale, the maximal severity of colonoscopy findings was graded as none (n = 2), mild (n = 4), moderate (n = 3), or severe (n = 1). Of the 59 segments evaluated with endoscopy, 35 were found to be endoscopically abnormal. The planar images identified 17 of these abnormal segments and the SPECT images 20. Nine of these ten children had abnormal bowel uptake by scintigraphy. Thus, the sensitivity of Sulesomab per patient was 90 % and per bowel segment 57 %. The correlation coefficient between the scintigraphic score for the segment with the Sulesomab maximum activity and the PDA was 0.3 (P = 0.41). Conclusion: In pediatric IBD assessment, planar imaging with Sulesomab did not prove very sensitive in detecting inflammation in each bowel segment. However, SPECT detected the presence of inflammation in the

  6. Infectious diseases, parasites, and biological toxins in sea ducks: Chapter 4

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hollmén, Tuula E.; Franson, J. Christian

    2015-01-01

    This chapter addresses disease agents in the broad sense, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoan and helminth parasites, and biological toxins. Some of these agents are known to cause mortality in sea ducks, some are thought to be incidental findings, and the significance of others is yet poorly understood. Although the focus of the chapter is on free-living sea ducks, the study of disease in this taxonomic group has been relatively limited and examples from captive sea ducks and other wild waterfowl are used to illustrate the pathogenicity of certain diseases. Much of the early work in sea ducks consisted of anecdotal and descriptive reports of parasites, but it was soon recognized that diseases such as avian cholera, renal coccidiosis, and intestinal infections with acanthocephalans were causes of mortality in wild populations. More recently, adenoviruses, reoviruses, and the newly emergent Wellfleet Bay virus, for example, also have been linked to die-offs of sea ducks. Declining populations of animals are particularly vulnerable to the threats posed by disease and it is important that we improve our understanding of the significance of disease in sea ducks. To conclude, we offer our recommendations for future directions in this field.

  7. The emergence of shared leadership in newly-formed teams with an initial structure of vertical leadership: A longitudinal analysis

    OpenAIRE

    Fransen, Katrien; Delvaux, Ellen; Mesquita, Batja; Van Puyenbroeck, Stef

    2018-01-01

    The importance of high-quality leadership for team effectiveness is widely recognized, with recent viewpoints arguing shared leadership to be a more powerful predictor than vertical leadership. To identify changes in leadership structures over time, we longitudinally tracked the leadership structure of 27 newly-formed teams (N = 195), all having an initial structure of vertical leadership. Our findings demonstrated that the average team leadership strengthened over the course of the 24-week p...

  8. Different Pathophysiological Phenotypes among Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes Patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Stidsen, Jacob

    2013-01-01

    Type 2 diabetes (T2D) can be considered a syndrome with several different pathophysiological mechanisms leading to hyperglycemia. Nonetheless, T2D is treated according to algorithms as if it was one disease entity. Methods: We investigated the prevalence of different pathophysiological phenotypes...... or secondary diabetes), classic obesity-associated insulin resistant diabetes ( f-P-C-peptide >= 568 pmol/l) and a normoinsulinopenic group (333 age of our new T2D patients was 61 years (range 21-95 years), 57% were men. We found that 3.0% newly diagnosed T2D patients...... suffered from LADA, 3.9% from secondary diabetes, 6.0% from steroid induced diabetes 5.9% had insulinopenic diabetes, whereas 56.7% presented the classic obesity-associated insulin-resistant phenotype. 24.6% was classified as normoinsulinopenic patients. Conclusion: We conclude that newly diagnosed T2D...

  9. [New species, newly used names and new ranges of tree ferns (Filicales: Cyatheaceae) in the Neotropics].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rojas-Alvarado, A F

    2001-06-01

    Two new species are described for the Neotropics, four species are newly accepted, and four species and one variety are reported. The new species are: Cyathea grayumii A. Rojas and C. panamensis A. Rojas. Cyathea alfonsiana L. D. Gómez, C. holdridgeana Nisman & L. D. Gómez, C. onusta H. Christ and C. squarrosa (Rosenst.) Domin are recognized; Cnemidaria coclena Stolze, Cyathea andina (H. Karst.) Domin, C. caracasana var. meridensis (H. Karst.) R. M. Tryon, C. macrosora (Baker) Domin and C. pseudonanna (L. D. Gómez) Lellinger are reported from Costa Rica and Panama.

  10. Health status of newly arrived refugees in Toronto, Ont: Part 1: infectious diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Redditt, Vanessa J; Janakiram, Praseedha; Graziano, Daniela; Rashid, Meb

    2015-07-01

    To determine the prevalence of selected infectious diseases among newly arrived refugee patients and whether there is variation by key demographic factors. Retrospective chart review. Primary care clinic for refugee patients in Toronto, Ont. A total of 1063 refugee patients rostered at the clinic from December 2011 to June 2014. Demographic information (age, sex, and region of birth); prevalence of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Strongyloides, Schistosoma, intestinal parasites, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis infections; and varicella immune status. The median age of patients was 29 years and 56% were female. Refugees were born in 87 different countries. Approximately 33% of patients were from Africa, 28% were from Europe, 14% were from the Eastern Mediterranean Region, 14% were from Asia, and 8% were from the Americas (excluding 4% born in Canada or the United States). The overall rate of HIV infection was 2%. The prevalence of hepatitis B infection was 4%, with a higher rate among refugees from Asia (12%, P refugees (64%, P refugees from Africa (6%, P = .003). Schistosoma infection was identified in 15% of patients from Africa. Intestinal parasites were identified in 16% of patients who submitted stool samples. Approximately 8% of patients were varicella nonimmune, with higher rates in patients from the Americas (21%, P refugee patients to provide timely preventive and curative care. Our data also point to possible policy and clinical implications, such as targeted screening approaches and improved access to vaccinations and therapeutics. Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

  11. Learning beyond graduation: exploring newly qualified specialists' entrance into daily practice from a learning perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuyvers, Katrien; Donche, Vincent; Van den Bossche, Piet

    2016-05-01

    The entrance of newly qualified medical specialists into daily practice is considered to be a stressful period in which curriculum support is absent. Although engaging in both personal and professional learning and development activities is recognized fundamental for lifelong professional competence, research on medical professionals' entrance into practice is scarce. This research aims to contribute to the framework of medical professionals' informal learning and outlines the results of an exploratory study on the nature of learning in daily practice beyond postgraduate training. Eleven newly qualified physicians from different specialized backgrounds participated in a phenomenographic study, using a critical incident method and a grounded theory approach. Results demonstrated that learning in the workplace is, to a large extent, informal and associated with a variety of learning experiences. Analysis shows that experiences related to diagnostics and treatments are important sources for learning. Furthermore, incidents related to communication, changing roles, policy and organization offer learning opportunities, and therefore categorized as learning experiences. A broad range of learning activities are identified in dealing with these learning experiences. More specifically, actively engaging in actions and interactions, especially with colleagues of the same specialty, are the most mentioned. Observing others, consulting written sources, and recognizing uncertainties, are also referred to as learning activities. In the study, interaction, solely or combined with other learning activities, are deemed as very important by specialists in the initial entrance into practice. These insights can be used to develop workplace structures to support the entrance into practice following postgraduate training.

  12. Mom's shadow: structure-from-motion in newly hatched chicks as revealed by an imprinting procedure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mascalzoni, Elena; Regolin, Lucia; Vallortigara, Giorgio

    2009-03-01

    The ability to recognize three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional (2-D) displays was investigated in domestic chicks, focusing on the role of the object's motion. In Experiment 1 newly hatched chicks, imprinted on a three-dimensional (3-D) object, were allowed to choose between the shadows of the familiar object and of an object never seen before. In Experiments 2 and 3 random-dot displays were used to produce the perception of a solid shape only when set in motion. Overall, the results showed that domestic chicks were able to recognize familiar shapes from 2-D motion stimuli. It is likely that similar general mechanisms underlying the perception of structure-from-motion and the extraction of 3-D information are shared by humans and animals. The present data shows that they occur similarly in birds as known for mammals, two separate vertebrate classes; this possibly indicates a common phylogenetic origin of these processes.

  13. Practicing on Newly Dead

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jewel Abraham

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available A newly dead cadaver simulation is practiced on the physical remains of the dead before the onset of rigor mortis. This technique has potential benefits for providing real-life in-situ experience for novice providers in health care practices. Evolving ethical views in health care brings into question some of the ethical aspects associated with newly dead cadaver simulation in terms of justification for practice, autonomy, consent, and the need of disclosure. A clear statement of policies and procedures on newly dead cadaver simulation has yet to be implemented. Although there are benefits and disadvantages to an in-situ cadaver simulation, such practices should not be carried out in secrecy as there is no compelling evidence that suggests such training as imperative. Secrecy in these practices is a violation of honor code of nursing ethics. As health care providers, practitioners are obliged to be ethically honest and trustworthy to their patients. The author explores the ethical aspects of using newly dead cadaver simulation in training novice nursing providers to gain competency in various lifesaving skills, which otherwise cannot be practiced on a living individual. The author explores multiple views on cadaver simulation in relation to ethical theories and practices such as consent and disclosure to family.

  14. Prevalence of Chronic Diabetic Complications in Newly Diagnosed versus Known Type 2 Diabetic Subjects in a Sample of Alexandria Population, Egypt.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khalil, Samir Assaad; Megallaa, Magdy Helmy; Rohoma, Kamel Hemida; Guindy, Myriam AbouSeif; Zaki, Adel; Hassanein, Mohamed; Malaty, Amin Helmy; Ismael, Hanaa Mohamed; Kharboush, Ibrahim Fahmy; El Kafash, Dalal Nasr-Eldein; Sallam, Hassan Nooman; Desouky, Iman Abdelkareem

    2018-01-24

    In Egypt, data on the prevalence of chronic diabetic complications, which are essential for the adjustment of policies and practices related to diabetes care, are scarce. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the frequency of chronic complications of diabetes; namely neuropathy, diabetic kidney disease (DKD), retinopathy and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in newly-diagnosed versus known type 2 diabetic patients. This is a cross-sectional study that is based on a previous household survey conducted on a representative sample of the population of Alexandria, Egypt. This study included 506 consecutive subjects with type 2 diabetes; 323 patients with previously known T2DM and 183 patients with newly diagnosed T2DM (discovered during the survey). For each participant, a focused history was taken. Comprehensive clinical examination was done including fundus examination, foot examination and assessment of ankle brachial index. Laboratory tests included HbAlc, lipids profile, serum creatinine and urinary albumin creatinine ratio (UACR). Peripheral neuropathy was detected in 20% of the studied patients; 29.4% of known patients and 3.3% of newly diagnosed patients (pDiabetic kidney disease was detected in 33.2% of the studied patients; 46.1% of known patients and 10.4% of newly diagnosed patients (pDiabetic retinopathy was detected in 34.6% of the studied patients; 48.3% of known patients and 10.4% of newly diagnosed patients (pdiabetes, the presence of any of the studied complications (neuropathy, diabetic kidney disease, retinopathy or PAD) was significantly associated with the presence of all other complications (pdiabetes, the presence of diabetic kidney disease was significantly associated with the presence of retinopathy (pdiabetes at the time of diagnosis. Finally, these results should be considered as a call for action for the health care planners and providers in our region to plan for early screening for diabetes and its complications to reduce the

  15. Fitness, daily activity and body composition in children with newly diagnosed, untreated asthma

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vahlkvist, S; Pedersen, S

    2009-01-01

    Background: Information about how the asthma disease affects the life style and health in children is sparse. Aim: To measure fitness, daily physical activity and body composition in children with newly diagnosed, untreated asthma and healthy controls, and to assess the association between...... the level of asthma control and these parameters. Methods: Daily physical activity measured using accelerometry, cardiovascular fitness and body composition (per cent fat, per cent lean tissue and bone mineral density) were measured in 57 children with newly diagnosed, untreated asthma and in 157 healthy...... fitness and daytime spent in intensive activity. Overweight children are physically less active than normal weight children....

  16. The Duty to Recognize Culture

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Morten Ebbe Juul

    2012-01-01

    On Taylor and Honneth's theories of recognition and whether one can derive a "duty to recognize Culture" from these......On Taylor and Honneth's theories of recognition and whether one can derive a "duty to recognize Culture" from these...

  17. Mortality factors and diseases in free-ranging Eurasian cranes (Grus grus) in Germany.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fanke, Jane; Wibbelt, Gudrun; Krone, Oliver

    2011-07-01

    Detailed postmortem examinations were performed on 167 free-ranging Eurasian Cranes (Grus grus) from Germany, collected between September 1998 and December 2008 to evaluate causes of death and diseases. The most common causes of mortality were traumatic injuries (n=105, 62.9%) from collisions with power lines (n=39, 23.4%) and wire fences (n=12, 7.2%). A group of 28 Eurasian Cranes (16.8%) died from organophosphate intoxication. Predation by White-tailed Sea Eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) occurred in four cases (2.4%). Pathologic changes due to infectious diseases were associated with Aspergillus spp. (n=7, 4.2%), endoparasites (n=7, 4.2%), avian poxvirus (n=6, 3.6%), Mycobacterium spp. (n=2, 1.2%), and adenovirus infection (n=1, 0.6%). A severe Strigea spp. infection (n=1, 0.6%) and a leiomyosarcoma (n=1, 0.6%) were newly recognized diseases in Eurasian Cranes in this study.

  18. Management of Newly Diagnosed Atrial Fibrillation in an Outpatient Clinic Setting

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thrysoee, Lars; Strömberg, Anna; Brandes, Axel

    2018-01-01

    fibrillation is not a fatal disease in itself was very important for patients. At the same time, visiting the clinic was overwhelming, information was difficult to understand, and patients found it difficult to be involved in decision-making. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that patients were uncertain......AIMS: To gain in-depth knowledge of patients' experiences of the consultation processes at a multidisciplinary atrial fibrillation outpatient clinic in a university hospital in Denmark. BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia associated with morbidity and mortality...... if not diagnosed and treated as recommended. Patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation preferably should be managed in an outpatient setting which includes medical examination, patient education and decision making on medical therapy. DESIGN: This is a qualitative study of 14 patients newly diagnosed...

  19. Patients with newly diagnosed Rheumatoid Arthritis are at increased risk of Diabetes Mellitus

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Emamifar, Amir; Levin, Klaus; Jensen Hansen, Inger Marie

    2018-01-01

    -C-reactive protein (DAS28-CRP) at the time of diagnosis and after 4 months (±1-2 months) of treatment initiation were extracted from Danbio Registry. To reveal the presence of DM, patients' electronic medical records were reviewed. The prevalence of DM in our patients was compared (using an age- and gender......-matched analysis) with that expected from Danish population. RESULTS: of 439 included patients, 60.1% were female, mean of age 64.6±15.0 years and RA disease duration 2.6±1.7 years. Prevalence of DM was 57/439 (12.9%), herein type II DM 52 (91.2%) and type I DM 5 (8.8%). Except for two patients, diagnosis of DM......AIMS: To reveal the prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) in patients with newly diagnosed Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and evaluate the association between clinical characteristics of RA and DM as well as treatment response in newly diagnosed RA patients with DM. METHODS: Newly diagnosed, adult, RA...

  20. A systematic review and meta-analysis on the safety of newly adjuvanted vaccines among children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stassijns, Jorgen; Bollaerts, Kaatje; Baay, Marc; Verstraeten, Thomas

    2016-02-03

    New adjuvants such as the AS- or the MF59-adjuvants improve vaccine efficacy and facilitate dose-sparing. Their use in influenza and malaria vaccines has resulted in a large body of evidence on their clinical safety in children. We carried out a systematic search for safety data from published clinical trials on newly adjuvanted vaccines in children ≤10 years of age. Serious adverse events (SAEs), solicited AEs, unsolicited AEs and AEs of special interest were evaluated for four new adjuvants: the immuno-stimulants containing adjuvant systems AS01 and AS02, and the squalene containing oil-in-water emulsions AS03 and MF59. Relative risks (RR) were calculated, comparing children receiving newly adjuvanted vaccines to children receiving other vaccines with a variety of antigens, both adjuvanted and unadjuvanted. Twenty-nine trials were included in the meta-analysis, encompassing 25,056 children who received at least one dose of the newly adjuvanted vaccines. SAEs did not occur more frequently in adjuvanted groups (RR 0.85, 95%CI 0.75-0.96). Our meta-analyses showed higher reactogenicity following administration of newly adjuvanted vaccines, however, no consistent pattern of solicited AEs was observed across adjuvant systems. Pain was the most prevalent AE, but often mild and of short duration. No increased risks were found for unsolicited AEs, febrile convulsions, potential immune mediated diseases and new onset of chronic diseases. Our meta-analysis did not show any safety concerns in clinical trials of the newly adjuvanted vaccines in children ≤10 years of age. An unexplained increase of meningitis in one Phase III AS01-adjuvanted malaria trial and the link between narcolepsy and the AS03-adjuvanted pandemic vaccine illustrate that continued safety monitoring is warranted. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Voldbjerg, Siri Lygum; Grønkjaer, Mette; Sørensen, Erik Elgaard

    2016-01-01

    AIM: To advance evidence on newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources. BACKGROUND: Clinical decisions need to be evidence-based and understanding the knowledge sources that newly graduated nurses use will inform both education and practice. Qualitative studies on newly graduated nurses' use...... underscoring progression in knowledge use and perception of competence and confidence among newly graduated nurses. CONCLUSION: The transition phase, feeling of confidence and ability to use critical thinking and reflection, has a great impact on knowledge sources incorporated in clinical decisions....... The synthesis accentuates that for use of newly graduated nurses' qualifications and skills in evidence-based practice, clinical practice needs to provide a supportive environment which nurtures critical thinking and questions and articulates use of multiple knowledge sources....

  2. Factors Associated with Newly Diagnosed Children with Diabetic Ketoacidosis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raheleh Mirsadraee

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Background Diabetes mellitus type 1 is one of the most prevalent endocrine diseases in pediatrics. Diabetic ketoacidosis is considered as one of the most threatening clinical pictures of DM1, especially if occurred as the first presentation of DM1 in children. Objectives The current study aimed to identify factors which may play a role in DKA onset in children. Methods This case-control study included all patients under 18 years old who referred to department of pediatrics endocrinology at Mashhad University Hospital (Imam Reza from January 2013 to December 2015 as newly diagnosed patients with DM1. Patients who fulfilled DKA criteria at diagnosis were considered as DKA group and those who referred with other presentations were considered as control group (non-DKA group. Data were analyzed by SPSS software ver. 16. Results During the study period, 97 (39.2% male newly diagnosed patients were included as DKA group. Accordingly 97 gender- and age-matched patients were added as non-DKA group. The most prevalent symptoms in both groups were polyuria (91.88% and polydipsia (88.66%. Fever and cold symptoms were significantly higher in the DKA group (P < 0.001 and P =0.005, respectively. Hemoglobin A1c level was significantly higher in the DKA group (P = 0.001, while body mass index was significantly lower in the DKA group (P = 0.045. Fever and father’s education level were the most important risk and protective factors in the DKA onset in newly diagnosed patients with DM1 (adjusted OR = 10.1, 95% CI = 2.9-35.3; P < 0.001 and adjusted OR = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3 - 0.9 and P = 0.019, respectively. Conclusions In conclusion, a recent febrile illness was found as the strongest risk factor and father’s education level as the main protective factor in the DKA to diagnose children with DM1. The study findings suggested that DKA is a severe form of DM1 instead of a neglected or misdiagnosed disease.

  3. PREVALENCE OF SLEEP DISORDERED BREATHING IN PATIENTS WITH NEWLY DIAGNOSED ACROMEGALY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    U. A. Tsoy

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Obstructive sleep disordered breathing or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA is the most common respiratory impairment in acromegaly. OSA is bound up with heightened cardiovascular mortality. Aim: Тo study frequency, features, and structure of sleep disordered breathing in patients with newly diagnosed acromegaly and to elucidate the factors influencing their development. Materials and methods: 38 patients (10 men, 28 women, median age 53 (28-76 years, median body mass index (BMI 29 (19.9-44.3 kg/m² with newly diagnosed acromegaly were recruited into the study. All subjects underwent full polysomnography (Embla N7000, Natus, USA and Remlogica software (USA. Results: Sleep disordered breathing was found in 28 (73.7% patients. OSA was revealed in all cases, in 11 (39.3% subjects it was mixed. In 10 (35.7% patients OSA was mild, in 8 (28.6% moderate, and in 10 (35.7% severe. BMI (р<0.01, disease duration (р=0.003, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1 level (р=0.04 were different in patients without OSA and patients with moderate-to-severe OSA. No difference was found in sex (р=0.4, age (р=0.064, and growth hormone level (р=0.6. Frequency of arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and other glucose metabolism impairments was the same in subjects without OSA and with severe-to-moderate OSA. Conclusion: All patients with newly diagnosed acromegaly should undergo polysomnography. BMI, disease duration, and IGF-1 level are significant risk factors for OSA development. Correlation OSA with arterial hypertension and glucose metabolism impairments needs to be further investigated.

  4. Comparative Survival in Patients With Postresection Recurrent Versus Newly Diagnosed Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Radiotherapy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cai Xuwei; Xu Luying; Wang Li; Hayman, James A.; Chang, Andrew C.; Pickens, Allan; Cease, Kemp B.; Orringer, Mark B.; Kong, F.-M.

    2010-01-01

    Purpose: To compare the survival of postresection recurrent vs. newly diagnosed non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. Methods and Materials: The study population consisted of 661 consecutive patients with NSCLC registered in the radiation oncology databases at two medical centers in the United States between 1992 and 2004. Of the 661 patients, 54 had postresection recurrent NSCLC and 607 had newly diagnosed NSCLC. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression models were used for the survival analyses. Results: The distribution of relevant clinical factors between these two groups was similar. The median survival time and 5-year overall survival rates were 19.8 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 13.9-25.7) and 14.8% (95% confidence interval, 5.4-24.2%) vs. 12.2 months (95% CI, 10.8-13.6) and 11.0% (95% CI, 8.5-13.5%) for recurrent vs. newly diagnosed patients, respectively (p = .037). For Stage I-III patients, no significant difference was observed in the 5-year overall survival (p = .297) or progression-free survival (p = .935) between recurrent and newly diagnosed patients. For the 46 patients with Stage I-III recurrent disease, multivariate analysis showed that chemotherapy was a significant prognostic factor for 5-year progression-free survival (hazard ratio, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.224-0.914; p = .027). Conclusion: Our institutional data have shown that patients with postresection recurrent NSCLC achieved survival comparable to that of newly diagnosed NSCLC patients when they were both treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. These findings suggest that patients with postresection recurrent NSCLC should be treated as aggressively as those with newly diagnosed disease.

  5. Asymmetric Dimethylarginine Plasma Levels and Endothelial Function in Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetic Patients

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesco Perticone

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available It is now well established that major risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVD impact upon endothelial function by decreasing nitric oxide (NO bioavailability. Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA, an endogenous analog of l-arginine, is able to inhibit the activity of endothelial-NO synthase, promoting endothelial dysfunction. Type 2 diabetes (T2D is characterized by a reduced endothelium-dependent vasodilation and increased ADMA levels and ADMA is strongly associated with micro- and macrovascular diabetic complications. However, there are not a lot of data about the role of ADMA on endothelial function in newly diagnosed T2D patients without cardiovascular (CV complications. For this aim, we have enrolled forty-five newly diagnosed T2D patients, evaluated by a oral glucose tolerance test, and thirty normal subjects. Endothelium-dependent and -independent vasodilatation was investigated by intra-arterial infusion of increasing doses of acetylcholine (ACh and sodium nitroprusside. ADMA was measured by high-performance liquid chromatography and insulin resistance (IR by HOMA. Newly diagnosed T2D patients showed higher ADMA and l-arginine mean values in comparison with normal subjects and a significantly reduced ACh-stimulated forearm blood flow (FBF. In T2D patients FBF was significantly and inversely correlated with ADMA (r = −0.524, p < 0.0001 and in a multivariate regression analysis, ADMA resulted the stronger predictor of FBF, explaining the 27.5% of variability (p < 0.0001. In conclusion, ADMA was strongly related to endothelial dysfunction also in patients with newly diagnosed T2D, without clinically manifest vascular complications. This field is of great interest for understanding the mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of diabetic disease and its CV complications.

  6. Recognizing teen depression

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000648.htm Recognizing teen depression To use the sharing features on this page, ... life. Be Aware of the Risk for Teen Depression Your teen is more at risk for depression ...

  7. Prevalence of chronic kidney disease in newly diagnosed patients with Human immunodeficiency virus in Ilorin, Nigeria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ayokunle, Dada Samuel; Olusegun, Olanrewaju Timothy; Ademola, Aderibigbe; Adindu, Chijioke; Olaitan, Rafiu Mojeed; Oladimeji, Ajayi Akande

    2015-01-01

    Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) the causative agent of Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is an important cause of renal diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. There is paucity of studies on the burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) among patients with HIV/AIDS in the North-Central zone of Nigeria. This is a cross-sectional study of 227 newly-diagnosed, antiretroviral naïve patients with HIV/AIDS seen at the HIV clinic of the Medical Out-patient Department (MOPD) of University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH). They were matched with 108 control group. Laboratory investigations were performed for the participants. CKD was defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) 30 mg/g. There were 100 (44%) males among the patients and 47 (43.5%) among the control group. The mean ages of the patients and controls were 40.3 ± 10.3 years and 41.8 ± 9.5 years respectively. CKD was observed in 108 (47.6%) among the patients and 18 (16.7%) of the controls (p = 0.01). The median CD4 T-cell count was significantly lower in patients with CKD. Ninety-three (41.0%) of the patients had dipstick proteinuria of > 2 +. The median albumin creatinine ratio (ACR) was significantly higher among the HIV-positive patients (272.3 mg/g) compared with the HIV-negative controls (27.22 mg/g) p = 0.01. The CD4 T-cell count correlates positively with eGFR (r = 0.463, p = 0.001) and negatively with ACR (r = -0.806, p = 0.001). CKD is very common among patients with HIV/AIDS in Ilorin. Screening and early intervention for CKD should be part of the protocols in the management of these patients.

  8. Cloning of a cDNA encoding a surface antigen of Schistosoma mansoni schistosomula recognized by sera of vassinated mice

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dalton, J.P.; Tom, T.D.; Strand, M.

    1987-01-01

    Spleen cells of mice vaccinated with radiation-attenuated Schistosoma mansoni cercariae were used to produce monoclonal antibodies directed against newly transformed schistosomular surface antigens. One of these monoclonal antibodies recognized a polypeptide of 18 kDa. Binding was measured by radioimmunoassay. This glycoprotein was purified by monoclonal antibody immunoaffinity chromatography and a polyclonal antiserum was prepared against it. Immunofluorescence assays showed that the polyclonal antiserum bound to the surface of newly transformed schistosomula and lung-stage organisms but not to the surface of liver-stage and adult worms. Using this polyclonal antiserum we isolated recombinant clones from an adult worm cDNA expression library constructed in λgt11. Clone 654.2 contained an insert of 0.52 kilobase and hybridized to a 1.2-kilobase mRNA species from adult worms. Most importantly, clone 654.2 produced a fusion protein of 125 kDa that was reactive with sera of vaccinated mice that are capable of transferring resistance. This result encourages future vaccination trials with the fusion protein

  9. Variably protease-sensitive prionopathy in the UK: a retrospective review 1991-2008

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Head, M.W.; Yull, H.M.; Ritchie, D.L.; Langeveld, J.P.M.; Fletcher, N.A.; Knight, R.S.; Ironside, J.W.

    2013-01-01

    Variably protease-sensitive prionopathy is a newly described human prion disease of unknown aetiology lying out with the hitherto recognized phenotypic spectrum of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Two cases that conform to the variably protease-sensitive prionopathy phenotype have been identified

  10. "RecognizeCane" : The new concept of a cane which recognizes the most common objects and safety clues.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scherlen, Anne-Catherine; Dumas, Jean Claude; Guedj, Benjamin; Vignot, Alexandre

    2007-01-01

    This paper introduces the new concept of an electronic cane for blind people. While some systems inform the subject only of the presence of the object and its relative distance, RecognizeCane is also able to recognize most common objects and environment clues to increase the safety and confidence of the navigation process. The originality of RecognizeCane is the use of simple sensors, such as infrared, brilliance or water sensors to inform the subject of the presence, for example, of a stairway, a water puddle, a zebra crossing or a trash can. This cane does not use an embedded vision system. RecognizeCane is equipped with several sensors and microprocessors to collect sensor data and extract the desired information about the close environment by means of a dynamic analysis of output signals.

  11. Cross-Linking Mast Cell Specific Gangliosides Stimulates the Release of Newly Formed Lipid Mediators and Newly Synthesized Cytokines

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Edismauro Garcia Freitas Filho

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Mast cells are immunoregulatory cells that participate in inflammatory processes. Cross-linking mast cell specific GD1b derived gangliosides by mAbAA4 results in partial activation of mast cells without the release of preformed mediators. The present study examines the release of newly formed and newly synthesized mediators following ganglioside cross-linking. Cross-linking the gangliosides with mAbAA4 released the newly formed lipid mediators, prostaglandins D2 and E2, without release of leukotrienes B4 and C4. The effect of cross-linking these gangliosides on the activation of enzymes in the arachidonate cascade was then investigated. Ganglioside cross-linking resulted in phosphorylation of cytosolic phospholipase A2 and increased expression of cyclooxygenase-2. Translocation of 5-lipoxygenase from the cytosol to the nucleus was not induced by ganglioside cross-linking. Cross-linking of GD1b derived gangliosides also resulted in the release of the newly synthesized mediators, interleukin-4, interleukin-6, and TNF-α. The effect of cross-linking the gangliosides on the MAP kinase pathway was then investigated. Cross-linking the gangliosides induced the phosphorylation of ERK1/2, JNK1/2, and p38 as well as activating both NFκB and NFAT in a Syk-dependent manner. Therefore, cross-linking the mast cell specific GD1b derived gangliosides results in the activation of signaling pathways that culminate with the release of newly formed and newly synthesized mediators.

  12. Newly Homeless Youth Typically Return Home

    OpenAIRE

    Milburn, Norweeta G.; Rosenthal, Doreen; Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane; Mallett, Shelley; Batterham, Philip; Rice, Eric; Solorio, Rosa

    2007-01-01

    165 newly homeless adolescents from Melbourne, Australia and 261 from Los Angeles, United States were surveyed and followed for two years. Most newly homeless adolescents returned home (70% U.S., 47% Australia) for significant amounts of time (39% U.S., 17% Australia more than 12 months) within two years of becoming homeless.

  13. Computational identification of epitopes in the glycoproteins of novel bunyavirus (SFTS virus) recognized by a human monoclonal antibody (MAb 4-5)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Wenshuai; Zeng, Xiaoyan; Zhang, Li; Peng, Haiyan; Jiao, Yongjun; Zeng, Jun; Treutlein, Herbert R.

    2013-06-01

    In this work, we have developed a new approach to predict the epitopes of antigens that are recognized by a specific antibody. Our method is based on the "multiple copy simultaneous search" (MCSS) approach which identifies optimal locations of small chemical functional groups on the surfaces of the antibody, and identifying sequence patterns of peptides that can bind to the surface of the antibody. The identified sequence patterns are then used to search the amino-acid sequence of the antigen protein. The approach was validated by reproducing the binding epitope of HIV gp120 envelop glycoprotein for the human neutralizing antibody as revealed in the available crystal structure. Our method was then applied to predict the epitopes of two glycoproteins of a newly discovered bunyavirus recognized by an antibody named MAb 4-5. These predicted epitopes can be verified by experimental methods. We also discuss the involvement of different amino acids in the antigen-antibody recognition based on the distributions of MCSS minima of different functional groups.

  14. Recognizing Bedside Events Using Thermal and Ultrasonic Readings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Danielsen Asbjørn

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Falls in homes of the elderly, in residential care facilities and in hospitals commonly occur in close proximity to the bed. Most approaches for recognizing falls use cameras, which challenge privacy, or sensor devices attached to the bed or the body to recognize bedside events and bedside falls. We use data collected from a ceiling mounted 80 × 60 thermal array combined with an ultrasonic sensor device. This approach makes it possible to monitor activity while preserving privacy in a non-intrusive manner. We evaluate three different approaches towards recognizing location and posture of an individual. Bedside events are recognized using a 10-second floating image rule/filter-based approach, recognizing bedside falls with 98.62% accuracy. Bed-entry and exit events are recognized with 98.66% and 96.73% accuracy, respectively.

  15. Double diabetes: an emerging disease in children and young adults ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Background: Studies in most countries have shown an increasing incidence of diabetes mellitus in children and young adults. Double diabetes is a newly recognized problem in children with different diagnostic and therapeutic measures. Methods: A review of over 30 literature obtained from Google, PUBMED search and ...

  16. The science and fiction of emerging rickettsioses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paddock, Christopher D

    2009-05-01

    As newly recognized rickettsial diseases and rickettsial pathogens increase in scope and magnitude, several elements related to the concept of emerging rickettsioses deserve consideration. Newly identified rickettsiae may be mildly pathogenic, or perhaps even nonpathogenic, and have little direct impact on human or animal health, yet nonetheless wield considerable influence on the epidemiology and ecology of historically recognized diseases. In this context "new" rickettsioses provide a lens through which "old" rickettsioses are more accurately represented. Predicting pathogen from nonpathogen is not an exact science, particularly as so few rickettsiae have been broadly accepted as nonpathogenic by contemporary rickettsiologists. However, various factors relating to specific physiologic requirements and molecular machinery of the particular rickettsia, as well as characteristics of its invertebrate host that either position or exclude the rickettsia from infecting a human host, must be considered. Close inspection of mild or atypical forms of historically recognized rickettsioses and a greater emphasis on culture- and molecular-based diagnostic techniques are the keys to identifying future rickettsial agents of disease.

  17. Immunoparesis in newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sorrig, Rasmus; Klausen, Tobias W.; Salomo, Morten

    2017-01-01

    Immunoparesis (hypogammaglobulinemia) is associated to an unfavorable prognosis in newly diagnosed Multiple myeloma (MM) patients. However, this finding has not been validated in an unselected population-based cohort. We analyzed 2558 newly diagnosed MM patients in the Danish Multiple Myeloma...

  18. Anti-liver-kidney microsome antibody type 1 recognizes human cytochrome P450 db1.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gueguen, M; Yamamoto, A M; Bernard, O; Alvarez, F

    1989-03-15

    Anti-liver-kidney microsome antibody type 1 (LKM1), present in the sera of a group of children with autoimmune hepatitis, was recently shown to recognize a 50 kDa protein identified as rat liver cytochromes P450 db1 and db2. High homology between these two members of the rat P450 IID subfamily and human P450 db1 suggested that anti-LKM1 antibody is directed against this human protein. To test this hypothesis, a human liver cDNA expression library in phage lambda GT-11 was screened using rat P450 db1 cDNA as a probe. Two human cDNA clones were found to be identical to human P450 db1 by restriction mapping. Immunoblot analysis using as antigen, the purified fusion protein from one of the human cDNA clones showed that only anti-LKM1 with anti-50 kDa reactivity recognized the fusion protein. This fusion protein was further used to develop an ELISA test that was shown to be specific for sera of children with this disease. These results: 1) identify the human liver antigen recognized by anti-LKM1 auto-antibodies as cytochrome P450 db1, 2) allow to speculate that mutation on the human P450 db1 gene could alter its expression in the hepatocyte and make it auto-antigenic, 3) provide a simple and specific diagnostic test for this disease.

  19. Impact of the gut microbiota on rodent models of human disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hansen, Axel Kornerup; Hansen, Camilla Hartmann Friis; Krych, Lukasz; Nielsen, Dennis Sandris

    2014-12-21

    Traditionally bacteria have been considered as either pathogens, commensals or symbionts. The mammal gut harbors 10(14) organisms dispersed on approximately 1000 different species. Today, diagnostics, in contrast to previous cultivation techniques, allow the identification of close to 100% of bacterial species. This has revealed that a range of animal models within different research areas, such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, allergy, behavior and colitis, are affected by their gut microbiota. Correlation studies may for some diseases show correlation between gut microbiota composition and disease parameters higher than 70%. Some disease phenotypes may be transferred when recolonizing germ free mice. The mechanistic aspects are not clear, but some examples on how gut bacteria stimulate receptors, metabolism, and immune responses are discussed. A more deeper understanding of the impact of microbiota has its origin in the overall composition of the microbiota and in some newly recognized species, such as Akkermansia muciniphila, Segmented filamentous bacteria and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, which seem to have an impact on more or less severe disease in specific models. Thus, the impact of the microbiota on animal models is of a magnitude that cannot be ignored in future research. Therefore, either models with specific microbiota must be developed, or the microbiota must be characterized in individual studies and incorporated into data evaluation.

  20. FDA Recognized Consensus Standards

    Data.gov (United States)

    U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — This database consists of those national and international standards recognized by FDA which manufacturers can declare conformity to and is part of the information...

  1. PHL10/460: Cancerfacts.com - Vertical Portal with Newly Developed Health Profiler

    OpenAIRE

    Lenz, C; Brucksch, M

    1999-01-01

    Introduction Unlike general health portals such as WebMD and Drkoop.com that cover everything from the flu to heart disease, Silicon Valley-based cancerfacts.com is a so-called vertical portal. It covers only one small vertical niche of health care: cancer, and in particular, prostate cancer. As a value-added proprietary technology, the company offers its newly developed profile engine to health information retrievers. Methods Users are enabled to insert their specific medical information - r...

  2. Can a CNN recognize Catalan diet?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Herruzo, P.; Bolaños, M.; Radeva, P.

    2016-10-01

    Nowadays, we can find several diseases related to the unhealthy diet habits of the population, such as diabetes, obesity, anemia, bulimia and anorexia. In many cases, these diseases are related to the food consumption of people. Mediterranean diet is scientifically known as a healthy diet that helps to prevent many metabolic diseases. In particular, our work focuses on the recognition of Mediterranean food and dishes. The development of this methodology would allow to analise the daily habits of users with wearable cameras, within the topic of lifelogging. By using automatic mechanisms we could build an objective tool for the analysis of the patient's behavior, allowing specialists to discover unhealthy food patterns and understand the user's lifestyle. With the aim to automatically recognize a complete diet, we introduce a challenging multi-labeled dataset related to Mediter-ranean diet called FoodCAT. The first type of label provided consists of 115 food classes with an average of 400 images per dish, and the second one consists of 12 food categories with an average of 3800 pictures per class. This dataset will serve as a basis for the development of automatic diet recognition. In this context, deep learning and more specifically, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), currently are state-of-the-art methods for automatic food recognition. In our work, we compare several architectures for image classification, with the purpose of diet recognition. Applying the best model for recognising food categories, we achieve a top-1 accuracy of 72.29%, and top-5 of 97.07%. In a complete diet recognition of dishes from Mediterranean diet, enlarged with the Food-101 dataset for international dishes recognition, we achieve a top-1 accuracy of 68.07%, and top-5 of 89.53%, for a total of 115+101 food classes.

  3. Common and emerging infectious diseases in the animal shelter.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pesavento, P A; Murphy, B G

    2014-03-01

    The beneficial role that animal shelters play is unquestionable. An estimated 3 to 4 million animals are cared for or placed in homes each year, and most shelters promote public health and support responsible pet ownership. It is, nonetheless, inevitable that shelters are prime examples of anthropogenic biological instability: even well-run shelters often house transient, displaced, and mixed populations of animals. Many of these animals have received minimal to no prior health care, and some have a history of scavenging or predation to survive. Overcrowding and poor shelter conditions further magnify these inherent risks to create individual, intraspecies, and interspecies stress and provide an environment conducive to exposure to numerous potentially collaborative pathogens. All of these factors can contribute to the evolution and emergence of new pathogens or to alterations in virulence of endemic pathogens. While it is not possible to effectively anticipate the timing or the pathogen type in emergence events, their sites of origin are less enigmatic, and pathologists and diagnosticians who work with sheltered animal populations have recognized several such events in the past decade. This article first considers the contribution of the shelter environment to canine and feline disease. This is followed by summaries of recent research on the pathogenesis of common shelter pathogens, as well as research that has led to the discovery of novel or emerging diseases and the methods that are used for their diagnosis and discovery. For the infectious agents that commonly affect sheltered dogs and cats, including canine distemper virus, canine influenza virus, Streptococcus spp, parvoviruses, feline herpesvirus, feline caliciviruses, and feline infectious peritonitis virus, we present familiar as well as newly recognized lesions associated with infection. Preliminary studies on recently discovered viruses like canine circovirus, canine bocavirus, and feline norovirus

  4. 46 CFR 42.05-60 - Recognized classification society.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Recognized classification society. 42.05-60 Section 42... FOREIGN VOYAGES BY SEA Definition of Terms Used in This Subchapter § 42.05-60 Recognized classification society. The term recognized classification society means the American Bureau of Shipping or other...

  5. 46 CFR 90.10-35 - Recognized classification society.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Recognized classification society. 90.10-35 Section 90... VESSELS GENERAL PROVISIONS Definition of Terms Used in This Subchapter § 90.10-35 Recognized classification society. The term recognized classification society means the American Bureau of Shipping or other...

  6. Longitudinal course of disease in a large cohort of myositis patients with autoantibodies recognizing the signal recognition particle

    Science.gov (United States)

    Werner, Jessie L.; Albayda, Jemyma; Paik, Julie; Danoff, Sonye K.; Casciola-Rosen, Livia; Christopher-Stine, Lisa; Mammen, Andrew L.

    2016-01-01

    Objective Patients with immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) often have autoantibodies recognizing the signal recognition particle (SRP) or HMG-CoA reductase (HMGCR). Here, we studied a cohort of anti-SRP patients to identify factors associated with disease severity and clinical improvement; we also compared the severity of weakness in those with anti-SRP versus anti-HMGCR autoantibodies. Methods All anti-SRP patients in the Johns Hopkins Myositis Cohort from 2002 to 2015 were included. Longitudinal information regarding proximal muscle strength, creatine kinase (CK) levels, and immunosuppressive therapy were recorded at each visit. Univariate and multivariate multilevel regression models were used to assess prognostic factors influencing recovery. Strength in the anti-SRP patients was compared to strength in 49 previously described anti-HMGCR subjects. Results Data from 37 anti-SRP patients and 380 total clinic visits was analyzed. Younger age at onset was associated with more severe weakness at the first visit (p=0.02) and all subsequent visits (p=0.002). Only 50% of patients reached near-full or full strength after 4 years of treatment and most of these continued to have elevated CK levels. Rituximab appeared to be effective in 13 of 17 anti-SRP patients. Anti-SRP patients were significantly weaker than those with anti-HMGCR autoantibodies (−1.3 strength points, p=0.001). Conclusions Younger age at onset is associated with more severe weakness in anti-SRP myositis. Furthermore, even among anti-SRP patients whose strength improved with immunosuppression, most had ongoing disease activity as demonstrated by elevated CK levels. Finally, anti-SRP patients were significantly weaker than anti-HMGCR patients, providing evidence that these autoantibodies are associated with distinct forms of IMNM. PMID:27111848

  7. Insulin autoantibodies: evidence of autoimmune disease among a group of Puerto Rican children with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes mellitus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    González de Pijem, L; Nieves-Rivera, F

    2001-06-01

    Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by a cell-specific destruction of the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Although Puerto Rico has the highest incidence of type 1 diabetes among Latin American countries, there is scanty data on the presence of antibodies against insulin producing cells. To this end, 20 children (8 males, 12 females), ages 1-15 years, admitted to the University Pediatric Hospital with type 1 diabetes de novo between November 2000 and April 2001 were prospectively studied to determine the presence of serum antibodies against Islet cells (ICA), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD-65) and insulin autoantibodies (IAA). IAA was found to be present in 45% of the subjects with 85% of positive rate in subjects under age 5. GAD-65 was present in 66% and ICA was present in 23% of the subjects. We found evidence of autoimmunity against islet cell surface and intracellular components among a cohort of Puerto Rican children with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes. These findings compared favorably with reports from other ethnicities.

  8. Changes in cardiac function and structure in newly diagnosed Graves' disease. A conventional and 2D-speckle tracking echocardiography study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aroditis, K; Pikilidou, M; Vourvouri, E; Hadjistavri, L; Zebekakis, P; Yovos, J; Efthimiadis, G; Karvounis, H

    2017-02-01

    Overproduction of thyroid hormones leads to structural as well as functional cardiac changes. Conventional echocardiography but also recently developed sophisticated two-dimensional echocardiography speckle (2D-STE) tracking allow elaborate evaluation of these changes. Our purpose was to investigate the effects of thyroid hormones overproduction on the heart in patients with Graves' disease and changes that occur after 6 months thyrostatic therapy. We conducted a prospective, case-control study of 6 months duration. Full echocardiographic assessment at diagnosis and after 6 months of thyrostatic therapy were performed in 44 patients with Graves' disease, aged 37.6 ± 9.1 years. Additionally, 43 euthyroid controls were studied for the same time period. Left ventricular end diastolic diameter (LVEDD) and left ventricular end systolic diameter (LVESD) were higher in the patient group while triscupid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) was lower in the patient group. Moreover, left ventricular (LV) mass index and left atrium (LA) volume index were higher in the Graves' disease group. Diastolic impairment as assessed with conventional echocardiography including tissue Doppler was present in the patient group (E/A ratio 0.87 ± 0.10,). 2D-STE analysis, revealed an increase in the strain rate at the isovolumic relaxation time (SRIVRT, 0.310 ± 0.07 patients versus 0.298 ± 0.09 s -1 controls). Improvement in diastolic and right systolic function as well as in left ventricular structural parameters was observed after restoration of euthyroidism (E/A ratio from 0.87 ± 0.10 versus 0.9 ± 0.08, p < 0.05). Patients with newly diagnosed Graves' showed an improvement in diastolic function, right systolic function and structural parameters after 6 months of thyrostatic treatment.

  9. Parkinson's Disease Videos

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... Parkinson's Disease: One Voice, Many Listeners Expert Briefings: Medical Therapies: What's in the Parkinson's Pipeline? Expert Briefings: Under-recognized Nonmotor Symptoms of Parkinson's Disease Expert Briefings: Gait, Balance and Falls in Parkinson's Disease Expert Briefings: Coping ...

  10. Early treatment for IgG4-related disease may prevent cognitive impairment caused by cerebral vasculitis: A case report and review of the literature

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Toshihiko Usami

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD is a recently recognized disease entity. A 74-year-old male presented with transient headache. He was diagnosed IgG4-RD by pancreatic biopsy at the age of 72. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI showed disseminated cerebral microbleeds and microinfarctions in time and space. It suggested cerebral vasculitis, however any causative factor were not confirmed. IgG4-RD rarely causes cerebral vasculitis. This might be a first case of an asymptomatic cerebral vasculitis due to IgG4-RD. Patient was started on oral prednisolone, and no neurological or neuropsychological symptom was clinically observed. The MRI findings improved after treatment, and revealed no indication of newly lesions at 6-months follow-up. Early treatment for IgG4-RD may be recommended to prevent irreversible cognitive dysfunction. Keywords: IgG4-related disease, Treatment, Cerebral vasculitis

  11. Establishment probability in newly founded populations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gusset Markus

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Establishment success in newly founded populations relies on reaching the established phase, which is defined by characteristic fluctuations of the population’s state variables. Stochastic population models can be used to quantify the establishment probability of newly founded populations; however, so far no simple but robust method for doing so existed. To determine a critical initial number of individuals that need to be released to reach the established phase, we used a novel application of the “Wissel plot”, where –ln(1 – P0(t is plotted against time t. This plot is based on the equation P0t=1–c1e–ω1t, which relates the probability of extinction by time t, P0(t, to two constants: c1 describes the probability of a newly founded population to reach the established phase, whereas ω1 describes the population’s probability of extinction per short time interval once established. Results For illustration, we applied the method to a previously developed stochastic population model of the endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus. A newly founded population reaches the established phase if the intercept of the (extrapolated linear parts of the “Wissel plot” with the y-axis, which is –ln(c1, is negative. For wild dogs in our model, this is the case if a critical initial number of four packs, consisting of eight individuals each, are released. Conclusions The method we present to quantify the establishment probability of newly founded populations is generic and inferences thus are transferable to other systems across the field of conservation biology. In contrast to other methods, our approach disaggregates the components of a population’s viability by distinguishing establishment from persistence.

  12. A survey of exposures related to recognized occupational contact dermatitis in Denmark in 2010

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Carøe, Tanja Korfitsen; Ebbehøj, Niels; Agner, Tove

    2014-01-01

    BACKGROUND: Skin diseases are the most commonly recognized occupational diseases in Denmark, and occupational contact dermatitis (OCD) comprises ∼95% of all cases. OBJECTIVES: To prevent occupational contact dermatitis, it is important to specifically identify exposures and work routines related...... to outbreak of the disease. The aim of this study was to give an overview of exposures for patients with occupational contact dermatitis in Denmark in 2010, and relate this to line of work and disease severity. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was a descriptive, register-based study including patients......, 1020 women and 484 men, were included in the study. Irritant contact dermatitis accounted for 70% of all cases; 68% of these were caused by wet work. Forty-six per cent of all patients were employed either in the healthcare sector, in cleaning, or as kitchen workers. Among contact allergies, the most...

  13. Generation of human antibody fragments recognizing distinct epitopes of the nucleocapsid (N SARS-CoV protein using a phage display approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Grasso Felicia

    2005-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV is a newly emerging virus that causes SARS with high mortality rate in infected people. Successful control of the global SARS epidemic will require rapid and sensitive diagnostic tests to monitor its spread, as well as, the development of vaccines and new antiviral compounds including neutralizing antibodies that effectively prevent or treat this disease. Methods The human synthetic single-chain fragment variable (scFv ETH-2 phage antibody library was used for the isolation of scFvs against the nucleocapsid (N protein of SARS-CoV using a bio panning-based strategy. The selected scFvs were characterized under genetics-molecular aspects and for SARS-CoV N protein detection in ELISA, western blotting and immunocytochemistry. Results Human scFv antibodies to N protein of SARS-CoV can be easily isolated by selecting the ETH-2 phage library on immunotubes coated with antigen. These in vitro selected human scFvs specifically recognize in ELISA and western blotting studies distinct epitopes in N protein domains and detect in immunohistochemistry investigations SARS-CoV particles in infected Vero cells. Conclusion The human scFv antibodies isolated and described in this study represent useful reagents for rapid detection of N SARS-CoV protein and SARS virus particles in infected target cells.

  14. 26 CFR 1.1374-2 - Net recognized built-in gain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 26 Internal Revenue 11 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 true Net recognized built-in gain. 1.1374-2 Section 1...-in gain. (a) In general. An S corporation's net recognized built-in gain for any taxable year is the... considering only its recognized built-in gain, recognized built-in loss, and recognized built-in gain...

  15. Illness associated with Campylobacter laridis, a newly recognized Campylobacter species.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tauxe, R V; Patton, C M; Edmonds, P; Barrett, T J; Brenner, D J; Blake, P A

    1985-02-01

    Campylobacter laridis, a recently described thermophilic Campylobacter species found principally in seagulls, has not previously been linked to illness in humans. Six clinical isolates of this species were referred to the national campylobacter reference laboratory in 1982 and 1983. Each isolate was confirmed by biochemical characterization and by DNA relatedness studies. The six isolates were obtained during an illness: enteritis in four, severe crampy abdominal pain in one, and terminal bacteremia in an immunocompromised host in one. The infections occurred in persons 8 months to 71 years old. Neither the geographic distribution nor the reports of the patients suggest that seagulls played a direct role in the epidemiology of these infections. This potential human enteric pathogen appears to be clinically, epidemiologically, and microbiologically similar to Campylobacter jejuni and may be mistaken for it if nalidixic acid susceptibility screening is not routinely performed.

  16. Cutis laxa and fatal pulmonary hypertension: a newly recognized syndrome?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brunetti-Pierri, Nicola; Piccolo, Pasquale; Morava, Eva; Wevers, Ron A.; McGuirk, Megan; Johnson, Yvette R.; Urban, Zsolt; Dishop, Megan K.; Potocki, Lorraine

    2015-01-01

    Cutis laxa is a connective tissue disorder with distinctive lax, redundant, and inelastic skin. It is a genetically heterogenous disorder with autosomal dominant and recessive patterns of inheritance. We report a patient with cutis laxa supported by clinical, microscopic, and ultrastructural findings. Molecular analysis of fibulin-4 and -5, of the α2 subunit of the V-type H+ ATPase, and of the component of the oligomeric Golgi complex 7 (COG7) genes excluded the type I and type II autosomal recessive forms of cutis laxa, and congenital disorders of glycosylation associated with cutis laxa. Remarkably, our patient also presented severe and lethal pulmonary hypertension as a newborn. This case with cutis laxa, severe pulmonary hypertension, and no detectable mutations in fibulin-4 and -5 genes may represent a previously unrecognized syndrome. PMID:21285876

  17. Cutis laxa and fatal pulmonary hypertension: a newly recognized syndrome?

    OpenAIRE

    Brunetti-Pierri, N; Piccolo, P; Morava, Eva; Wevers, RA; McGuirk, M; Johnson, YR; Urban, Z; Dishop, MK; Potocki, L

    2011-01-01

    Cutis laxa is a connective tissue disorder with distinctive lax, redundant, and inelastic skin. It is a genetically heterogenous disorder with autosomal dominant and recessive patterns of inheritance. We report a patient with cutis laxa supported by clinical, microscopic, and ultrastructural findings. Molecular analysis of fibulin-4 and -5, of the α2 subunit of the V-type H+ ATPase, and of the component of the oligomeric Golgi complex 7 (COG7) genes excluded the type I and type II autosomal r...

  18. Exploring scientific legitimacy of orthorexia nervosa: a newly emerging eating disorder

    OpenAIRE

    Chaki, Biswajit; Pal, Sangita; Bandyopadhyay, Amit

    2013-01-01

    Eating disorders are a range maladaptive eating behaviours characterized by highly restrictive and unhealthy food intake patterns that lead to variety of psychiatric, physiological and health complications such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders etc. Many of these psychological eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa have been recognized as disease by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) of American psychiatric association. How...

  19. Effects of intensive induction and consolidation chemotherapy with idarubicin and high dose cytarabine on minimal residual disease levels in newly diagnosed adult precursor-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenneth F. Bradstock

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available An intensive induction regimen, consisting of idarubicin and high dose cytarabine, was assessed in 19 adult patients, median age 44 years, with newly diagnosed precursor-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL. Patients achieving a complete response (CR were given an attenuated consolidation course. The primary endpoints were induction death rate and incidence of serious non-hematological toxicity. Grades 3–4 diarrhoea occurred in 47% of patients during induction. Two patients (11% died during induction therapy, and 2 were withdrawn due to resistant disease or prolonged marrow hypoplasia. Fifteen patients achieved CR (79%, but levels of minimal residual disease (MRD after induction were comparable with those previously observed using a modified pediatric protocol. Overall survival at 5 years was 36.8% while leukemia-free survival was 44.1%. An intensive AML protocol used in adults with ALL resulted in substantial toxicity and provided similar levels of cytoreduction to conventional ALL protocols, without improving long-term outcomes.

  20. Data mining and Pattern Recognizing Models for Identifying Inherited Diseases: Challenges and Implications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lahiru Iddamalgoda

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Data mining and pattern recognition methods reveal interesting findings in genetic studies, especially on how genetic makeup is associated with inherited diseases. Although researchers have proposed various data mining models for biomedical approaches, there remains a challenge in accurately determining the responsible genetic factors for prioritizing the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP associated with the disease. In this commentary, we review the state-of-art data mining and pattern recognition models for identifying inherited diseases and deliberate the need of binary classification and scoring based prioritization methods for determining causal variants. While we discuss the pros and cons associated with these methods known, we argue that the gene prioritization methods and the protein interaction (PPI methods in conjunction with the K nearest neighbors’ could be used in accurately categorizing the genetic factors in disease causation

  1. PREVALENCE OF DIABETIC RETINOPATHY IN PATIENTS WITH NEWLY DIAGNOSED TYPE II DIABETES MELLITUS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. Bostak

    2006-11-01

    Full Text Available Diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of type II diabetes mellitus and carries with it the threat of blindness. Accurate information regarding the incidence of diabetic retinopathy and associated risk factors is important in the prevention of its development and of the visual impairment caused by this complication. This study was designed to determine the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in newly diagnosed patients with type II diabetes mellitus. We have also evaluated the association of diabetic retinopathy with clinical and biochemical variables. In a cross-sectional study, 152 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed type II diabetes mellitus were referred from two outpatient clinics in Tehran for ophthalmologic exam to detect retinopathy. Indirect ophthalmoscopy was performed and data regarding risk factors were extracted from routine medical records. Chi square and Mann Whitney U tests were used to analyze the data. The overall prevalence of diabetic retinopathy was 13.8 %( 21 cases: three cases with microaneurysm only, 10 with mild, 5 with moderate and 2 with severe non proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Only one patient had advanced proliferative retinopathy. The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy was positively associated with age, duration of disease, fasting plasma glucose, HbA1c, and systolic blood pressure. Diabetic retinopathy is common in newly diagnosed type II diabetes mellitus patients. Ophthalmologic consultation is essential at the time of diagnosis for all patients.

  2. Time perspective and weight management behaviors in newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes: a mediational analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, Peter A; Fong, Geoffrey T; Cheng, Alice Y

    2012-12-01

    The primary objective of the current study was to examine the extent to which domain-specific time perspective predicts weight management behaviors (dietary behavior and physical activity) among those newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. A secondary objective was to test potential mediators of the hypothesized effect (behavioral intention, self-efficacy and control beliefs). A total of 204 adults newly diagnosed (≤6 months) with Type 2 diabetes participated in the study, which included a baseline assessment of domain-general and domain-specific time perspective, as well as strength of intention to perform two weight-management behaviors (dietary choice and physical activity); both weight-management behaviors were assessed again at 6 month follow-up. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed a prospective association between domain-specific time perspective and uptake of weight management behaviors. Individuals with newly diagnosed T2DM possessing a future-oriented time perspective reported making less frequent fatty food choices and greater increases in physical activity over the 6-month follow-up interval. These effects were selectively mediated by intention strength, and not competing social cognitive variables. For both behaviors, the total effects and meditational models were robust to adjustments for demographics, body composition and disease variables. A future-oriented time perspective is prospectively associated with superior uptake of weight management behaviors among those with newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes. The facilitating effect of future-oriented thinking appears to occur via enhanced strength of intentions to perform weight management behaviors.

  3. Profile of chronic kidney disease related-mineral bone disorders in newly diagnosed advanced predialysis diabetic kidney disease patients: A hospital based cross-sectional study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ray, S; Beatrice, A M; Ghosh, A; Pramanik, S; Bhattacharjee, R; Ghosh, S; Raychaudhury, A; Mukhopadhyay, S; Chowdhury, S

    2017-12-01

    Chronic kidney disease related-mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD) has been poorly studied in pre-dialysis Indian CKD population. There are limited data on the pattern of these disturbances in diabetic CKD patients. Therefore, a study was conducted to find out the profile of mineral bone disorders in T2DM patients with pre-dialysis CKD. In this cross-sectional design, diabetic patients with newly-diagnosed stage 4 and 5 CKD were evaluated. Serum levels of calcium, phosphorus, intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH), 25 hydroxy vitamin D and total alkaline phosphatase (ALP) were measured in all patients. Bone mineral density (BMD) was measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). A total of 72 eligible patients participated (44 males, 28 females; age 54.2±11.7). Patients with CKD Stage 5 had a lower level of corrected serum calcium and significantly higher level of inorganic phosphorus, total ALP and iPTH as compared to stage 4 patients. Overall, 38.5% were hypocalcemic, 31.43% were hyperphosphatemic. 24.2% of CKD subjects were vitamin D deficient (110pg/ml) was detected in nearly 43% of patients. In stage 5, only 32% patients was found to have hyperparathyroidism (iPTH>300pg/ml). There was a good correlation between iPTH and total ALP (r=0.5, p=0.0001) in this cohort. 25 (OH) vitamin D was inversely correlated with ALP (r=-0.39, P=0.001) and showed negative correlation with urine ACR (r=-0.37, P=0.002). As a group, the osteoporotic CKD subjects exhibited higher iPTH (220.1±153.8 vs. 119±108pg/ml, p<0.05) as compared to those who were osteopenic or had normal bone density. There was significant correlation between BMD and iPTH (adjusted r=-0.436; P=0.001). In the multivariate regression model, we found intact PTH to predict BMD even after adjustment of all the confounders. The current study showed that adynamic bone disease is prevalent even in pre-dialysis CKD population. High bone turnover disease may not be the most prevalent type in diabetic CKD. However, it

  4. Fibril specific, conformation dependent antibodies recognize a generic epitope common to amyloid fibrils and fibrillar oligomers that is absent in prefibrillar oligomers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rasool Suhail

    2007-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Amyloid-related degenerative diseases are associated with the accumulation of misfolded proteins as amyloid fibrils in tissue. In Alzheimer disease (AD, amyloid accumulates in several distinct types of insoluble plaque deposits, intracellular Aβ and as soluble oligomers and the relationships between these deposits and their pathological significance remains unclear. Conformation dependent antibodies have been reported that specifically recognize distinct assembly states of amyloids, including prefibrillar oligomers and fibrils. Results We immunized rabbits with a morphologically homogeneous population of Aβ42 fibrils. The resulting immune serum (OC specifically recognizes fibrils, but not random coil monomer or prefibrillar oligomers, indicating fibrils display a distinct conformation dependent epitope that is absent in prefibrillar oligomers. The fibril epitope is also displayed by fibrils of other types of amyloids, indicating that the epitope is a generic feature of the polypeptide backbone. The fibril specific antibody also recognizes 100,000 × G soluble fibrillar oligomers ranging in size from dimer to greater than 250 kDa on western blots. The fibrillar oligomers recognized by OC are immunologically distinct from prefibrillar oligomers recognized by A11, even though their sizes overlap broadly, indicating that size is not a reliable indicator of oligomer conformation. The immune response to prefibrillar oligomers and fibrils is not sequence specific and antisera of the same specificity are produced in response to immunization with islet amyloid polypeptide prefibrillar oligomer mimics and fibrils. The fibril specific antibodies stain all types of amyloid deposits in human AD brain. Diffuse amyloid deposits stain intensely with anti-fibril antibody although they are thioflavin S negative, suggesting that they are indeed fibrillar in conformation. OC also stains islet amyloid deposits in transgenic mouse models of type

  5. Prevalence and risk factors of agitation in newly hospitalized schizophrenia patients in China: An observational survey.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mi, Weifeng; Zhang, Suzhen; Liu, Qi; Yang, Fude; Wang, Yong; Li, Tao; Mei, Qiyi; He, Hongbo; Chen, Zhiyu; Su, Zhonghua; Liu, Tiebang; Xie, Shiping; Tan, Qingrong; Zhang, Jinbei; Zhang, Congpei; Sang, Hong; Chen, Wenhao; Shi, Le; Li, Lingzhi; Shi, Ying; Guo, Lihua; Zhang, Hongyan; Lu, Lin

    2017-07-01

    This multi-center observational study investigated the prevalence of agitation in newly hospitalized schizophrenia patients in China and its potential risk factors. It was performed in 2014 and covered 14 hospitals. Newly hospitalized patients with schizophrenia or suspected schizophrenia who met the diagnostic criteria of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision, were recruited. Agitation and related risk factors were evaluated by a questionnaire designed for the survey. General demographic data, disease characteristics, scores on schizophrenia rating scales and agitation rating scales (e.g., Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-Excited Component [PANSS-EC] and Behavioral Activity Rating Scale [BARS]) were collected. Among the 1512 patients screened in the study, 1400 (92.59%) were eligible. According to the PANSS-EC and BARS, the prevalence of agitation was 60.92% (853 of 1400) and 59.00% (826 of 1400), respectively. The overall prevalence of agitation was 47.50% (665 of 1400). The most important risk factor of agitation was being aggressive at baseline (Modified Overt Aggression Scale score ≥4, odds ratio=6.54; 95% confidence interval=4.93-8.69). Other risk factors included a history of aggressive behavior, northern region of residence, involuntary hospitalization, disease severity, low level of education, living alone, being unemployed or retired. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  6. Recognizing, Confronting, and Eliminating Workplace Bullying.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berry, Peggy Ann; Gillespie, Gordon L; Fisher, Bonnie S; Gormley, Denise K

    2016-07-01

    Workplace bullying (WPB) behaviors negatively affect nurse productivity, satisfaction, and retention, and hinder safe patient care. The purpose of this article is to define WPB, differentiate between incivility and WPB, and recommend actions to prevent WPB behaviors. Informed occupational and environmental health nurses and nurse leaders must recognize, confront, and eliminate WPB in their facilities and organizations. Recognizing, confronting, and eliminating WPB behaviors in health care is a crucial first step toward sustained improvements in patient care quality and the health and safety of health care employees. © 2016 The Author(s).

  7. Recognizing textual entailment models and applications

    CERN Document Server

    Dagan, Ido; Sammons, Mark

    2013-01-01

    In the last few years, a number of NLP researchers have developed and participated in the task of Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE). This task encapsulates Natural Language Understanding capabilities within a very simple interface: recognizing when the meaning of a text snippet is contained in the meaning of a second piece of text. This simple abstraction of an exceedingly complex problem has broad appeal partly because it can be conceived also as a component in other NLP applications, from Machine Translation to Semantic Search to Information Extraction. It also avoids commitment to any sp

  8. Quantification of Fusarium oxysporum in fumigated soils by a newly developed real-time PCR assay to assess the efficacy of fumigants for Fusarium wilt disease in strawberry plants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Yuan; Mao, Liangang; Yan, Dongdong; Ma, Taotao; Shen, Jin; Guo, Meixia; Wang, Qiuxia; Ouyang, Canbin; Cao, Aocheng

    2014-11-01

    Two soil fumigants, chloropicrin (CP) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), were used to control Fusarium wilt disease (FWD) which caused large economic losses in strawberries. The fumigants were evaluated alone and in combination in a laboratory study and in strawberry greenhouses. Laboratory tests found that combinations of CP and DMDS indicated a positive synergistic activity on Fusarium oxysporum. A newly developed quantitative assay for F. oxysporum involving real-time PCR was used successfully to evaluate F. oxysporum control by the fumigants; it provided similar results to the selective medium but was less time-consuming and less labor intensive. Greenhouse trials revealed that the combination of CP and DMDS successfully suppressed the incidence of FWD and sharply reduced the population density of F. oxysporum, which significantly increased fruit branch number and maintained a good strawberry yield, higher than methyl bromide (MB) treatment. All of the treatments provided significantly better results than the non-treated control. This study confirms that the newly developed real-time PCR quantitative assay for F. oxysporum was suitable for the control efficacy evaluation of soil fumigants and that the novel fumigant combination of CP and DMDS offers a promising effective alternative to MB for the control of F. oxysporum in strawberry greenhouses. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry.

  9. Renal disease in patients with celiac disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boonpheng, Boonphiphop; Cheungpasitporn, Wisit; Wijarnpreecha, Karn

    2018-04-01

    Celiac disease, an inflammatory disease of small bowel caused by sensitivity to dietary gluten and related protein, affects approximately 0.5-1% of the population in the Western world. Extra-intestinal symptoms and associated diseases are increasingly recognized including diabetes mellitus type 1, thyroid disease, dermatitis herpetiformis and ataxia. There have also been a number of reports of various types of renal involvement in patients with celiac disease including diabetes nephropathy, IgA nephropathy, membranous nephropathy, membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, nephrotic syndrome related to malabsorption, oxalate nephropathy, and associations of celiac disease with chronic kidney disease and end-stage kidney disease. This review aims to present the current literature on possible pathologic mechanisms underlying renal disease in patients with celiac disease.

  10. Chronic diseases, lack of medications, and depression among Syrian refugees in Jordan, 2013-2014.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gammouh, Omar Salem; Al-Smadi, Ahmed Mohammad; Tawalbeh, Loai Issa; Khoury, Laurice Sami

    2015-01-29

    Studying mental and physical health problems in refugees facilitates providing suitable health care, thus improving their quality of life. We studied depression tendency in Syrian refugees in Jordan in the light of chronic diseases and medication availability. Also, depression prevalence and depression comorbidity with chronic diseases were identified. In this multicenter cross-sectional survey, data from Syrian refugees attending Caritas centers in 6 Jordanian cities from November 2013 through June 2014 were analyzed. Participants' demographics, depression, previously diagnosed chronic diseases, and newly diagnosed chronic diseases and the availability of medications were studied. Logistic regression was used to examine predictors for depression. Of 765 refugees who participated, about one-third demonstrated significant depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory. Descriptive analyses showed that depression was comorbid in 35% of participants with previously diagnosed chronic diseases and in 40% of participants with newly diagnosed chronic diseases. Newly diagnosed chronic diseases and lack of medications significantly contributed to depression, but the regression model as a whole explained less than 5% of the variance. Because the regression model showed low effect size, we concluded that newly diagnosed chronic diseases and medication shortages could not predict depression in Syrian refugees residing in Jordan. Therefore, further studies of additional factors are recommended. Prompt measures have to be taken to prevent the spread of chronic diseases and improve mental health in this fragile population.

  11. Health-related and social factors predicting non-reemployment amongst newly unemployed

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Skärlund Mikael

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Many researchers have examined the effect that mental health has on reemployment opportunities amongst the unemployed, but the results are inconclusive. Our aim in this study is to investigate the effects that different aspects of mental and physical health, as well as socio-demographic, social, and economic factors, have on reemployment. Methods A questionnaire was administered to 1,000 and answered by 502 newly registered unemployed Swedes, who were followed for one year using data from the Swedish National Labour Market Board. The differences between those reemployed and those not reemployed was analysed using stepwise logistic regression. Results General mental ill health amongst unemployed individuals measured by the General Health Questionnaire scale was associated with lower levels of reemployment after one year. This effect could not be explained by any of the scales measuring specific aspects of mental disease such as health-related level of function, rate of depression, burnout, or alcohol misuse. Instead being above 45, low control over one’s financial situation, being an immigrant, and visiting a physician during the last three months were better predictors of failure to be reemployed. Conclusion There are theoretical reasons to assume that psychological distress leads to a decreased reemployment rate amongst the unemployed. The results of this study partly endorse this hypothesis empirically, showing that general subjective mental distress decreases the rate of reemployment amongst newly unemployed individuals, although this effect was mediated by social and economic factors. Indicators of psychiatric disease had no significant effect on reemployment. The results of this study lead us to suggest the early introduction of financial counselling, psychological support, and other interventions for groups with lower reemployment rates.

  12. Health-related and social factors predicting non-reemployment amongst newly unemployed.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skärlund, Mikael; Åhs, Annika; Westerling, Ragnar

    2012-10-23

    Many researchers have examined the effect that mental health has on reemployment opportunities amongst the unemployed, but the results are inconclusive. Our aim in this study is to investigate the effects that different aspects of mental and physical health, as well as socio-demographic, social, and economic factors, have on reemployment. A questionnaire was administered to 1,000 and answered by 502 newly registered unemployed Swedes, who were followed for one year using data from the Swedish National Labour Market Board. The differences between those reemployed and those not reemployed was analysed using stepwise logistic regression. General mental ill health amongst unemployed individuals measured by the General Health Questionnaire scale was associated with lower levels of reemployment after one year. This effect could not be explained by any of the scales measuring specific aspects of mental disease such as health-related level of function, rate of depression, burnout, or alcohol misuse. Instead being above 45, low control over one's financial situation, being an immigrant, and visiting a physician during the last three months were better predictors of failure to be reemployed. There are theoretical reasons to assume that psychological distress leads to a decreased reemployment rate amongst the unemployed. The results of this study partly endorse this hypothesis empirically, showing that general subjective mental distress decreases the rate of reemployment amongst newly unemployed individuals, although this effect was mediated by social and economic factors. Indicators of psychiatric disease had no significant effect on reemployment. The results of this study lead us to suggest the early introduction of financial counselling, psychological support, and other interventions for groups with lower reemployment rates.

  13. 76 FR 33419 - Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations

    Science.gov (United States)

    2011-06-08

    ... 232, 240, 249, et al. Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations; Proposed Rule #0;#0...-11] RIN 3235-AL15 Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations AGENCY: Securities and... rating organizations (``NRSROs''). In addition, in accordance with the Dodd-Frank Act, the Commission is...

  14. Quantification of newly produced B and T lymphocytes in untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caimi Luigi

    2010-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The immune defects occurring in chronic lymphocytic leukemia are responsible for the frequent occurrence of infections and autoimmune phenomena, and may be involved in the initiation and maintenance of the malignant clone. Here, we evaluated the quantitative defects of newly produced B and T lymphocytes. Methods The output of B and T lymphocytes from the production and maturation sites was analyzed in chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients and healthy controls by quantifying kappa-deleting recombination excision circles (KRECs and T-cell receptor excision circles (TRECs by a Real-Time PCR assay that simultaneously detects both targets. T-lymphocyte subsets were analyzed by six-color flow cytometric analysis. Data comparison was performed by two-sided Mann-Whitney test. Results KRECs level was reduced in untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients studied at the very early stage of the disease, whereas the release of TRECs+ cells was preserved. Furthermore, the observed increase of CD4+ lymphocytes could be ascribed to the accumulation of CD4+ cells with effector memory phenotype. Conclusions The decreased number of newly produced B lymphocytes in these patients is likely related to a homeostatic mechanism by which the immune system balances the abnormal B-cell expansion. This feature may precede the profound defect of humoral immunity characterizing the later stages of the disease.

  15. Critical epitopes in the nucleocapsid protein of SFTS virus recognized by a panel of SFTS patients derived human monoclonal antibodies.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Yu

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: SFTS virus (SFTSV is a newly discovered pathogen to cause severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS in human. Successful control of SFTSV epidemic requires better understanding of the antigen target in humoral immune responses to the new bunyavirus infection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We have generated a combinatorial Fab antibody phage library from two SFTS patients recovered from SFTSV infection. To date, 94 unique human antibodies have been generated and characterized from over 1200 Fab antibody clones obtained by screening the library with SFTS purified virions. All those monoclonal antibodies (MAbs recognized the nucleocapsid (N protein of SFTSV while none of them were reactive to the viral glycoproteins Gn or Gc. Furthermore, over screening 1000 mouse monoclonal antibody clones derived from SFTSV virions immunization, 462 clones reacted with N protein, while only 16 clones were reactive to glycoprotein. Furthermore, epitope mapping of SFTSV N protein was performed through molecular simulation, site mutation and competitive ELISA, and we found that at least 4 distinct antigenic epitopes within N protein were recognized by those human and mouse MAbs, in particular mutation of Glu10 to Ala10 abolished or significantly reduced the binding activity of nearly most SFTS patients derived MAbs. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The large number of human recombinant MAbs derived from SFTS patients recognized the viral N protein indicated the important role of the N protein in humoral responses to SFTSV infection, and the critical epitopes we defined in this study provided molecular basis for detection and diagnosis of SFTSV infection.

  16. Confidence in leadership among the newly qualified.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bayliss-Pratt, Lisa; Morley, Mary; Bagley, Liz; Alderson, Steven

    2013-10-23

    The Francis report highlighted the importance of strong leadership from health professionals but it is unclear how prepared those who are newly qualified feel to take on a leadership role. We aimed to assess the confidence of newly qualified health professionals working in the West Midlands in the different competencies of the NHS Leadership Framework. Most respondents felt confident in their abilities to demonstrate personal qualities and work with others, but less so at managing or improving services or setting direction.

  17. Recognizing Body Dysmorphic Disorder (Dysmorphophobia)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Varma, Anukriti; Rastogi, Rajesh

    2015-01-01

    Dysmorphophobia is a psychiatric condition which frequently presents in the clinics of dermatologists and plastic surgeons. This disorder (also called body dysmorphic disorder) is troublesome to the patient whilst being confusing for the doctor. This commonly undiagnosed condition can be detected by a few simple steps. Timely referral to a psychiatrist benefits most patients suffering from it. This article describes with a case vignette, how to recognize body dysmorphic disorder presenting in the dermatological or aesthetic surgery set up. Diagnostic criteria, eitiology, approach to patient, management strategy and when to refer are important learning points. The importance of recognizing this disorder timely and referring the patient to the psychiatrist for appropriate treatment is crucial. This article covers all aspects of body dysmorphic disorder relevant to dermatologists and plastic surgeons and hopes to be useful in a better understanding of this disorder. PMID:26644741

  18. 46 CFR 188.10-59 - Recognized classification society.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Recognized classification society. 188.10-59 Section 188... VESSELS GENERAL PROVISIONS Definition of Terms Used in This Subchapter § 188.10-59 Recognized classification society. This term means the American Bureau of Shipping or other classification society...

  19. Prevalence and characteristics of the metabolic syndrome among newly diagnosed hypertensive patients

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osuji, Charles U.; Omejua, Emeka G.

    2012-01-01

    Background: Cardiovascular disease risk factors have a tendency to cluster. The presence of such a cluster in an individual has been designated the metabolic syndrome (MetS). There is a paucity of reports of the prevalence of MetS in hypertensive patients in south east Nigeria. This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) among newly diagnosed hypertensive patients using the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP ATP III) criteria in a tertiary healthcare centre in South East Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A population of 250 consecutive newly diagnosed adult hypertensive patients (126 males and 124 females) was evaluated. Blood pressure and anthropometric measurements were done using standardized techniques. After an overnight fast, blood samples were taken for glucose and lipid profile assays. The NCEP ATP III criteria were then applied for the diagnosis of MetS. Results: The prevalence of the MetS among the study population was 31.2%. The sex-specific prevalences were 15.1% and 47.6% among male and female patients respectively. A large number of the patients (40.4%) were at a high potential risk of developing the MetS as they already met 2 of the criteria. The MetS prevalence increased progressively from 14.3% through 23.8%, in the patients aged 24-33years and 34-43 years, respectively to a peak (40.4%) among those aged 44-53 years before declining in those aged 54-63 years (31.8%), 64-73 years (33.3%) and 74 years and above (20.6%). Central obesity was the most common component of the MetS being present in 50.4% of patients (28.6% of males and 72.6% of females). Of the other components, low HDL-C was present in 38.8% (26.2% of males and 51.6% of females), elevated FBS in 12.8% (6.3% of males and 19.4% of females) and elevated triglycerides in 8.8% (11.9% of males and 5.6% of females). Conclusion: The prevalence of the MetS is high among newly diagnosed hypertensive patients in Nnewi

  20. Prevalence and clinical characteristics of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in newly diagnosed patients with ketosis-onset diabetes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, T-T; Wang, A-P; Lu, J-X; Chen, M-Y; Zhao, C-C; Tang, Z-H; Li, L-X; Jia, W-P

    2018-03-21

    As the prevalence and clinical characteristics of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are still unknown in ketosis-onset diabetes, the present study compared the characteristics of NAFLD in type 1 diabetes (T1D), ketosis-onset and non-ketotic type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients. This cross-sectional study was performed with newly diagnosed Chinese patients with diabetes, including 39 T1D, 165 ketosis-onset and 173 non-ketotic T2D, with 30 non-diabetics included as controls. NAFLD was determined by hepatic ultrasonography, then its clinical features were analyzed and its associated risk factors evaluated. NAFLD prevalence in patients with ketosis-onset diabetes (61.8%) was significantly higher than in controls (23.3%; P=0.003) and in T1D patients (15.4%; Pketosis-onset and non-ketotic T2D patients (52.6%; P=0.229), although BMI and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) proved to be independent risk factors for the presence of NAFLD in both these groups whereas, in T1D patients, serum uric acid levels were independent risk factors. NAFLD prevalence and risk factors in ketosis-onset diabetes were similar to those in non-ketotic T2D, but different from those in T1D. These data provide further evidence that ketosis-onset diabetes should be classified as a subtype of T2D rather than idiopathic T1D. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  1. Data mining and Pattern Recognizing Models for Identifying Inherited Diseases: Challenges and Implications

    OpenAIRE

    Lahiru Iddamalgoda; Partha Sarathi Das; Partha Sarathi Das; Achala Aponso; Vijayaraghava Seshadri Sundararajan; Prashanth Suravajhala; Prashanth Suravajhala; Prashanth Suravajhala; Jayaraman K Valadi

    2016-01-01

    Data mining and pattern recognition methods reveal interesting findings in genetic studies, especially on how genetic makeup is associated with inherited diseases. Although researchers have proposed various data mining models for biomedical approaches, there remains a challenge in accurately determining the responsible genetic factors for prioritizing the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) associated with the disease. In this commentary, we review the state-of-art data mining and pattern r...

  2. Cardiovascular Risk Assessment with Vascular Function, Carotid Atherosclerosis and the UKPDS Risk Engine in Korean Patients with Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Choon Sik Seon

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available BackgroundPatients with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Few studies have evaluated the cardiovascular disease (CVD risk simultaneously using the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS risk engine and non-invasive vascular tests in patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes.MethodsParticipants (n=380; aged 20 to 81 years with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes were free of clinical evidence of CVD. The 10-year coronary heart disease (CHD and stroke risks were calculated for each patient using the UKPDS risk engine. Carotid intima media thickness (CIMT, flow mediated dilation (FMD, pulse wave velocity (PWV and augmentation index (AI were measured. The correlations between the UKPDS risk engine and the non-invasive vascular tests were assessed using partial correlation analysis, after adjusting for age, and multiple regression analysis.ResultsThe mean 10-year CHD and 10-year stroke risks were 14.92±11.53% and 4.03±3.95%, respectively. The 10-year CHD risk correlated with CIMT (P<0.001, FMD (P=0.017, and PWV (P=0.35 after adjusting for age. The 10-year stroke risk correlated only with the mean CIMT (P<0.001 after adjusting for age. FMD correlated with age (P<0.01 and systolic blood pressure (P=0.09. CIMT correlated with age (P<0.01, HbA1c (P=0.05, and gender (P<0.01.ConclusionThe CVD risk is increased at the onset of type 2 diabetes. CIMT, FMD, and PWV along with the UKPDS risk engine should be considered to evaluate cardiovascular disease risk in patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes.

  3. Regional changes in psychotropic use among Finnish persons with newly diagnosed Alzheimer's disease in 2005-2011.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna-Maija Tolppanen

    Full Text Available To describe and compare temporal changes in prevalence and incidence of psychotropic use (antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines and related drugs; BZDRs in persons with newly diagnosed Alzheimer's disease (AD between university hospital districts of Finland during 2005-2011.The MEDALZ study includes all community-dwellers of Finland who received a clinically verified AD diagnosis in 2005-2011 (N = 70,718. Prevalent and incident use of psychotropics among those who had received AD diagnosis less than one year ago were compared in 2005-2011.Regional differences in psychotropic use between university hospital districts were more evident in 2005 than 2011 for prevalent use of any psychotropic, antipsychotic and BZDRs and incident use of any psychotropic and antipsychotics. Regional differences in prevalent antidepressant use and incident BZDR use remained similar during the follow-up, while differences in incident antidepressant use increased during the follow-up. The prevalence of any psychotropic use in 2005 varied between 44.7-50.7% and between 45.0-47.9% in 2011. Incidence of any psychotropic use in 2005 was between 8.6-12.1% and 6.2-8.2% in 2011. In 2005, the distribution of incident psychotropic use followed a large scale spatial variation that, however, did not correspond to university hospital districts. During the study period from 2005 to 2011 the cyclic spatial variation disappeared. No sign of adjacent hospital districts being more or less closely related to each other compared to hospital districts in general was detected.Except for antidepressants, regional differences in psychotropic use have mainly diminished between 2005 and 2011. Our findings highlight the importance of acknowledging regional differences in a country with relatively homogeneous healthcare system and conducting future studies assessing the reasons behind these differences.

  4. Face recognition in newly hatched chicks at the onset of vision.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wood, Samantha M W; Wood, Justin N

    2015-04-01

    How does face recognition emerge in the newborn brain? To address this question, we used an automated controlled-rearing method with a newborn animal model: the domestic chick (Gallus gallus). This automated method allowed us to examine chicks' face recognition abilities at the onset of both face experience and object experience. In the first week of life, newly hatched chicks were raised in controlled-rearing chambers that contained no objects other than a single virtual human face. In the second week of life, we used an automated forced-choice testing procedure to examine whether chicks could distinguish that familiar face from a variety of unfamiliar faces. Chicks successfully distinguished the familiar face from most of the unfamiliar faces-for example, chicks were sensitive to changes in the face's age, gender, and orientation (upright vs. inverted). Thus, chicks can build an accurate representation of the first face they see in their life. These results show that the initial state of face recognition is surprisingly powerful: Newborn visual systems can begin encoding and recognizing faces at the onset of vision. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  5. Predictive value of pretreatment positron emission tomography/computed tomography in patients with newly diagnosed extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bai, Bing; Huang, Hui-Qiang; Cai, Qi-Chun; Fan, Wei; Wang, Xiao-Xiao; Zhang, Xu; Lin, Ze-Xiao; Gao, Yan; Xia, Yun-Fei; Guo, Ying; Cai, Qing-Qing; Jiang, Wen-Qi; Lin, Tong-Yu

    2013-03-01

    The role of (18)Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (ENKL) is not well established. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic role of the pretreatment maximum standardized uptake value (SUV(max)) on PET/CT in patients with newly diagnosed ENKL. Among 364 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed ENKL, 81 patients were included and reviewed. The impact of SUV(max) on survival and the relationship between SUV(max) and other clinicopathological parameters were analyzed. The median SUV(max) was 14.6 (range 2.0-45.4). The optimal cutoff value of SUV(max) to predict overall survival (OS) was 15. Patients with high SUV(max) (SUVmax >15) were associated with bulky disease (P KPI, P = 0.046), resistance to primary treatment (P = 0.014), poor OS (P 60 years (P = 0.001), stage III-IV (P = 0.023), SUV(max) >15 (P = 0.020), and bulky disease (>5 cm) (P = 0.002). By using the SUV(max), patients in most subgroups stratified by the KPI or the International Prognostic Index (IPI) were further discriminated in OS with significant statistical difference. Our results suggest the pretreatment SUV(max) is predictive of prognosis in patients with newly diagnosed ENKL. The SUV(max) may provide additional prognostic information for IPI and KPI.

  6. Association between recognizing dementia as a mental illness and dementia knowledge among elderly Chinese Americans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Xin; Woo, Benjamin K P

    2016-06-22

    To investigate whether older Chinese Americans perceive dementia as a mental illness and the relationship between such perception and their general understanding of dementia remains unclear. Our study aims to understand this relationship and its future implication on improving dementia literacy among ethnic minorities. Elderly Chinese American participants from the Greater Los Angeles were asked to complete an 11-item dementia questionnaire, following a community health seminar. Cross-sectional survey data was analyzed using standard statistical methods. The questionnaire received an 88.3% response rate. Among 316 responders, only 28.8% (n = 91) of elderly Chinese Americans identified dementia as a mental illness, and 71.2% (n = 225) did not recognize its mental disease origin. Furthermore, in comparison between these two groups, the first group demonstrated significantly higher level of baseline knowledge of the disease. This study reveals that only approximately 1 out of 4 older Chinese Americans recognized dementia as a mental illness, consistent with previous studies on Asian Americans. Our study however showed that when dementia was being perceived as a mental illness, such perception was associated with a higher level of baseline dementia understanding. The current study suggested the potential of improving older Chinese Americans dementia literacy by increasing awareness of its mental illness origin.

  7. Recognizing Facial Slivers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilad-Gutnick, Sharon; Harmatz, Elia Samuel; Tsourides, Kleovoulos; Yovel, Galit; Sinha, Pawan

    2018-07-01

    We report here an unexpectedly robust ability of healthy human individuals ( n = 40) to recognize extremely distorted needle-like facial images, challenging the well-entrenched notion that veridical spatial configuration is necessary for extracting facial identity. In face identification tasks of parametrically compressed internal and external features, we found that the sum of performances on each cue falls significantly short of performance on full faces, despite the equal visual information available from both measures (with full faces essentially being a superposition of internal and external features). We hypothesize that this large deficit stems from the use of positional information about how the internal features are positioned relative to the external features. To test this, we systematically changed the relations between internal and external features and found preferential encoding of vertical but not horizontal spatial relationships in facial representations ( n = 20). Finally, we employ magnetoencephalography imaging ( n = 20) to demonstrate a close mapping between the behavioral psychometric curve and the amplitude of the M250 face familiarity, but not M170 face-sensitive evoked response field component, providing evidence that the M250 can be modulated by faces that are perceptually identifiable, irrespective of extreme distortions to the face's veridical configuration. We theorize that the tolerance to compressive distortions has evolved from the need to recognize faces across varying viewpoints. Our findings help clarify the important, but poorly defined, concept of facial configuration and also enable an association between behavioral performance and previously reported neural correlates of face perception.

  8. Problems faced by newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus patients at ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Diabetes mellitus can be a frightening experience for newly diagnosed patients. The aim of this study was to determine and describe the problems faced by newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus patients at primary healthcare facilities at Mopani district, Limpopo Province. A qualitative, descriptive and contextual research ...

  9. Newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources in clinical decision-making

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Voldbjerg, Siri Lygum; Grønkjaer, Mette; Wiechula, Rick

    2017-01-01

    AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore which knowledge sources newly graduated nurses' use in clinical decision-making and why and how they are used. BACKGROUND: In spite of an increased educational focus on skills and competencies within evidence based practice newly graduated nurses' ability to use...... approaches to strengthen the knowledgebase used in clinical decision-making. DESIGN AND METHODS: Ethnographic study using participant-observation and individual semi-structured interviews of nine Danish newly graduated nurses in medical and surgical hospital settings. RESULTS: Newly graduates use...... in clinical decision-making. If newly graduates are to be supported in an articulate and reflective use of a variety of sources, they have to be allocated to experienced nurses who model a reflective, articulate and balanced use of knowledge sources. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved....

  10. Value of a newly sequenced bacterial genome

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Barbosa, Eudes; Aburjaile, Flavia F; Ramos, Rommel Tj

    2014-01-01

    and annotation will not be undertaken. It is important to know what is lost when we settle for a draft genome and to determine the "scientific value" of a newly sequenced genome. This review addresses the expected impact of newly sequenced genomes on antibacterial discovery and vaccinology. Also, it discusses...... heightened expectations that NGS would boost antibacterial discovery and vaccine development. Although many possible drug and vaccine targets have been discovered, the success rate of genome-based analysis has remained below expectations. Furthermore, NGS has had consequences for genome quality, resulting...

  11. Functional and morphological imaging of thyroid associated eye disease. Data evaluation by means of image fusion

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kainz, H.

    2002-08-01

    Aim: to recognize the structures that show an uptake of a 99mTc-labeled octreotide tracer within the orbit and head in patients with thyroid associated eye disease relying on image fusion. Methods: A series of 18 patients presenting the signs and symptoms of thyroid associated eye disease were studied. Functional imaging was done with 99mTc-HYNIC-TOC, a newly in-house developed tracer. Both whole body as well as single photon emission tomographies (SPECT) of the head were obtained in each patient. Parallel to nuclear medicine imaging, morphological imaging was done using either computed tomography or magnetic resonance. Results: By means of image fusion farther more information on the functional status of the patients was obtained. All areas showing an uptake could be anatomically identified, revealing a series of organs that had not yet been consideren in this disease. The organs presenting tracer uptake showed characteristic forms as described below: - eye glass sign: lacrimal gland and lacrimal ducts - scissors sign: eye muscles, rectus sup. and inf. - arch on CT: muscle displacement - Omega sign: tonsils and salivary glands - W- sign: tonsils and salivary glands Conclusions: By means of image fusion it was possible to recognize that a series of organs of the neck and head express somatostatin receptors. We interpret these results as a sign of inflammation of the lacrimal glands, the lacrimal ducts, the cervical lymphatics, the anterior portions of the extra ocular eye muscles and muscles of the posterior cervical region. Somatostatin uptake in these sturctures reflects the prescence of specific receptors which reflect the immuno regulating function of the peptide. (author)

  12. Recognizing Multi-user Activities using Body Sensor Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gu, Tao; Wang, Liang; Chen, Hanhua

    2011-01-01

    The advances of wireless networking and sensor technology open up an interesting opportunity to infer human activities in a smart home environment. Existing work in this paradigm focuses mainly on recognizing activities of a single user. In this work, we address the fundamental problem...... activity classes of data—for building activity models and design a scalable, noise-resistant, Emerging Pattern based Multi-user Activity Recognizer (epMAR) to recognize both single- and multi-user activities. We develop a multi-modal, wireless body sensor network for collecting real-world traces in a smart...... home environment, and conduct comprehensive empirical studies to evaluate our system. Results show that epMAR outperforms existing schemes in terms of accuracy, scalability and robustness....

  13. 28 CFR 549.15 - Infectious disease training and preventive measures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Infectious disease training and... INSTITUTIONAL MANAGEMENT MEDICAL SERVICES Infectious Disease Management § 549.15 Infectious disease training and..., incorporating a question-and-answer session, about infectious diseases to all newly committed inmates, during...

  14. Association of copeptin and cortisol in newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baranowska-Bik, Agnieszka; Kochanowski, Jan; Uchman, Dorota; Litwiniuk, Anna; Kalisz, Malgorzata; Martynska, Lidia; Wolinska-Witort, Ewa; Baranowska, Boguslawa; Bik, Wojciech

    2015-05-15

    Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. Obesity may increase the risk of developing MS. The aim of this study was to evaluate copeptin and cortisol plasma levels in newly diagnosed untreated MS patients and to determine whether copeptin and cortisol are related to the patients' clinical statuses. We report that copeptin and cortisol were higher in overweight/obese MS patients. Positive correlations were observed between the two parameters. We conclude that alterations of copeptin and cortisol levels in multiple sclerosis patients may be related to adiposity. An increase in cortisol may also be associated with copeptin secretion. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Do You Recognize This Parent?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wallace, Edna

    1997-01-01

    Suggests effective ways to work with parents who may be permissive, busy, detached, overprotective, or negative. Recommends that child care professionals be sensitive and understanding, recognize other demands on parents' time and communicate competitively with them, use terms parents understand, accept various levels of parental involvement, be…

  16. The association of pioglitazone and urinary tract disease in type 2 diabetic Taiwanese: bladder cancer and chronic kidney disease.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mei-Yueh Lee

    Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: Although studies have shown an association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer, the associated factors have not been identified. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that may link pioglitazone to bladder cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In total, 34,970 study subjects were identified from the National Health Insurance Research Database in 2003 with follow-up from 2005 to 2009. The demographic characteristics of patients who had used and had never used pioglitazone, including age, sex, diabetes duration, urinary tract disease, nephropathy, bladder cancer, and cumulative dose and duration of pioglitazone therapy, were analyzed using the χ2 test. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to determine the independent effects of pioglitazone on bladder cancer and newly developed chronic kidney disease. RESULTS: Among 3,497 ever users and 31,473 never users of pioglitazone, the respective incident cases of bladder cancer were 12 (0.4% and 72 (0.2%, and for newly developed chronic kidney disease 245 (8.1% and 663 (2.3%, respectively. Ever use of pioglitazone [1.59(1.32-1.91], cumulative dose of pioglitazone 10,500 mg [1.34 (1.04-1.73], and duration of therapy 12 months [1.39 (1.09-1.76] were associated with the development of chronic kidney disease. CONCLUSIONS: There was no association of pioglitazone use with bladder cancer development, however, there was an association with an increased risk of newly developed chronic kidney disease.

  17. Equipping African American Clergy to Recognize Depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anthony, Jean Spann; Morris, Edith; Collins, Charles W; Watson, Albert; Williams, Jennifer E; Ferguson, Bʼnai; Ruhlman, Deborah L

    2016-01-01

    Many African Americans (AAs) use clergy as their primary source of help for depression, with few being referred to mental health providers. This study used face-to-face workshops to train AA clergy to recognize the symptoms and levels of severity of depression. A pretest/posttest format was used to test knowledge (N = 42) about depression symptoms. Results showed that the participation improved the clergy's ability to recognize depression symptoms. Faith community nurses can develop workshops for clergy to improve recognition and treatment of depression.

  18. Chronic Diseases, Lack of Medications, and Depression Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan, 2013–2014

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Smadi, Ahmed Mohammad; Tawalbeh, Loai Issa; Khoury, Laurice Sami

    2015-01-01

    Introduction Studying mental and physical health problems in refugees facilitates providing suitable health care, thus improving their quality of life. We studied depression tendency in Syrian refugees in Jordan in the light of chronic diseases and medication availability. Also, depression prevalence and depression comorbidity with chronic diseases were identified. Methods In this multicenter cross-sectional survey, data from Syrian refugees attending Caritas centers in 6 Jordanian cities from November 2013 through June 2014 were analyzed. Participants’ demographics, depression, previously diagnosed chronic diseases, and newly diagnosed chronic diseases and the availability of medications were studied. Logistic regression was used to examine predictors for depression. Results Of 765 refugees who participated, about one-third demonstrated significant depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory. Descriptive analyses showed that depression was comorbid in 35% of participants with previously diagnosed chronic diseases and in 40% of participants with newly diagnosed chronic diseases. Newly diagnosed chronic diseases and lack of medications significantly contributed to depression, but the regression model as a whole explained less than 5% of the variance. Conclusion Because the regression model showed low effect size, we concluded that newly diagnosed chronic diseases and medication shortages could not predict depression in Syrian refugees residing in Jordan. Therefore, further studies of additional factors are recommended. Prompt measures have to be taken to prevent the spread of chronic diseases and improve mental health in this fragile population. PMID:25633485

  19. [Infectious diseases].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chapuis-Taillard, Caroline; de Vallière, Serge; Bochud, Pierre-Yves

    2009-01-07

    In 2008, several publications have highlighted the role of climate change and globalization on the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Studies have shown the extension towards Europe of diseases such as Crimea-Congo fever (Kosovo, Turkey and Bulgaria), leismaniosis (Cyprus) and chikungunya virus infection (Italy). The article also contains comments on Plasmodium knowlesi, a newly identified cause of severe malaria in humans, as well as an update on human transmission of the H5NI avian influenza virus. It also mentions new data on Bell's palsy as well as two vaccines (varicella-zoster and pneumococcus), and provides a list of recent guidelines for the treatment of common infectious diseases.

  20. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy: a potential late and under recognized consequence of rugby union?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stewart, W; McNamara, P H; Lawlor, B; Hutchinson, S; Farrell, M

    2016-01-01

    The association between exposure to head injury and increased risk of neurodegenerative disease, specifically chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is widely recognized. Historically, this was largely considered a phenomenon restricted to boxers, with more recent case series identifying further 'high risk' individuals, such as former American footballers, or military personnel. However, in all cases thus far reported, it is clear that it is the exposure to head injury which is associated with increased dementia risk, and not the circumstances or environment of exposure. As such, there is considerable potential for under-recognition of CTE in patients presenting with neurodegenerative disease, particularly where head injury exposure might have been historical and through sport. This article reviews current understanding of CTE and, via an illustrative case in rugby union, highlights the value of a detailed history on head injury and also draws attention to imaging studies in assessing patients with neurodegenerative disease. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Physicians. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  1. Tick-borne pathogen – Reversed and conventional discovery of disease

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ellen eTijsse Klasen

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Molecular methods have increased the number of known microorganisms associated with ticks significantly. Some of these newly identified microorganisms are readily linked to human disease while others are yet unknown to cause human disease. The face of tick-borne disease discovery has changed with more diseases now being discovered in a ‘reversed way’, detecting disease cases only years after the tick-borne microorganism was first discovered. Compared to the conventional discovery of infectious diseases, this order of discoveries presents researchers with new challenges. Especially estimating public health risks of such agents is challenging, as case definitions and diagnostic procedures may initially be missing. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings of molecular methods, serology, epidemiological studies that might be used to study some fundamental questions regarding newly identified tick-borne diseases. With increased tick-exposure and improved detection methods, more tick-borne microorganisms will be added to the list of pathogens causing disease in humans in future.

  2. Voluntary emergence and water detection in a newly recognized amphibious fish.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Magellan, K

    2015-06-01

    Galaxias 'nebula', a small fish which has adaptations for air-breathing but is not known to be amphibious, voluntarily emerged from water and, in an unfamiliar environment, moved preferentially towards an alternative water source. Nebula may thus be considered one of the few truly amphibious fishes, and their ability to detect water provides a selective advantage which aids their survival in unpredictable natural environments. © 2015 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles.

  3. History of U.S. Military Contributions to the Study of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers

    Science.gov (United States)

    2005-04-01

    disease. Death has been observed in 33.9% of cases. Hepatorenal failure, shock, and severe anemia were all factors associated with death.^’" U.S...Allpahuayo virus; a newly recognized arenavirus (Arenaviridae) from arboreal rice rats [Oecomys bicolorand Oecomys parico(a) in northeastern Peru . Virology

  4. Continuity of care with physicians and risk of subsequent hospitalization and end-stage renal disease in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Po-Ya; Chien, Li-Nien; Bai, Chyi-Huey; Lin, Yuh-Feng; Chiou, Hung-Yi

    2018-01-01

    Effective management for type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) can slow the progression of kidney outcomes and reduce hospital admissions. Better continuity of care (COC) was found to improve patients' adherence and self-management. This study examined the associations between COC, hospitalization, and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in DM patients. In the cohort study, data from 1996 to 2012 were retrieved from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database, using inverse probability weighted analysis. A total of 26,063 patients with newly diagnosed type 2 DM who had been treated with antihyperglycemic agents were included. COC is to assess the extent to which a DM patient visited the same physician during the study period. This study categorized COC into 3 groups - low, intermediate, and high, - according to the distribution of scores in our sample. The number of ESRD patients in the high, intermediate, and low COC groups were 92 (22.33%), 130 (31.55%), and 190 (46.12%), respectively, and the mean follow-up periods for the 3 groups were 7.13, 7.12, and 7.27 years, respectively. After using inverse probability weighting, the intermediate and low COC groups were significantly associated with an increased risk of ESRD compared with the high COC group (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 1.36 [95% CI, 1.03-1.80] and aHR 1.76 [95% CI, 1.35-2.30], respectively). The intermediate and low COC groups were also significantly associated with the subsequent hospitalization compared with the high COC group (aHR 1.15 [95% CI, 0.99-1.33] and aHR 1.72 [95% CI, 1.50-1.97], respectively). COC is related to ESRD onset and subsequent hospitalization among patients with DM. This study suggested that when DM patients keep visiting the same physician for managing their diseases, the progression of renal disease can be prevented.

  5. Newly Generated Liquid Waste Processing Alternatives Study, Volume 1

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Landman, William Henry; Bates, Steven Odum; Bonnema, Bruce Edward; Palmer, Stanley Leland; Podgorney, Anna Kristine; Walsh, Stephanie

    2002-09-01

    This report identifies and evaluates three options for treating newly generated liquid waste at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The three options are: (a) treat the waste using processing facilities designed for treating sodium-bearing waste, (b) treat the waste using subcontractor-supplied mobile systems, or (c) treat the waste using a special facility designed and constructed for that purpose. In studying these options, engineers concluded that the best approach is to store the newly generated liquid waste until a sodium-bearing waste treatment facility is available and then to co-process the stored inventory of the newly generated waste with the sodium-bearing waste. After the sodium-bearing waste facility completes its mission, two paths are available. The newly generated liquid waste could be treated using the subcontractor-supplied system or the sodium-bearing waste facility or a portion of it. The final decision depends on the design of the sodium-bearing waste treatment facility, which will be completed in coming years.

  6. Recognizing and Managing Interpersonal Conflict.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deane, Nancy; Hovland, Michael

    1993-01-01

    Practical advice is offered, to managers and supervisors at any level, on recognizing and analyzing interpersonal conflicts, managing such conflicts and making them productive, and ensuring that performance reviews result in progress for both supervisor and employee. Conflict is seen as inevitable, an opportunity to take action, and manageable.…

  7. Recognizing Prefixes in Scientific Quantities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sokolowski, Andrzej

    2015-01-01

    Although recognizing prefixes in physical quantities is inherent for practitioners, it might not be inherent for students, who do not use prefixes in their everyday life experiences. This deficiency surfaces in AP Physics exams. For example, readers of an AP Physics exam reported "a common mistake of incorrectly converting nanometers to…

  8. Coeliac disease in The Netherlands.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schweizer, JJ; Blomberg - van der Flier, von B.M.E.; Mesquita, HB Bueno-de; Mearin, ML

    2004-01-01

    BACKGROUND: The prevalence of adult coeliac disease in The Netherlands was studied in the Dutch Coeliac Disease Society and in blood donors but not in the general population. We therefore studied the prevalence of recognized and unrecognized coeliac disease in a large cohort, representative of the

  9. Transaldolase deficiency: a new cause of hydrops fetalis and neonatal multi-organ disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Valayannopoulos, Vassili; Verhoeven, Nanda M; Mention, Karine; Salomons, Gajja S; Sommelet, Danièle; Gonzales, Marie; Touati, Guy; de Lonlay, Pascale; Jakobs, Cornelis; Saudubray, Jean-Marie

    2006-11-01

    Transaldolase (TALDO) deficiency is a newly recognized metabolic disease, which has been reported so far in 2 patients presenting with liver failure and cirrhosis. We report a new sibship of 4 infants born to the same consanguineous parents; all presented at birth or in the antenatal period with dysmorphic features, cutis laxa and hypertrichosis, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, liver failure, hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and genitourinary malformations. The clinical courses were variable: the first child died of liver failure at 4 months of age; the second pregnancy was medically terminated at 28 weeks gestation because of hydrops fetalis with oligohydramnios. The third child is doing well at age 7 with liver fibrosis and mild kidney failure. The fourth child is now 21 months old and has hepatosplenomegaly, mild anemia, and thrombocytopenia. Urine assessment of polyols showed elevations of erythritol, arabitol, and ribitol consistent with TALDO deficiency. TALDO activity was undetectable in the patients' tissues, and mutation in the TALDO1 gene was found in the 4 patients.

  10. Predictors of Distant Brain Recurrence for Patients With Newly Diagnosed Brain Metastases Treated With Stereotactic Radiosurgery Alone

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sawrie, Stephen M.; Guthrie, Barton L.; Spencer, Sharon A.; Nordal, Robert A.; Meredith, Ruby F.; Markert, James M.; Cloud, Gretchen A.; Fiveash, John B.

    2008-01-01

    Purpose: To ascertain predictors of distant brain failure (DBF) in patients treated initially with stereotactic radiosurgery alone for newly diagnosed brain metastases. We hypothesize that these factors may be used to group patients according to risk of DBF. Methods and Materials: We retrospectively analyzed 100 patients with newly diagnosed brain metastases treated from 2003 to 2005 at our Gamma Knife radiosurgery facility. The primary endpoint was DBF. Potential predictors included number of metastases, tumor volume, histologic characteristics, extracranial disease, and use of temozolomide. Results: One-year actuarial risk of DBF was 61% for all patients. Significant predictors of DBF included more than three metastases (hazard ratio, 3.30; p = 0.004), stable or poorly controlled extracranial disease (hazard ratio, 2.16; p = 0.04), and melanoma histologic characteristics (hazard ratio, 2.14; p = 0.02). These were confirmed in multivariate analysis. Those with three or fewer metastases, no extracranial disease, and nonmelanoma histologic characteristics (N = 18) had a median time to DBF of 89 weeks vs. 33 weeks for all others. One-year actuarial freedom from DBF for this group was 83% vs. 26% for all others. Conclusions: Independent significant predictors of DBF in our series included number of metastases (more than three), present or uncontrolled extracranial disease, and melanoma histologic characteristics. These factors were combined to identify a lower risk subgroup with significantly longer time to DBF. These patients may be candidates for initial localized treatment, reserving whole-brain radiation therapy for salvage. Patients in the higher risk group may be candidates for initial whole-brain radiation therapy or should be considered for clinical trials

  11. Environmental noise and cardiovascular disease in adults: Research in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    L′ubica Argalášová-Sobotová

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The adverse effects of noise on health have been intensely explored in the past 50 years. However, the scope of research conducted in the Central and Eastern Europe, South-East Europe, and Newly Independent States is not well-known. The aim of this review was to present studies on cardiovascular effects of environmental noise in adults published since 1965 and to point out the most important issues that need to be addressed in the future. More than 100 papers on noise and health and about 20 papers on cardiovascular effects of environmental noise in adults were identified by literature search. The authors reviewed scientific international and local journals, conference proceedings, and local reports published in national languages. The major endpoints were high blood pressure, ischemic heart disease, and myocardial infarction. The target populations were adults. Experimental and exposure-assessment studies, field, empirical studies, social surveys, and epidemiological studies are presented. The major sources of environmental noise were road and air traffic. The results were presented in tables and the most relevant articles were briefly discussed. The importance of this review is that it refers to some countries that no longer exist in the same political and governmental systems. The strength of this paper is that it includes publications that were not evaluated in earlier systematic reviews. Strategies for future noise-related research on national and global level are proposed.

  12. Treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme with carmustine, cisplatin and etoposide followed by radiotherapy. A phase II study

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lassen, U; Kristjansen, P E; Wagner, A

    1999-01-01

    fractions. Twenty-nine patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), mean age 50 (27-66) and performance status (PS) 0-2 were included. Using the Macdonald criteria 33% had partial remission (PR), 41% stable disease (SD) and 26% progressive disease (PD) after chemotherapy. After additional...... (6.0-9.1) and median survival was 11.4 months (10.1-12.7). We conclude that this regimen is effective and feasible in patients with GBM. The short course pre-irradiatory chemotherapy may be less cumbersome than adjuvant chemotherapy and the regimen may be even more active in grade III gliomas....

  13. Immunodominant IgM and IgG Epitopes Recognized by Antibodies Induced in Enterovirus A71-Associated Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease Patients.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kam Leng Aw-Yong

    Full Text Available Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71 is one of the main causative agents of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD. Unlike other enteroviruses that cause HFMD, EV-A71 is more frequently associated with severe neurological complications and fatality. To date, no effective licensed antivirals are available to combat EV-A71 infection. Little is known about the immunogenicity of viral non-structural proteins in humans. Previous studies have mainly focused on characterization of epitopes of EV-A71 structural proteins by using immunized animal antisera. In this study, we have characterized human antibody responses against the structural and non-structural proteins of EV-A71. Each viral protein was cloned and expressed in either bacterial or mammalian systems, and tested with antisera by western blot. Results revealed that all structural proteins (VP1-4, and non-structural proteins 2A, 3C and 3D were targets of EV-A71 IgM, whereas EV-A71 IgG recognized all the structural and non-structural proteins. Sixty three synthetic peptides predicted to be immunogenic in silico were synthesized and used for the characterization of EV-A71 linear B-cell epitopes. In total, we identified 22 IgM and four IgG dominant epitopes. Synthetic peptide PEP27, corresponding to residues 142-156 of VP1, was identified as the EV-A71 IgM-specific immunodominant epitope. PEP23, mapped to VP1 41-55, was recognized as the EV-A71 IgG cross-reactive immunodominant epitope. The structural protein VP1 is the major immunodominant site targeted by anti-EV-A71 IgM and IgG antibodies, but epitopes against non-structural proteins were also detected. These data provide new understanding of the immune response to EV-A71 infection, which benefits the development of diagnostic tools, potential therapeutics and subunit vaccine candidates.

  14. Observation of the bone mineral density of newly formed bone using rabbits. Compared with newly formed bone around implants and cortical bone

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nakada, Hiroshi; Numata, Yasuko; Sakae, Toshiro; Tamaki, Hiroyuki; Kato, Takao

    2009-01-01

    There have been many studies reporting that newly formed bone around implants is spongy bone. However, although the morphology is reported as being like spongy bone, it is difficult to discriminate whether the bone quality of newly formed bone appears similar to osteoid or cortical bone; therefore, evaluation of bone quality is required. The aims of this study were to measure the bone mineral density (BMD) values of newly formed bone around implants after 4, 8, 16, 24 and 48 weeks, to represent these values on three-dimensional color mapping (3Dmap), and to evaluate the change in bone quality associated with newly formed bone around implants. The animal experimental protocol of this study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments of our University. This experiment used 20 surface treatment implants (Ti-6Al-4V alloy: 3.1 mm in diameter and 30.0 mm in length) by grit-blasting. They were embedded into surgically created flaws in femurs of 20 New Zealand white rabbits (16 weeks old, male). The rabbits were sacrificed with an ear intravenous overdose of pentobarbital sodium under general anesthesia each period, and the femurs were resected. We measured BMD of newly formed bone around implants and cortical bone using Micro-CT, and the BMD distribution map of 3Dmap (TRI/3D Bon BMD, Ratoc System Engineering). The BMD of cortical bone was 1,026.3±44.3 mg/cm 3 at 4 weeks, 1,023.8±40.9 mg/cm 3 at 8 weeks, 1,048.2±45.6 mg/cm 3 at 16 weeks, 1,067.2±60.2 mg/cm 3 at 24 weeks, and 1,069.3±50.7 mg/cm 3 at 48 weeks after implantation, showing a non-significant increase each period. The BMD of newly formed bone around implants was 296.8±25.6 mg/cm 3 at 4 weeks, 525.0±72.4 mg/cm 3 at 8 weeks, 691.2±26.0 mg/cm 3 at 16 weeks, 776.9±27.7 mg/cm 3 at 24 weeks, and 845.2±23.1 mg/cm 3 at 48 weeks after implantation, showing a significant increase after each period. It was revealed that the color scale of newly formed bone was Low level at 4 weeks, and then it

  15. Lymphography and computed tomography of abdominal nodes in newly diagnosed patients with Hodgkin's disease in clinical stage I-III

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Neumann, C.H.

    1986-10-01

    Between 1978 and 1983, 80 patients with Hodgkin's disease (HD) in clinical Stage I-III had computed tomography (CT) of the abdomen and pelvis and lymphography (LAG) prior to staging laparatomy with multiple lymph node biopsies at Stanford University Medical Center. There were 224 biopsied nodal sites. The sensitivity and specificity for CT to determine the status of biopsied paraortic and iliac nodes was .61 and .91 vs. .94 and .90 for LAG. CT appeared of even lower sensitivity (.13) in evaluating splenic hilar, celiac axis and portal nodes. Including all biopsy proven subdiaphragmatic nodal sites, CT's sensitivity to diagnose the presence of subdiaphragmatic adenopathy was .38 vs. .52 in LAG. Assessment of the final pathological stage was more successful by LAG (.61) than by CT (.49). Positive and negative predictive values of both tests indicate higher reliability of LAG results as regards individual intraabdominal nodes (LAG .71, .98 vs. CT .58, .86), the entire subdiaphragmatic nodal area (LAG .79, .77 vs. CT .61, .71) and prediction of final pathological stage. LAG appeared to be the more useful test during initial staging of newly diagnosed and untreated patients with HD. None of the test for itself or in combination can replace laparatomy when exact information is necessary for further clinical decisions.

  16. Screening for Infectious Diseases among Newly Arrived Migrants in EU/EEA Countries—Varying Practices but Consensus on the Utility of Screening

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tommi Kärki

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Screening is one possible tool for monitoring infectious diseases among migrants. However, there is limited information on screening programmes targeted for newly arrived migrants in EU/EEA countries. Our aim was to investigate the implementation, practices and usefulness of these programmes. We conducted a survey among country experts from EU/EEA countries and Switzerland, asking whether their countries had implemented screening programmes. We also estimated the association between the implementation of these programmes and the rate of asylum-seekers in the population. Of the countries, 16 (59% had implemented screening programmes and 15 (56% had national guidelines. The rate of asylum-seekers was associated with implementation of screening programmes (p = 0.014. Screening was performed most often for tuberculosis; most commonly on holding level, and was targeted to specific migrant groups in over half of the countries performing screening. Twenty-five of all the country experts (96% considered screening among migrants useful, and 24 (92% would welcome EU level guidelines for screening. The implementation of screening programmes varied, and the practices were different among countries. Our survey suggests, that establishing EU level guidelines for screening would be useful, although they would have to take into account differences between individual countries.

  17. Atypical Clinical Manifestations of Graves' Disease: An Analysis in Depth

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hegazi, Mohamed Osama; Ahmed, Sherif

    2012-01-01

    Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in the number of reports about newly recognized (atypical or unusual) manifestations of Graves' disease (GD), that are related to various body systems. One of these manifestations is sometimes the main presenting feature of GD. Some of the atypical manifestations are specifically related to GD, while others are also similarly seen in patients with other forms of hyperthyroidism. Lack of knowledge of the association between these findings and GD may lead to delay in diagnosis, misdiagnosis, or unnecessary investigations. The atypical clinical presentations of GD include anemia, vomiting, jaundice, and right heart failure. There is one type of anemia that is not explained by any of the known etiological factors and responds well to hyperthyroidism treatment. This type of anemia resembles anemia of chronic disease and may be termed GD anemia. Other forms of anemia that are associated with GD include pernicious anemia, iron deficiency anemia of celiac disease, and autoimmune hemolytic anemia. Vomiting has been reported as a presenting feature of Graves' disease. Some cases had the typical findings of hyperthyroidism initially masked, and the vomiting did not improve until hyperthyroidism has been detected and treated. Hyperthyroidism may present with jaundice, and on the other hand, deep jaundice may develop with the onset of overt hyperthyroidism in previously compensated chronic liver disease patients. Pulmonary hypertension is reported to be associated with GD and to respond to its treatment. GD-related pulmonary hypertension may be so severe to produce isolated right-sided heart failure that is occasionally found as the presenting manifestation of GD. PMID:22132347

  18. Immune Cells in Blood Recognize Tumors

    Science.gov (United States)

    NCI scientists have developed a novel strategy for identifying immune cells circulating in the blood that recognize specific proteins on tumor cells, a finding they believe may have potential implications for immune-based therapies.

  19. The practical skills of newly qualified nurses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Danbjørg, Dorthe Boe; Birkelund, Regner

    2011-02-01

    This paper reports the findings from a study of newly qualified nurses and which subjects the nurses regarded as the most important in order to be able to live up to the requirements of clinical practice, and how they experience their potential for developing practical and moral skills, after the decrease in practical training. A qualitative approach guided the research process and the analysis of the data. The data was collected by participant observation and qualitative interviews with four nurses as informants. The conclusions made in this study are based on the statements and the observations of the newly qualified nurses. Our findings are discussed in relation to the Aristotelian concept and other relevant literature. The main message is that the newly qualified nurses did not feel equipped when they finished their training. This could be interpreted as a direct consequence of the decrease in practical training. Our study also underlines that the way nursing theory is perceived and taught is problematic. The interviews revealed that the nurses think that nursing theories should be applied directly in practice. This misunderstanding is probably also applicable to the teachers of the theories. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources: a meta-ethnography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Voldbjerg, Siri Lygum; Grønkjaer, Mette; Sørensen, Erik Elgaard; Hall, Elisabeth O C

    2016-08-01

    To advance evidence on newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources. Clinical decisions need to be evidence-based and understanding the knowledge sources that newly graduated nurses use will inform both education and practice. Qualitative studies on newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources are increasing though generated from scattered healthcare contexts. Therefore, a metasynthesis of qualitative research on what knowledge sources new graduates use in decision-making was conducted. Meta-ethnography. Nineteen reports, representing 17 studies, published from 2000-2014 were identified from iterative searches in relevant databases from May 2013-May 2014. Included reports were appraised for quality and Noblit and Hare's meta-ethnography guided the interpretation and synthesis of data. Newly graduated nurses' use of knowledge sources during their first 2-year postgraduation were interpreted in the main theme 'self and others as knowledge sources,' with two subthemes 'doing and following' and 'knowing and doing,' each with several elucidating categories. The metasynthesis revealed a line of argument among the report findings underscoring progression in knowledge use and perception of competence and confidence among newly graduated nurses. The transition phase, feeling of confidence and ability to use critical thinking and reflection, has a great impact on knowledge sources incorporated in clinical decisions. The synthesis accentuates that for use of newly graduated nurses' qualifications and skills in evidence-based practice, clinical practice needs to provide a supportive environment which nurtures critical thinking and questions and articulates use of multiple knowledge sources. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  1. The impact of organisational culture on the adaptation of newly ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Usually newly employed nurses find adjusting to a work setting a challenging experience. Their successful adaptation to their work situation is greatly influenced by the socialisation process inherent in the organisational culture. The newly employed nurse often finds that the norms are unclear, confusing and restrictive.

  2. Resilience and Associated Factors among Mainland Chinese Women Newly Diagnosed with Breast Cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Zijing; Liu, Ye; Li, Xuelian; Li, Xiaohan

    2016-01-01

    Resilience is the individual's ability to bounce back from trauma. It has been studied for some time in the U.S., but few studies in China have addressed this important construct. In mainland China, relatively little is known about the resilience of patients in clinical settings, especially among patients with breast cancer. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the level of resilience and identify predictors of resilience among mainland Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 213 mainland Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer between November 2014 and June 2015. Participants were assessed with the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire (MCMQ, including 3 subscales: confrontation, avoidance, and acceptance-resignation), Herth Hope Index (HHI), and demographic and disease-related information. Descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses and multiple stepwise regression were conducted to explore predictors for resilience. The average score for CD-RISC was 60.97, ranging from 37 to 69. Resilience was positively associated with educational level, family income, time span after diagnosis, social support, confrontation, avoidance, and hope. However, resilience was negatively associated with age, body mass index (BMI), and acceptance-resignation. Multiple stepwise regression analysis indicated that hope (β = 0.343, Pconfrontation (β = 0.187, P = 0.001), and age (β = -0.108, P = 0.037) significantly affected resilience and explained 50.1% of the total variance in resilience. Women with newly diagnosed breast cancer from mainland China demonstrated particularly low resilience level, which was predicted by hope educational level, avoidance, confrontation, and age.

  3. Impairment of complex upper limb motor function in de novo parkinson's disease.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ponsen, M.M.; Daffertshofer, A.; Wolters, E.C.M.J.; Beek, P.J.; Berendse, H.W.

    2008-01-01

    The aim of the present study was to evaluate complex upper limb motor function in newly diagnosed, untreated Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Four different unimanual upper limb motor tasks were applied to 13 newly diagnosed, untreated PD patients and 13 age- and sex-matched controls. In a

  4. Recognizing Textual Entailment: Challenges in the Portuguese Language

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gil Rocha

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Recognizing textual entailment comprises the task of determining semantic entailment relations between text fragments. A text fragment entails another text fragment if, from the meaning of the former, one can infer the meaning of the latter. If such relation is bidirectional, then we are in the presence of a paraphrase. Automatically recognizing textual entailment relations captures major semantic inference needs in several natural language processing (NLP applications. As in many NLP tasks, textual entailment corpora for English abound, while the same is not true for more resource-scarce languages such as Portuguese. Exploiting what seems to be the only Portuguese corpus for textual entailment and paraphrases (the ASSIN corpus, in this paper, we address the task of automatically recognizing textual entailment (RTE and paraphrases from text written in the Portuguese language, by employing supervised machine learning techniques. We employ lexical, syntactic and semantic features, and analyze the impact of using semantic-based approaches in the performance of the system. We then try to take advantage of the bi-dialect nature of ASSIN to compensate its limited size. With the same aim, we explore modeling the task of recognizing textual entailment and paraphrases as a binary classification problem by considering the bidirectional nature of paraphrases as entailment relationships. Addressing the task as a multi-class classification problem, we achieve results in line with the winner of the ASSIN Challenge. In addition, we conclude that semantic-based approaches are promising in this task, and that combining data from European and Brazilian Portuguese is less straightforward than it may initially seem. The binary classification modeling of the problem does not seem to bring advantages to the original multi-class model, despite the outstanding results obtained by the binary classifier for recognizing textual entailments.

  5. Celiac disease

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Radlović Nedeljko

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Celiac disease is a multysystemic autoimmune disease induced by gluten in wheat, barley and rye. It is characterized by polygenic predisposition, high prevalence (1%, widely heterogeneous expression and frequent association with other autoimmune diseases, selective deficit of IgA and Down, Turner and Williams syndrome. The basis of the disease and the key finding in its diagnostics is symptomatic or asymptomatic inflammation of the small intestinal mucosa which resolves by gluten-free diet. Therefore, the basis of the treatment involves elimination diet, so that the disorder, if timely recognized and adequately treated, also characterizes excellent prognosis.

  6. 14 CFR 26.39 - Newly produced airplanes: Fuel tank flammability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 14 Aeronautics and Space 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Newly produced airplanes: Fuel tank... Tank Flammability § 26.39 Newly produced airplanes: Fuel tank flammability. (a) Applicability: This... Series 767 Series (b) Any fuel tank meeting all of the criteria stated in paragraphs (b)(1), (b)(2) and...

  7. Estimating the impact of newly arrived foreign-born persons on tuberculosis in the United States.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yecai Liu

    Full Text Available Among approximately 163.5 million foreign-born persons admitted to the United States annually, only 500,000 immigrants and refugees are required to undergo overseas tuberculosis (TB screening. It is unclear what extent of the unscreened nonimmigrant visitors contributes to the burden of foreign-born TB in the United States.We defined foreign-born persons within 1 year after arrival in the United States as "newly arrived", and utilized data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization to estimate the incidence of TB among newly arrived foreign-born persons in the United States. During 2001 through 2008, 11,500 TB incident cases, including 291 multidrug-resistant TB incident cases, were estimated to occur among 20,989,738 person-years for the 1,479,542,654 newly arrived foreign-born persons in the United States. Of the 11,500 estimated TB incident cases, 41.6% (4,783 occurred among immigrants and refugees, 36.6% (4,211 among students/exchange visitors and temporary workers, 13.8% (1,589 among tourists and business travelers, and 7.3% (834 among Canadian and Mexican nonimmigrant visitors without an I-94 form (e.g., arrival-departure record. The top 3 newly arrived foreign-born populations with the largest estimated TB incident cases per 100,000 admissions were immigrants and refugees from high-incidence countries (e.g., 2008 WHO-estimated TB incidence rate of ≥100 cases/100,000 population/year; 235.8 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% confidence interval [CI], 228.3 to 243.3, students/exchange visitors and temporary workers from high-incidence countries (60.9 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% CI, 58.5 to 63.3, and immigrants and refugees from medium-incidence countries (e.g., 2008 WHO-estimated TB incidence rate of 15-99 cases/100,000 population/year; 55.2 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% CI, 51.6 to 58.8.Newly arrived nonimmigrant visitors contribute substantially to the burden of

  8. Estimating the impact of newly arrived foreign-born persons on tuberculosis in the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yecai; Painter, John A; Posey, Drew L; Cain, Kevin P; Weinberg, Michelle S; Maloney, Susan A; Ortega, Luis S; Cetron, Martin S

    2012-01-01

    Among approximately 163.5 million foreign-born persons admitted to the United States annually, only 500,000 immigrants and refugees are required to undergo overseas tuberculosis (TB) screening. It is unclear what extent of the unscreened nonimmigrant visitors contributes to the burden of foreign-born TB in the United States. We defined foreign-born persons within 1 year after arrival in the United States as "newly arrived", and utilized data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization to estimate the incidence of TB among newly arrived foreign-born persons in the United States. During 2001 through 2008, 11,500 TB incident cases, including 291 multidrug-resistant TB incident cases, were estimated to occur among 20,989,738 person-years for the 1,479,542,654 newly arrived foreign-born persons in the United States. Of the 11,500 estimated TB incident cases, 41.6% (4,783) occurred among immigrants and refugees, 36.6% (4,211) among students/exchange visitors and temporary workers, 13.8% (1,589) among tourists and business travelers, and 7.3% (834) among Canadian and Mexican nonimmigrant visitors without an I-94 form (e.g., arrival-departure record). The top 3 newly arrived foreign-born populations with the largest estimated TB incident cases per 100,000 admissions were immigrants and refugees from high-incidence countries (e.g., 2008 WHO-estimated TB incidence rate of ≥100 cases/100,000 population/year; 235.8 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% confidence interval [CI], 228.3 to 243.3), students/exchange visitors and temporary workers from high-incidence countries (60.9 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% CI, 58.5 to 63.3), and immigrants and refugees from medium-incidence countries (e.g., 2008 WHO-estimated TB incidence rate of 15-99 cases/100,000 population/year; 55.2 cases/100,000 admissions, 95% CI, 51.6 to 58.8). Newly arrived nonimmigrant visitors contribute substantially to the burden of foreign

  9. Burnout: Recognize and Reverse.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anne, Samantha

    2014-07-01

    Physician burnout may be underrecognized and can cause significant detrimental effects on personal health and job satisfaction. Burnout has been associated with medical errors, alcohol and drug abuse, and neglect and abandonment of career goals. With self-awareness, development of coping mechanisms, and the adoption of a strong social and professional support network, burnout can be combated. This article focuses on recognizing characteristics of burnout and providing strategies to cope to avoid reaching a high degree of burnout. © American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation 2014.

  10. Dermatological diseases in patients with chronic kidney disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gagnon1, Amy L; Desai, Tejas

    2013-04-01

    There are a variety of dermatological diseases that are more commonly seen in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and renal transplants than the general population. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Google Scholar, Pubmed (NLM), LISTA (EBSCO) and Web of Science has been searched. Some cutaneous diseases are clearly unique to this population. Of them, Lindsay's Nails, xerosis cutis, dryness of the skin, nephrogenic systemic fibrosis and acquired perforating dermatosis have been described in chronic kidney disease patients. The most common malignancy found in all transplant recipients is non-melanoma skin cancer. It is important for patients and physicians to recognize the manifestations of skin disease in patients suffering from chronic kidney disease to mitigate the morbidity associated with these conditions.

  11. Chrysosplenium japonicum (Saxifragaceae, Newly Recorded from Taiwan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tian-Chuan Hsu

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available Chrysosplenium japonicum (Maxim. Makino (Saxifragaceae is newly recorded from northeastern Taiwan. Description, color photos and a key to the Chrysosplenium species in Taiwan are provided.

  12. Drawing and Recognizing Chinese Characters with Recurrent Neural Network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xu-Yao; Yin, Fei; Zhang, Yan-Ming; Liu, Cheng-Lin; Bengio, Yoshua

    2018-04-01

    Recent deep learning based approaches have achieved great success on handwriting recognition. Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world. Previous research has mainly focused on recognizing handwritten Chinese characters. However, recognition is only one aspect for understanding a language, another challenging and interesting task is to teach a machine to automatically write (pictographic) Chinese characters. In this paper, we propose a framework by using the recurrent neural network (RNN) as both a discriminative model for recognizing Chinese characters and a generative model for drawing (generating) Chinese characters. To recognize Chinese characters, previous methods usually adopt the convolutional neural network (CNN) models which require transforming the online handwriting trajectory into image-like representations. Instead, our RNN based approach is an end-to-end system which directly deals with the sequential structure and does not require any domain-specific knowledge. With the RNN system (combining an LSTM and GRU), state-of-the-art performance can be achieved on the ICDAR-2013 competition database. Furthermore, under the RNN framework, a conditional generative model with character embedding is proposed for automatically drawing recognizable Chinese characters. The generated characters (in vector format) are human-readable and also can be recognized by the discriminative RNN model with high accuracy. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of using RNNs as both generative and discriminative models for the tasks of drawing and recognizing Chinese characters.

  13. Recognizing Variable Environments The Theory of Cognitive Prism

    CERN Document Server

    Dong, Tiansi

    2012-01-01

    Normal adults do not have any difficulty in recognizing their homes. But can artificial systems do in the same way as humans? This book collects interdisciplinary evidences and presents an answer from the perspective of computing, namely, the theory of cognitive prism. To recognize an environment, an intelligent system only needs to classify objects, structures them based on the connection relation (not through measuring!), subjectively orders the objects, and compares with the target environment, whose knowledge is similarly structured. The intelligent system works, therefore, like a prism: when a beam of light (a scene) reaches (is perceived) to an optical prism (by an intelligent system), some light (objects) is reflected (are neglected), those passed through (the recognized objects) are distorted (are ordered differently). So comes the term 'cognitive prism'! Two fundamental propositions used in the theory can be informally stated as follow: an orientation relation is a kind of distance comparison relatio...

  14. [Working memory for music in patients with mild cognitive impairment and early stage Alzheimer's disease].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kerer, Manuela; Marksteiner, Josef; Hinterhuber, Hartmann; Mazzola, Guerino; Kemmler, Georg; Bliem, Harald R; Weiss, Elisabeth M

    2013-01-01

    A variety of studies demonstrated that some forms of memory for music are spared in dementia, but only few studies have investigated patients with early stages of dementia. In this pilot-study we tested working memory for music in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) with a newly created test. The test probed working memory using 7 gradually elongated tone-lines and 6 chords which were each followed by 3 similar items and 1 identical item. The participants of the study, namely 10 patients with MCI, 10 patients with early stage AD and 23 healthy subjects were instructed to select the identical tone-line or chord. Subjects with MCI and early AD showed significantly reduced performance than controls in most of the presented tasks. In recognizing chords MCI- participants surprisingly showed an unimpaired performance. The gradual increase of the impairment during the preclinical phase of AD seems to spare this special ability in MCI.

  15. Being a team leader: newly registered nurses relate their experiences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ekström, Louise; Idvall, Ewa

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents a study that explores how newly qualified registered nurses experience their leadership role in the ward-based nursing care team. A nurse's clinical leadership affects the quality of care provided. Newly qualified nurses experience difficulties during the transition period from student to qualified professional and find it challenging to lead nursing care. Twelve nurses were interviewed and the transcribed texts analysed using qualitative content analysis to assess both manifest and latent content. Five themes were identified: feeling stranded; forming well-functioning teams; learning to lead; having the courage, strength, and desire to lead; and ensuring appropriate care. The findings indicate that many factors limit nurses' leadership but some circumstances are supportive. The leadership prerequisites for newly registered nurses need to improve, emphasizing different ways to create a supportive atmosphere that promotes professional development and job satisfaction. To increase nurse retention and promote quality of care, nurse managers need to clarify expectations and guide and support newly qualified nurses in a planned way. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  16. The role of vitamin K in chronic aging diseases: inflammation, cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vitamin K is an enzyme cofactor required for the carboxylation of vitamin K dependent proteins, several of which have been implicated in diseases of aging. Inflammation is recognized as a crucial component of many chronic aging diseases, and evidence suggests vitamin K has an anti-inflammatory actio...

  17. People newly in love are more responsive to positive feedback.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown, Cassandra L; Beninger, Richard J

    2012-06-01

    Passionate love is associated with increased activity in dopamine-rich regions of the brain. Increased dopamine in these regions is associated with a greater tendency to learn from reward in trial-and-error learning tasks. This study examined the prediction that individuals who were newly in love would be better at responding to reward (positive feedback). In test trials, people who were newly in love selected positive outcomes significantly more often than their single (not in love) counterparts but were no better at the task overall. This suggests that people who are newly in love show a bias toward responding to positive feedback, which may reflect a general bias towards reward-seeking.

  18. Super-Memorizers Are Not Super-Recognizers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ramon, M.; Miellet, S.; Dzieciol, A.M.; Konrad, B.N; Dresler, M.; Caldara, R.

    2016-01-01

    Humans have a natural expertise in recognizing faces. However, the nature of the interaction between this critical visual biological skill and memory is yet unclear. Here, we had the unique opportunity to test two individuals who have had exceptional success in the World Memory Championships,

  19. Prognostic value of regulatory T cells in newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zahran, Asmaa M; Badrawy, Hosny; Ibrahim, Abeer

    2014-08-01

    Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a clonal disease, characterized by a reciprocal t(9, 22) that results in a chimeric BCR/ABL fusion gene. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) constitute the main cell population that enables cancer cells to evade immune surveillance. The purpose of our study was to investigate the level of Tregs in newly diagnosed CML patients and to correlate it with the patients' clinical, laboratory and molecular data. We also aimed to assess the effect of treatment using tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) on Treg levels. Tregs were characterized and quantified by flow cytometry in 63 newly diagnosed CML patients and 40 healthy controls. TKI was used in 45 patients with chronic phase CML, and the response to therapy was correlated with baseline Treg levels. The percentages of Tregs were significantly increased in CML patients compared to the controls. Treg numbers were significantly lower in patients with chronic phase CML versus the accelerated and blast phases, and were significantly lower in patients with complete molecular remission (CMR) compared to those patients without CMR. Tregs may play a role in the maintenance of CML. Moreover, the decrease of their levels in patients with CMR suggests that Tregs might have a clinical value in evaluating the effects of therapy.

  20. Failure to recognize nontuberculous mycobacteria leads to misdiagnosis of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mamoudou Maiga

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM infections cause morbidity worldwide. They are difficult to diagnose in resource-limited regions, and most patients receive empiric treatment for tuberculosis (TB. Our objective here is to evaluate the potential impact of NTM diseases among patients treated presumptively for tuberculosis in Mali. METHODS: We re-evaluated sputum specimens among patients newly diagnosed with TB (naïve and those previously treated for TB disease (chronic cases. Sputum microscopy, culture and Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug susceptibility testing were performed. Identification of strains was performed using molecular probes or sequencing of secA1 and/or 16S rRNA genes. RESULTS: Of 142 patients enrolled, 61 (43% were clinically classified as chronic cases and 17 (12% were infected with NTM. Eleven of the 142 (8% patients had NTM disease alone (8 M. avium, 2 M. simiae and 1 M. palustre. All these 11 were from the chronic TB group, comprising 11/61 (18% of that group and all were identified as candidates for second line treatment. The remaining 6/17 (35.30% NTM infected patients had coinfection with M. tuberculosis and all 6 were from the TB treatment naïve group. These 6 were candidates for the standard first line treatment regimen of TB. M. avium was identified in 11 of the 142 (8% patients, only 3/11 (27.27% of whom were HIV positive. CONCLUSIONS: NTM infections should be considered a cause of morbidity in TB endemic environments especially when managing chronic TB cases to limit morbidity and provide appropriate treatment.

  1. Workplace Violence and Job Outcomes of Newly Licensed Nurses

    OpenAIRE

    Chang, Hyoung Eun; Cho, Sung-Hyun

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of workplace violence toward newly licensed nurses and the relationship between workplace violence and job outcomes. Methods: An online survey was conducted of newly licensed registered nurses who had obtained their license in 2012 or 2013 in South Korea and had been working for 5–12 months after first being employed. The sample consisted of 312 nurses working in hospitals or clinics. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire...

  2. Resilience and Associated Factors among Mainland Chinese Women Newly Diagnosed with Breast Cancer.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zijing Wu

    Full Text Available Resilience is the individual's ability to bounce back from trauma. It has been studied for some time in the U.S., but few studies in China have addressed this important construct. In mainland China, relatively little is known about the resilience of patients in clinical settings, especially among patients with breast cancer. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the level of resilience and identify predictors of resilience among mainland Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer.A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 213 mainland Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer between November 2014 and June 2015. Participants were assessed with the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC, Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS, Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire (MCMQ, including 3 subscales: confrontation, avoidance, and acceptance-resignation, Herth Hope Index (HHI, and demographic and disease-related information. Descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses and multiple stepwise regression were conducted to explore predictors for resilience.The average score for CD-RISC was 60.97, ranging from 37 to 69. Resilience was positively associated with educational level, family income, time span after diagnosis, social support, confrontation, avoidance, and hope. However, resilience was negatively associated with age, body mass index (BMI, and acceptance-resignation. Multiple stepwise regression analysis indicated that hope (β = 0.343, P<0.001, educational level of junior college or above (β = 0.272, P<0.001, educational level of high school (β = 0.235, P<0.001, avoidance (β = 0.220, P<0.001, confrontation (β = 0.187, P = 0.001, and age (β = -0.108, P = 0.037 significantly affected resilience and explained 50.1% of the total variance in resilience.Women with newly diagnosed breast cancer from mainland China demonstrated particularly low resilience level, which was predicted by hope educational level, avoidance, confrontation

  3. Hope as experienced in women newly diagnosed with gynaecological cancer

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hammer, Kristianna; Mogensen, Ole; Hall, Elisabeth O C

    2009-01-01

    cancer diagnosis made the women oscillate between hope and hopelessness, between positive expectations of getting cured and frightening feelings of the disease taking over. Five major interrelated themes of hope were identified: hope of being cured, cared for and getting back to normal, hope as being...... at a gynaecological department of a Danish university hospital. The women, aged 24-87 (median 52yrs), were diagnosed with ovarian, endometrial, cervical and vulvar cancer. RESULTS: Hope was found to be connected to both diagnosis, cure, family life and life itself and closely tied to hopelessness. The newly received...... active and feeling well, hope as an internal power to maintain integration, hope as significant relationships and hope as fighting against hopelessness. Thus, hope was woven together with hopelessness in a mysterious way; it took command through inner strength and courage based on a trust in being cured...

  4. INCREASED TISSUE TRANSGLUTAMINASE LEVELS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED EPILEPTIFORM ACTIVITY IN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY AMONG PATIENTS WITH CELIAC DISEASE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sedat IŞIKAY

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Background - Celiac disease is an autoimmune systemic disorder in genetically predisposed individuals precipitated by gluten ingestion. Objective - In this study, we aimed to determine asymptomatic spike-and-wave findings on electroencephalography in children with celiac disease. Methods - A total of 175 children with the diagnosis of celiac disease (study group and 99 age- and sex-matched healthy children as controls (control group were included in the study. In order to determine the effects of gluten free diet on laboratory and electroencephalography findings, the celiac group is further subdivided into two as newly-diagnosed and formerly-diagnosed patients. Medical histories of all children and laboratory findings were all recorded and neurologic statuses were evaluated. All patients underwent a sleep and awake electroencephalography. Results - Among 175 celiac disease patients included in the study, 43 were newly diagnosed while 132 were formerly-diagnosed patients. In electroencephalography evaluation of patients the epileptiform activity was determined in 4 (9.3% of newly diagnosed and in 2 (1.5% of formerly diagnosed patients; on the other hand the epileptiform activity was present in only 1 (1.0% of control cases. There was a statistically significant difference between groups in regards to the presence of epileptiform activity in electroencephalography. Pearson correlation analysis revealed that epileptiform activity in both sleep and awake electroencephalography were positively correlated with tissue transglutaminase levels (P=0.014 and P=0.019, respectively. Conclusion - We have determined an increased epileptiform activity frequency among newly-diagnosed celiac disease patients compared with formerly-diagnosed celiac disease patients and control cases. Moreover the tissue transglutaminase levels were also correlated with the presence of epileptiform activity in electroencephalography. Among newly diagnosed celiac disease patients

  5. Triglyceride-based screening tests fail to recognize cardiometabolic disease in African immigrant and African-American men.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Sophia S K; Ramsey, Natalie L M; Castillo, Darleen C; Ricks, Madia; Sumner, Anne E

    2013-02-01

    The prevalence of cardiometabolic disease in Africa now rivals that of Western nations. Therefore, screening programs that lead to effective prevention of cardiometabolic disease in Africans is imperative. Most screening tests for cardiometabolic disease use triglyceride (TG) levels as a criterion. However, the failure rate of TG-based screening tests in African Americans is high. In Africans, the efficacy of TG-based screening tests is unknown. Our goal was to determine the association between hypertriglyceridemia (TG ≥150 mg/dL) and cardiometabolic disease in African and African-American men. This was a cross-sectional study of 155 men (80 African immigrants, 75 African Americans) [age, 35±9 years, mean±standard deviation (SD), body mass index (BMI) 28.5±5.2 kg/m(2)] who self-identified as healthy. Lipid profiles were performed. Glucose tolerance and insulin resistance was determined by oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT) and the insulin sensitivity index (S(I)), respectively. Cardiometabolic disease was defined by four possible subtypes--prediabetes, diabetes, insulin resistance, or metabolic triad [hyperinsulinemia, hyperapolipoprotein B, small low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles]. TG levels were higher in men with cardiometabolic disease than without (88±43 versus 61±26 mg/dL, Pfail to identify both African immigrants and African-American men with cardiometabolic disease. As a consequence, the opportunity for early intervention and prevention is lost.

  6. The roles of categorical and coordinate spatial relations in recognizing buildings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palermo, Liana; Piccardi, Laura; Nori, Raffaella; Giusberti, Fiorella; Guariglia, Cecilia

    2012-11-01

    Categorical spatial information is considered more useful for recognizing objects, and coordinate spatial information for guiding actions--for example, during navigation or grasping. In contrast with this assumption, we hypothesized that buildings, unlike other categories of objects, require both categorical and coordinate spatial information in order to be recognized. This hypothesis arose from evidence that right-brain-damaged patients have deficits in both coordinate judgments and recognition of buildings and from the fact that buildings are very useful for guiding navigation in urban environments. To test this hypothesis, we assessed 210 healthy college students while they performed four different tasks that required categorical and coordinate judgments and the recognition of common objects and buildings. Our results showed that both categorical and coordinate spatial representations are necessary to recognize a building, whereas only categorical representations are necessary to recognize an object. We discuss our data in view of a recent neural framework for visuospatial processing, suggesting that recognizing buildings may specifically activate the parieto-medial-temporal pathway.

  7. Antarctic skuas recognize individual humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Won Young; Han, Yeong-Deok; Lee, Sang-Im; Jablonski, Piotr G; Jung, Jin-Woo; Kim, Jeong-Hoon

    2016-07-01

    Recent findings report that wild animals can recognize individual humans. To explain how the animals distinguish humans, two hypotheses are proposed. The high cognitive abilities hypothesis implies that pre-existing high intelligence enabled animals to acquire such abilities. The pre-exposure to stimuli hypothesis suggests that frequent encounters with humans promote the acquisition of discriminatory abilities in these species. Here, we examine individual human recognition abilities in a wild Antarctic species, the brown skua (Stercorarius antarcticus), which lives away from typical human settlements and was only recently exposed to humans due to activities at Antarctic stations. We found that, as nest visits were repeated, the skua parents responded at further distances and were more likely to attack the nest intruder. Also, we demonstrated that seven out of seven breeding pairs of skuas selectively responded to a human nest intruder with aggression and ignored a neutral human who had not previously approached the nest. The results indicate that Antarctic skuas, a species that typically inhabited in human-free areas, are able to recognize individual humans who disturbed their nests. Our findings generally support the high cognitive abilities hypothesis, but this ability can be acquired during a relatively short period in the life of an individual as a result of interactions between individual birds and humans.

  8. Neural Inductive Matrix Completion for Predicting Disease-Gene Associations

    KAUST Repository

    Hou, Siqing

    2018-05-21

    In silico prioritization of undiscovered associations can help find causal genes of newly discovered diseases. Some existing methods are based on known associations, and side information of diseases and genes. We exploit the possibility of using a neural network model, Neural inductive matrix completion (NIMC), in disease-gene prediction. Comparing to the state-of-the-art inductive matrix completion method, using neural networks allows us to learn latent features from non-linear functions of input features. Previous methods use disease features only from mining text. Comparing to text mining, disease ontology is a more informative way of discovering correlation of dis- eases, from which we can calculate the similarities between diseases and help increase the performance of predicting disease-gene associations. We compare the proposed method with other state-of-the-art methods for pre- dicting associated genes for diseases from the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database. Results show that both new features and the proposed NIMC model can improve the chance of recovering an unknown associated gene in the top 100 predicted genes. Best results are obtained by using both the new features and the new model. Results also show the proposed method does better in predicting associated genes for newly discovered diseases.

  9. Standard chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab for women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer (ICON7)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Oza, Amit M; Cook, Adrian D; Pfisterer, Jacobus

    2015-01-01

    BACKGROUND: The ICON7 trial previously reported improved progression-free survival in women with ovarian cancer with the addition of bevacizumab to standard chemotherapy, with the greatest effect in patients at high risk of disease progression. We report the final overall survival results...... of the trial. METHODS: ICON7 was an international, phase 3, open-label, randomised trial undertaken at 263 centres in 11 countries across Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Eligible adult women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer that was either high-risk early-stage disease (International Federation....... This trial is registered as an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial, number ISRCTN91273375. FINDINGS: Between Dec 18, 2006, and Feb 16, 2009, 1528 women were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive chemotherapy (n=764) or chemotherapy plus bevacizumab (n=764). Median follow-up at the end...

  10. Treatment-associated polymorphisms in protease are significantly associated with higher viral load and lower CD4 count in newly diagnosed drug-naive HIV-1 infected patients

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    K. Theys (Kristof); K. Deforche; J. Vercauteren (Jurgen); P. Libin (Pieter); D.A.M.C. van de Vijver (David); J. Albert (Jan); B. Åsjö (Birgitta); M. Bruckova (Marie); R.J. Camacho (Ricardo Jorge); B. Clotet (Bonaventura); Z. Grossman (Zehava); A. Horban (Andrzej); C. Kücherer (Claudia); D. Paraskevis (Dimitrios); E. Puchhammer-Stöckl (Elisabeth); C. Riva (Chiara); L. Ruiz (Lidia); J.-C. Schmit (Jean-Claude); R. Schuurman (Rob); A. Sonnerborg (Anders); D. Stanekova (Danica); D. Struck (Daniel); K. van Laethem (Kristel); A.M.J. Wensing (Annemarie); E. Puchhammer-Stockl E. (Elisabeth); M. Sarcletti (M.); B. Schmied (B.); M. Geit (M.); G. Balluch (G.); A.M. Vandamme (Anne Mieke); I. Derdelinck (Inge); A. Sasse (A.); M. Bogaert (M.); H. Ceunen (H.); A. de Roo (Annie); M. De Wit (Meike); F. Echahidi (F.); K. Fransen (K.); J.-C. Goffard (J.); P. Goubau (Patrick); E. Goudeseune (E.); J.-C. Yombi (J.); P. Lacor (Patrick); C. Liesnard (C.); M. Moutschen (M.); L.A. Pierard; R. Rens (R.); J. Schrooten; D. Vaira (D.); A. van den Heuvel (A.); B. van der Gucht (B.); M. van Ranst (Marc); E. van Wijngaerden (Eric); T. Vandercam; M. Vekemans (M.); C. Verhofstede; N. Clumeck (N.); K. van Laethem (K.); L.G. Kostrikis (Leondios); I. Demetriades (I.); I. Kousiappa (Ioanna); V.L. Demetriou (Victoria); J. Hezka (Johana); M. Linka (Marek); L. Machala (L.); L.B. Jrgensen (L.); J. Gerstoft (J.); L. Mathiesen (L.); C. Pedersen (Court); C. Nielsen (Claus); A. Laursen (A.); B. Kvinesdal (B.); K. Liitsola (Kirsi); M. Ristola (M.); J. Suni (J.); J. Sutinen (J.); K. Korn (Klaus); C. K̈ucherer (C.); P. Braun (P.); G. Poggensee (G.); M. Däumer (M.); D. Eberle (David); O. Hamouda (Osamah); H. Heiken (H.); R. Kaiser (Rolf); H. Knechten (H.); H. M̈uller (H.); S. Neifer (S.); H. Walter (Hauke); B. Gunsenheimer-Bartmeyer (B.); T. Harrer (T.); A. Hatzakis (Angelos); E. Hatzitheodorou (E.); C. Issaris (C.); C. Haida (C.); A. Zavitsanou (A.); G. Magiorkinis (Gkikas); M. Lazanas (M.); L. Chini; N. Magafas (N.); N. Tsogas (N.); V. Paparizos (V.); S. Kourkounti (S.); A. Antoniadou (A.); A. Papadopoulos (A.); P. Panagopoulos (P.); G. Poulakou (G.); V. Sakka (V.); G. Chryssos (G.); S. Drimis (S.); P. Gargalianos (P.); M. Lelekis (M.); G. Xilomenos (G.); M. Psichogiou (M.); G.L. Daikos (George); G. Panos (G.); G. Haratsis (G.); T. Kordossis (T.); A. Kontos (Angelos); G. Koratzanis (G.); M. Theodoridou (M.); G. Mostrou (G.); V. Spoulou (V.); W. Hall (W.); C. de Gascun (Cillian); C. Byrne (C.); M. Duffy (M.); P. Bergin; D. Reidy (D.); G. Farrell; J. Lambert (Julien); E. O'Connor (E.); A. Rochford (A.); J. Low (J.); P. Coakely (P.); S. Coughlan (Suzie); I. Levi (I.); D. Chemtob (D.); C. Balotta (Claudia); C. Mussini (C.); I. Caramma (I.); A. Capetti (A.); M.C. Colombo (M.); C. Rossi (Cesare); F. Prati (Francesco); F. Tramuto (F.); F. Vitale (F.); M. Ciccozzi (M.); G. Angarano (Guiseppe); G. Rezza (G.); R. Hemmer (R.); V. Arendt (V.); T. Staub (T.); F. Schneider (F.); F. Roman (Francois); C.A.B. Boucher (Charles); P.H.M. van Bentum (P. H M); K. Brinkman (Kees); E.L.M. Op de Coul (Eline); M.E. van der Ende (Marchina); I.M. Hoepelman (Ilja Mohandas); M.E.E. van Kasteren (Marjo); J. Juttmann (Job); M. Kuipers (M.); N. Langebeek (Nienke); C. Richter (C.); R.M.W.J. Santegoets (R. M W J); L. Schrijnders-Gudde (L.); R. Schuurman (Rob); B.J.M. van de Ven (B. J M); B. Asjö (Birgitta); V. Ormaasen (Vidar); P. Aavitsland (P.); J. Stanczak (J.); G.P. Stanczak (G.); E. Firlag-Burkacka (E.); A. Wiercinska-Drapalo (A.); E. Jablonowska (E.); E. Malolepsza (E.); M. Leszczyszyn-Pynka (M.); W. Szata (W.); A. de Palma (Andre); F. Borges (F.); T. Paix̃ao (T.); V. Duque (V.); F. Aráujo (F.); M. Stanojevic (Maja); D.J. Jevtovic (D.); D. Salemovic (D.); M. Habekova (M.); M. Mokras (M.); P. Truska (P.); M. Poljak (Mario); D.Z. Babic (Dunja); J. Tomazic (J.); S. Vidmar (Suzanna); P. Karner (P.); C. Gutíerrez (C.); C. deMendoza (C.); I. Erkicia (I.); P. Domingo (P.); X. Camino (X.); M.A. Galindo (Miguel Angel); J.L. Blanco (J.); M. Leal (M.); A. Masabeu (A.); A. Guelar (A.); J.M. Llibre (Josep M.); N. Margall (N.); C. Iribarren (Carlos); S. Gutierrez (S.); J.F. Baldov́i (J.); C.E. Pedreira (Carlos Eduardo); J.M. Gatell (J.); S. Moreno (S.); C. de Mendoza (Carmen); V. Soriano (Virtudes); A. Blaxhult (A.); A. Heidarian (A.); A. Karlsson (A.); K. Aperia-Peipke (K.); I.-M. Bergbrant (I.); M. Gissĺen (M.); M. Svennerholm (M.); P. Bj̈orkman (P.); G. Bratt (G.); M. Carlsson (M.); H. Ekvall (H.); M. Ericsson (M.); M. Ḧofer (M.); B. Johansson (Bert); N. Kuylenstierna (N.); K. Ljungberg (Karl); S. Mäkitalo (S.); A. Strand; K. Öberg (Kjell); T. Berg (Trine)

    2012-01-01

    textabstractBackground: The effect of drug resistance transmission on disease progression in the newly infected patient is not well understood. Major drug resistance mutations severely impair viral fitness in a drug free environment, and therefore are expected to revert quickly. Compensatory

  11. Clinical evaluation of chemokine and enzymatic biomarkers of Gaucher disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Deegan, Patrick B.; Moran, Mary Teresa; McFarlane, Ian; Schofield, J. Paul; Boot, Rolf G.; Aerts, Johannes M. F. G.; Cox, Timothy M.

    2005-01-01

    Purpose: Gaucher disease is an exemplary orphan disorder. Enzyme replacement therapy with imiglucerase is effective, but very expensive. To improve the assessment of severity of disease and responses to this costly treatment, we have evaluated several enzymatic biomarkers and a newly-described

  12. Parkinson's Disease Videos

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... and Parkinson's Nurse: Webinars: Nursing Solutions: Recognizing the Impact of Genitourinary Symptoms in PD Expert Briefings: Is ... With Non-Parkinson's Disease Medications? What Is the Impact of PD Medications on Excessive Daytime Sleepiness? What ...

  13. Parkinson's Disease Videos

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... Around: Transportation and Travel with PD Expert Briefings: Sleep and Parkinson's Nurse: Webinars: Nursing Solutions: Recognizing the ... Communication and the PD Partnership Expert Briefings: Fatigue, Sleep Disorders and Parkinson's Disease Expert Briefings: What's in ...

  14. Parkinson's Disease Videos

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... Around: Transportation and Travel with PD Expert Briefings: Sleep and Parkinson's Nursing Solutions: Recognizing the Impact of ... Communication and the PD Partnership Expert Briefings: Fatigue, Sleep Disorders and Parkinson's Disease Expert Briefings: What's in ...

  15. Exercise recommendations in patients with newly diagnosed fibromyalgia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilson, Brad; Spencer, Horace; Kortebein, Patrick

    2012-04-01

    To evaluate exercise recommendations in patients newly diagnosed with fibromyalgia. A retrospective chart review. A public university rheumatology clinic. Patients newly diagnosed with fibromyalgia (N = 122). Frequency and type of exercise recommendations. The mean (standard deviation) age of these patients with fibromyalgia was 45 ± 12 years; 91% were women. Exercise was recommended as part of the documented treatment plan in 47% of these patients (57/122); only 3 patients had a documented contraindication for exercise. Aquatic exercise was most frequently recommended (56% [32/57]), followed by combined aquatic-aerobic exercise (26% [15/57]), and, infrequently, aerobic exercise only (5% [3/57]); only 7% of these patients (4/57) were referred for physical therapy. The primary method of communication was verbal discussion (94% [54/57]). Although there is well-documented evidence that exercise is beneficial for patients with fibromyalgia, we found that less than half of patients with newly diagnosed fibromyalgia in our study were provided recommendations to initiate an exercise program as part of their treatment plan. Further investigation of these findings are warranted, including evaluation of other university and community rheumatology practices as well as that of other physicians caring for patients with fibromyalgia. However, our findings indicate that there appears to be an opportunity to provide more specific and practical education regarding the implementation of an exercise regimen for patients with newly diagnosed fibromyalgia. Physiatrists may be particularly well suited to manage the exercise component of patients with fibromyalgia because of their specialized training in exercise prescription. Copyright © 2012 American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Therapeutic preferences and outcomes in newly diagnosed patients with Crohn's diseases in the biological era in Hungary: a nationwide study based on the National Health Insurance Fund database.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kurti, Zsuzsanna; Ilias, Akos; Gonczi, Lorant; Vegh, Zsuzsanna; Fadgyas-Freyler, Petra; Korponay, Gyula; Golovics, Petra A; Lovasz, Barbara D; Lakatos, Peter L

    2018-01-30

    Accelerated treatment strategy, including tight disease control and early aggressive therapy with immunosuppressives (IS) and biological agents have become increasingly common in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aim of the present study was to estimate the early treatment strategy and outcomes in newly diagnosed patients with Crohn's disease (CD) between 2004 and 2008 and 2009-2015 in the whole IBD population in Hungary based on the administrative database of the National Health Insurance Fund (OEP). We used the administrative database of the OEP, the only nationwide state-owned health insurance provider in Hungary. Patients were identified through previously reported algorithms using the ICD-10 codes for CD in the out-, inpatient (medical, surgical) non-primary care records and drug prescription databases between 2004 and 2015. Patients were stratified according to the year of diagnosis and maximum treatment steps during the first 3 years after diagnosis. A total of 6173 (male/female: 46.12%/53.87%) newly diagnosed CD patients with physician-diagnosed IBD were found in the period of 2004-2015. The use of 5-ASA and steroids remained common in the biological era, while immunosuppressives and biologicals were started earlier and became more frequent among patients diagnosed after 2009. The probability of biological therapy was 2.9%/6.4% and 8.4%/13.7% after 1 and 3 years in patients diagnosed in 2004-2008/2009-2015. The probability of hospitalization in the first 3 years after diagnosis was different before and after 2009, according to the maximal treatment step (overall 55.7%vs. 47.4% (p = 0.001), anti-TNF: 73%vs. 66.7% (p = 0.103), IS: 64.6% vs. 56.1% (p = 0.001), steroid: 44.2%vs. 36.8% (p < 0.007), 5-ASA: 32.6% vs. 26.7% p = 0.157)). In contrast, surgery rates were not significantly different in patients diagnosed before and after 2009 according to the maximum treatment step (overall 16.0%vs.15.3%(p = 0.672) anti-TNF 26.7%vs.27

  17. Nilotinib versus imatinib for newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Saglio, Giuseppe; Kim, Dong-Wook; Issaragrisil, Surapol

    2010-01-01

    Nilotinib has been shown to be a more potent inhibitor of BCR-ABL than imatinib. We evaluated the efficacy and safety of nilotinib, as compared with imatinib, in patients with newly diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the chronic phase.......Nilotinib has been shown to be a more potent inhibitor of BCR-ABL than imatinib. We evaluated the efficacy and safety of nilotinib, as compared with imatinib, in patients with newly diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the chronic phase....

  18. Transformation of organic N newly added to red soil treated with different cultural practices

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    ZhangQin-Zheng; YeQing-Fu; 等

    1998-01-01

    By using 15N tracer method,transformation of organic N,which wqas newly added to red soil treated with different cultural practices,was studied under thelaboratory incubation condition.The experimental results showed that the transformation of N from newly added organic matter and soil native pool during incubation was influenced by cultural practice treatment beforeincubation.Fallow was favorable to the mineralization of newly added organic N and soil N compared with the planting wheat treatment.Planting wheat greatly increased the loss of soil N.Application of fertilizers stimulated the mineralization of newly added organic N and application of organic matter reduced the mineralization,but stimulated microbialtransformation of newly adde4d organic N.

  19. Cytauxzoonosis: Diagnosis and treatment of an emerging disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherrill, Meredith K; Cohn, Leah A

    2015-11-01

    Cytauxzoonosis is a life-threatening hematoprotozoal disease with a rapidly progressive clinical course. Once considered a rare disease only relevant to a small geographic area, it is now recognized in more than about a third of the United States. The geographic range seems likely to increase with expansion of the range of the vector tick. Both disease diagnosis and treatment offer challenges. The acute illness is often recognized by characteristic parasitic cellular inclusions, but illness may occur before parasites can be identified, and parasitic inclusions may persist long after illness has resolved. Also, while infection was once considered nearly uniformly fatal, subclinical infections are now recognized. Disease prognosis has improved for many cats through implementation of new therapies, but some pathogens are resistant to these therapies and death from disease is still common. Currently, prevention strategies are limited to ectoparasite control. Cytauxzoonosis caused by Cytauxzoon felis is limited to the Americas, and is especially problematic in southeastern and south central USA. However, other Cytauxzoon species have been recognized in Europe and Asia. This review is aimed at veterinary practitioners and focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of cytauxzoonosis. Disease management is of crucial importance in endemic regions. Furthermore, the expanding geographic range of infection, and the possibility of parasite identification in chronically infected cats with a travel history, make understanding cytauxzoonosis relevant in non-endemic regions as well. The authors draw on evidence from prospective clinical trials, experimental infections, retrospective clinical studies and case reports, as well as their own personal experience with the diagnosis and treatment of cytauxzoonosis. © The Author(s) 2015.

  20. A Pilot Safety Study of Lenalidomide and Radiotherapy for Patients With Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma Multiforme

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Drappatz, Jan; Wong, Eric T.; Schiff, David; Kesari, Santosh; Batchelor, Tracy T.; Doherty, Lisa; LaFrankie, Debra Conrad; Ramakrishna, Naren; Weiss, Stephanie; Smith, Sharon T.; Ciampa, Abigail; Zimmerman, Jennifer; Ostrowsky, Louis; David, Karly; Norden, Andrew

    2009-01-01

    Purpose: To define the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of lenalidomide, an analogue of thalidomide with enhanced immunomodulatory and antiangiogenic properties and a more favorable toxicity profile, in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) when given concurrently with radiotherapy. Patients and Methods: Patients with newly diagnosed GBM received radiotherapy concurrently with lenalidomide given for 3 weeks followed by a 1-week rest period and continued lenalidomide until tumor progression or unacceptable toxicity. Dose escalation occurred in groups of 6. Determination of the MTD was based on toxicities during the first 12 weeks of therapy. The primary endpoint was toxicity. Results: Twenty-three patients were enrolled, of whom 20 were treated and evaluable for both toxicity and tumor response and 2 were evaluable for toxicity only. Common toxicities included venous thromboembolic disease, fatigue, and nausea. Dose-limiting toxicities were eosinophilic pneumonitis and transaminase elevations. The MTD for lenalidomide was determined to be 15 mg/m 2 /d. Conclusion: The recommended dose for lenalidomide with radiotherapy is 15 mg/m 2 /d for 3 weeks followed by a 1-week rest period. Venous thromboembolic complications occurred in 4 patients, and prophylactic anticoagulation should be considered

  1. Paget disease of the male nipple.

    Science.gov (United States)

    El Harroudi, T; Tijami, F; El Otmany, A; Jalil, A

    2010-01-01

    Breast cancer occurring in the mammary gland of men is infrequent. It accounts for 0.8% of all breast cancers, which is less than one per cent of all newly diagnosed male cancers and 0.2% of male cancer deaths. However, Paget disease of the male nipple is extremely rare. We report a single case of Paget disease with infiltrative ductal carcinoma of the breast in a 61-year-old man.

  2. Clinical and taxonomic status of pathogenic nonpigmented or late-pigmenting rapidly growing mycobacteria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown-Elliott, Barbara A; Wallace, Richard J

    2002-10-01

    The history, taxonomy, geographic distribution, clinical disease, and therapy of the pathogenic nonpigmented or late-pigmenting rapidly growing mycobacteria (RGM) are reviewed. Community-acquired disease and health care-associated disease are highlighted for each species. The latter grouping includes health care-associated outbreaks and pseudo-outbreaks as well as sporadic disease cases. Treatment recommendations for each species and type of disease are also described. Special emphasis is on the Mycobacterium fortuitum group, including M. fortuitum, M. peregrinum, and the unnamed third biovariant complex with its recent taxonomic changes and newly recognized species (including M. septicum, M. mageritense, and proposed species M. houstonense and M. bonickei). The clinical and taxonomic status of M. chelonae, M. abscessus, and M. mucogenicum is also detailed, along with that of the closely related new species, M. immunogenum. Additionally, newly recognized species, M. wolinskyi and M. goodii, as well as M. smegmatis sensu stricto, are included in a discussion of the M. smegmatis group. Laboratory diagnosis of RGM using phenotypic methods such as biochemical testing and high-performance liquid chromatography and molecular methods of diagnosis are also discussed. The latter includes PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, hybridization, ribotyping, and sequence analysis. Susceptibility testing and antibiotic susceptibility patterns of the RGM are also annotated, along with the current recommendations from the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) for mycobacterial susceptibility testing.

  3. A newly recognized autosomal dominant limb girdle muscular dystrophy with cardiac involvement

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Kooi, A. J.; Ledderhof, T. M.; de Voogt, W. G.; Res, C. J.; Bouwsma, G.; Troost, D.; Busch, H. F.; Becker, A. E.; de Visser, M.

    1996-01-01

    Sixty-five members of three families with limb girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) underwent neurological, cardiological, and ancillary investigations. Thirty-five individuals were diagnosed as having slowly progressive autosomal dominant LGMD. Symmetrical weakness started in the proximal lower limb

  4. Molecular Studies of HTLV-1 Infection in Newly Recognized High Risk Population

    Science.gov (United States)

    1993-07-10

    members. Members of this community continued to marry close relatives for over the next 150 years. Markers of consanguinity are high among Mashadi...Caribbean region, and relationship to adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma. Int J Cancer 1982;30:257-264. 51. Hattori T, Uchiyama T, Topibana K, Takatsuki K

  5. Newly recognized turbidity current structure can explain prolonged flushing of submarine canyons.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Azpiroz-Zabala, Maria; Cartigny, Matthieu J B; Talling, Peter J; Parsons, Daniel R; Sumner, Esther J; Clare, Michael A; Simmons, Stephen M; Cooper, Cortis; Pope, Ed L

    2017-10-01

    Seabed-hugging flows called turbidity currents are the volumetrically most important process transporting sediment across our planet and form its largest sediment accumulations. We seek to understand the internal structure and behavior of turbidity currents by reanalyzing the most detailed direct measurements yet of velocities and densities within oceanic turbidity currents, obtained from weeklong flows in the Congo Canyon. We provide a new model for turbidity current structure that can explain why these are far more prolonged than all previously monitored oceanic turbidity currents, which lasted for only hours or minutes at other locations. The observed Congo Canyon flows consist of a short-lived zone of fast and dense fluid at their front, which outruns the slower moving body of the flow. We propose that the sustained duration of these turbidity currents results from flow stretching and that this stretching is characteristic of mud-rich turbidity current systems. The lack of stretching in previously monitored flows is attributed to coarser sediment that settles out from the body more rapidly. These prolonged seafloor flows rival the discharge of the Congo River and carry ~2% of the terrestrial organic carbon buried globally in the oceans each year through a single submarine canyon. Thus, this new structure explains sustained flushing of globally important amounts of sediment, organic carbon, nutrients, and fresh water into the deep ocean.

  6. The Sundance fault: A newly recognized shear zone at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Spengler, R.W.; Braun, C.A.; Martin, L.G.; Weisenberg, C.W.

    1994-01-01

    Ongoing detailed mapping at a scale of 1:240 of structural features within the potential repository area indicates the presence of several previously unrecognized structural features. Minor north-trending west-side-down faults occur east and west of the Ghost Dance fault and suggest a total width of the Ghost Dance fault system of nearly 366 m (1200 ft). A zone of near-vertical N30 degrees - 40 degrees W - trending faults, at least 274 m (900 ft) wide, has been identified in the northern part of our study area and may traverse across the proposed repository area. On the basis of a preliminary analysis of available data, we propose to name this zone the ''Sundance fault system'' and the dominant structure, occurring near the middle of the zone, the ''Sundance fault.'' Some field relations suggest left-stepping deflections of north-trending faults along a preexisting northwest-trending structural fabric. Other field observations suggest that the ''Sundance fault system'' offsets the Ghost Dance fault system in an apparent right lateral sense by at least 52 m (170 ft). Additional detailed field studies, however, are needed to better understand structural complexities at Yucca Mountain

  7. Recognizing occupational effects of diacetyl: What can we learn from this history?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreiss, Kathleen

    2017-08-01

    For half of the 30-odd years that diacetyl-exposed workers have developed disabling lung disease, obliterative bronchiolitis was unrecognized as an occupational risk. Delays in its recognition as an occupational lung disease are attributable to the absence of a work-related temporal pattern of symptoms; failure to recognize clusters of cases; complexity of exposure environments; and absence of epidemiologic characterization of workforces giving rise to case clusters. Few physicians are familiar with this rare disease, and motivation to investigate the unknown requires familiarity with what is known and what is anomalous. In pursuit of the previously undescribed risk, investigators benefited greatly from multi-disciplinary collaboration, in this case including physicians, epidemiologists, environmental scientists, toxicologists, industry representatives, and worker advocates. In the 15 years since obliterative bronchiolitis was described in microwave popcorn workers, α-dicarbonyl-related lung disease has been found in flavoring manufacturing workers, other food production workers, diacetyl manufacturing workers, and coffee production workers, alongside case reports in other industries. Within the field of occupational health, impacts include new ventures in public health surveillance, attention to spirometry quality for serial measurements, identifying other indolent causes of obliterative bronchiolitis apart from accidental over-exposures, and broadening the spectrum of diagnostic abnormalities in the disease. Within toxicology, impacts include new attention to appropriate animal models of obliterative bronchiolitis, pertinence of computational fluid dynamic-physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling, and contributions to mechanistic understanding of respiratory epithelial necrosis, airway fibrosis, and central nervous system effects. In these continuing efforts, collaboration between laboratory scientists, clinicians, occupational public health practitioners

  8. Changes Over Time in the Utilization of Disease-Related Internet Information in Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients 2007 to 2013

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahana, Eva; Kuhr, Kathrin; Ansmann, Lena; Pfaff, Holger

    2014-01-01

    Background As the number of people with Internet access rises, so does the use of the Internet as a potentially valuable source for health information. Insight into patient use of this information and its correlates over time may reveal changes in the digital divide based on patient age and education. Existing research has focused on patient characteristics that predict Internet information use and research on treatment context is rare. Objective This study aims to (1) present data on the proportion of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients treated in German breast centers from 2007 to 2013 who used the Internet for information on their disease, (2) look into correlations between Internet utilization and sociodemographic characteristics and if these change over time, and (3) determine if use of Internet information varies with the hospitals in which the patients were initially treated. Methods Data about utilization of the Internet for breast cancer–specific health information was obtained in a postal survey of breast cancer patients that is conducted annually in Germany with a steady response rate of 87% of consenting patients. Data from the survey were combined with data obtained by hospital personnel (eg, cancer stage and type of surgery). Data from 27,491 patients from 7 consecutive annual surveys were analyzed for this paper using multilevel regression modeling to account for clustering of patients in specific hospitals. Results Breast cancer patients seeking disease-specific information on the Internet increased significantly from 26.96% (853/3164) in 2007 to 37.21% (1485/3991) in 2013. Similar patterns of demographic correlates were found for all 7 cohorts. Older patients (≥70 years) and patients with <10 years of formal education were less likely to use the Internet for information on topics related to their disease. Internet use was significantly higher among privately insured patients and patients living with a partner. Higher cancer stage and a

  9. Possible origin of Saturn's newly discovered outer ring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Moehlmann, D.

    1986-01-01

    Within a planetogonic model the self-gravitationally caused formation of pre-planetary and pre-satellite rings from an earlier thin disk is reported. The theoretically derived orbital radii of these rings are compared with the orbital levels in the planetary system and the satellite systems of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. From this comparison it is concluded that at the radial position of Saturn's newly discovered outer ring an early pre-satellite ring of more or less evolved satellites could have existed. These satellites should have been disturbed in their evolution by the gravitation of the neighbouring massive satellite Titan. The comparison also may indicate similarities between the asteroidal belt and the newly discovered outer ring of Saturn

  10. Oral Cancer Knowledge Assessment: Newly Graduated versus Senior Dental Clinicians

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salgado de Souza, Ricardo; Gallego Arias Pecorari, Vanessa; Lauria Dib, Luciano

    2018-01-01

    The present study assessed the level of dentists' knowledge regarding oral cancer in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. A questionnaire was used to compare the level of knowledge among newly graduated and senior clinicians. A total of 20,154 e-mails were correctly delivered to the dentists registered in the database of the Regional Dentistry Council of São Paulo, and 477 (2.36%) responses were received. This sample consisted of 84 newly graduated clinicians and 105 senior clinicians. For the statistical analysis, the chi-square test and the logistic regression analysis were performed with α = 0.05, and the results were described herein. According to their knowledge level, the results were statistically different between the groups, since 19% of the newly graduated clinicians were evaluated with knowledge grade A (excellent) in comparison to 6.7% of the senior clinicians. In spite of the results indicated that newly graduated clinicians' knowledge regarding oral cancer was 2.1 times higher, 34.5% of the professionals in this group had regular or poor knowledge on the subject, and several questions relating to clinical characteristics and risk factors indicated that there still exist some knowledge gaps, demonstrating that there is a need for further studies and information activities addressing oral cancer. PMID:29666649

  11. Coping Profiles Differentiate Psychological Adjustment in Chinese Women Newly Diagnosed With Breast Cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Lingyan; Li, Shichen; Wang, Yuping; Yi, Jinyao; Yang, Yanjie; He, Jincai; Zhu, Xiongzhao

    2017-06-01

    The study aimed to explore latent profiles of coping in Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer and examine the differences of psychological distress, demographic, and medical characteristics across profiles. Latent profile analysis was used to identify 3 classes of copers based on data from 618 Chinese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer who completed questionnaires assessing their coping strategies and psychological distress. "Adaptive coper," reporting most use of adaptive cognitive coping strategies, behaviors of acceptance and shifting attention, and least use of maladaptive cognitive coping strategies, had the best psychological adjustment. "Negative coper," characterized by most use of maladaptive cognitive coping strategies, least use of adaptive cognitive coping strategies except "putting in perspective," and median levels of medical coping behaviors, had the worst psychological adjustment. "Inconsistent coper," with great use of all cognitive coping strategies, and most behaviors of fighting against the disease, and fewest behaviors of attention shift, had relatively high levels of psychological distress. Younger age, less education, shorter time since diagnosis, widowed, living in rural areas, and undergoing chemotherapy are possible markers for patients with less adaptive coping patterns. Interventions should be developed according to the different coping profiles of patients, and the key group to target is "negative copers," who may benefit from cognitive behavioral approaches that combine emotion, cognition and behavior, which could help them more effectively appraise and cope with stressful events.

  12. Multi-UAV joint target recognizing based on binocular vision theory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuan Zhang

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Target recognizing of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV based on image processing take the advantage of 2D information containing in the image for identifying the target. Compare to single UAV with electrical optical tracking system (EOTS, multi-UAV with EOTS is able to take a group of image focused on the suspected target from multiple view point. Benefit from matching each couple of image in this group, points set constituted by matched feature points implicates the depth of each point. Coordinate of target feature points could be computing from depth of feature points. This depth information makes up a cloud of points and reconstructed an exclusive 3D model to recognizing system. Considering the target recognizing do not require precise target model, the cloud of feature points was regrouped into n subsets and reconstructed to a semi-3D model. Casting these subsets in a Cartesian coordinate and applying these projections in convolutional neural networks (CNN respectively, the integrated output of networks is the improved result of recognizing.

  13. Career Motivation in Newly Licensed Registered Nurses: What Makes Them Remain

    Science.gov (United States)

    Banks, Zarata Mann; Bailey, Jessica H.

    2010-01-01

    Despite vast research on newly licensed registered nurses (RNs), we don't know why some newly licensed registered nurses remain in their current jobs and others leave the nursing profession early in their career. Job satisfaction, the most significant factor emerging from the literature, plays a significant role in nurses' decisions to remain in…

  14. Mining Emerging Patterns for Recognizing Activities of Multiple Users in Pervasive Computing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gu, Tao; Wu, Zhanqing; Wang, Liang

    2009-01-01

    Understanding and recognizing human activities from sensor readings is an important task in pervasive computing. Existing work on activity recognition mainly focuses on recognizing activities for a single user in a smart home environment. However, in real life, there are often multiple inhabitants...... activity models, and propose an Emerging Pattern based Multi-user Activity Recognizer (epMAR) to recognize both single-user and multiuser activities. We conduct our empirical studies by collecting real-world activity traces done by two volunteers over a period of two weeks in a smart home environment...... sensor readings in a home environment, and propose a novel pattern mining approach to recognize both single-user and multi-user activities in a unified solution. We exploit Emerging Pattern – a type of knowledge pattern that describes significant changes between classes of data – for constructing our...

  15. Meeting and activating the newly unemployed

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rotger, Gabriel Pons

    -demanding activity. As intensive activation is usually accompanied by intensive search monitoring, it is important to disentangling the contribution of the costly activation programs from that of caseworker meetings. Using Danish data for the period 2010-13, the paper shows that requiring newly unemployed intensive...... activation, contrary to job search meetings, reduces employment and increases sickness benefit claims....

  16. Questioning the "big assumptions". Part II: recognizing organizational contradictions that impede institutional change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bowe, Constance M; Lahey, Lisa; Kegan, Robert; Armstrong, Elizabeth

    2003-08-01

    Well-designed medical curriculum reforms can fall short of their primary objectives during implementation when unanticipated or unaddressed organizational resistance surfaces. This typically occurs if the agents for change ignore faculty concerns during the planning stage or when the provision of essential institutional safeguards to support new behaviors are neglected. Disappointing outcomes in curriculum reforms then result in the perpetuation of or reversion to the status quo despite the loftiest of goals. Institutional resistance to change, much like that observed during personal development, does not necessarily indicate a communal lack of commitment to the organization's newly stated goals. It may reflect the existence of competing organizational objectives that must be addressed before substantive advances in a new direction can be accomplished. The authors describe how the Big Assumptions process (see previous article) was adapted and applied at the institutional level during a school of medicine's curriculum reform. Reform leaders encouraged faculty participants to articulate their reservations about considered changes to provided insights into the organization's competing commitments. The line of discussion provided an opportunity for faculty to appreciate the gridlock that existed until appropriate test of the school's long held Big Assumptions could be conducted. The Big Assumptions process proved useful in moving faculty groups to recognize and questions the validity of unchallenged institutional beliefs that were likely to undermine efforts toward change. The process also allowed the organization to put essential institutional safeguards in place that ultimately insured that substantive reforms could be sustained.

  17. Competence of newly qualified registered nurses from a nursing college

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    BG Morolong

    2005-09-01

    Full Text Available The South African education and training system, through its policy of outcomesbased education and training, has made competency a national priority. In compliance to this national requirement of producing competent learners, the South African Nursing Council ( 1999 B require that the beginner professional nurse practitioners and midwives have the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values which will enable them to render efficient professional service. The health care system also demands competent nurse practitioners to ensure quality in health care. In the light of competency being a national priority and a statutory demand, the research question that emerges is, how competent are the newly qualified registered nurses from a specific nursing college in clinical nursing education? A quantitative, non-experimental contextual design was used to evaluate the competence of newly qualified registered nurses from a specific nursing college. The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase dealt with the development of an instrument together with its manual through the conceptualisation process. The second phase focused on the evaluation of the competency of newly qualified nurses using the instrument based on the steps of the nursing process. A pilot study was conducted to test the feasibility of the items of the instrument. During the evaluation phase, a sample of twenty-six newly qualified nurses was selected by simple random sampling from a target population of thirty-six newly qualified registered nurses. However, six participants withdrew from the study. Data was collected in two general hospitals where the newly qualified registered nurses were working. Observation and questioning were used as data collection techniques in accordance with the developed instrument. Measures were taken to ensure internal validity and reliability of the results. To protect the rights of the participants, the researcher adhered to DENOSA’S (1998

  18. Human peripheral blood monocytes display surface antigens recognized by monoclonal antinuclear antibodies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Holers, V.M.; Kotzin, B.L.

    1985-01-01

    The authors used monoclonal anti-nuclear autoantibodies and indirect immunofluorescence to examine normal human peripheral blood mononuclear leukocytes for the presence of cell surface nuclear antigens. Only one monoclonal anti-histone antibody (MH-2) was found to bind to freshly isolated PBL, staining approximately 10% of large cells. However, after cells were placed into culture for 16-24 h, a high percentage (up to 60%) of large-sized cells were recognized by an anti-DNA (BWD-1) and several different antihistone monoclonal antibodies (BWH-1, MH-1, and MH-2). These antibodies recognize separate antigenic determinants on chromatin and histones extracted from chromatin. The histone antigen-positive cells were viable, and the monoclonal antibodies could be shown to be binding to the cell surface and not to the nucleus. Using monoclonal antibodies specific for monocytes and T cells, and complement-mediated cytotoxicity, the cells bearing histone antigens were shown to be primarily monocytes. The appearance of histone and DNA antigen-positive cells was nearly completely inhibited by the addition of low concentrations of cycloheximide at initiation of the cultures. In contrast, little effect on the percentage of positive cells was detected if cells were exposed to high doses of gamma irradiation before culture. These data further support the existence of cell surface nuclear antigens on selected cell subsets, which may provide insight into the immunopathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus and related autoimmune diseases

  19. Chronic wasting disease: Bambi vs. the prion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chronic wasting disease (CWD) was first described in Colorado in 1967 and subsequently recognized as a prion disease in 1980. CWD has a long and asymptomatic incubation period (> 1 year) followed by a short disease course that ends in the death of the animal. There is no known treatment or cure for ...

  20. Intellectual Impairment in Patients with Newly Diagnosed HIV Infection in Southwestern Nigeria

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Taofiki A. Sunmonu

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Neurocognitive impairment is a detrimental complication of HIV infection. Here, we characterized the intellectual performance of patients with newly diagnosed HIV infection in southwestern Nigeria. We conducted a prospective study at Owo Federal Medical Center by using the adapted Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS. The raw scores were converted to standardized scores (z-scores and correlated with clinical and laboratory findings. Fifty-eight HIV positive patients were recruited; 72% were in WHO stages 3 and 4. We detected a high rate of intellectual impairment in HIV positive patients and controls (63.8% and 10%, resp.; P<0.001. HIV positive patients performed worse throughout the subtests of both verbal and performance intelligence quotients. Presence of opportunistic infections was associated with worse performance in the similarities and digit symbol tests and performance and full scale scores. Lower body weight correlated with poor performance in different WAIS subtests. The high rate of advanced disease stage warrants measures aimed at earlier diagnosis and treatment. Assessment of neurocognitive performance at diagnosis may offer the opportunity to improve functioning in daily life and counteract disease progression.

  1. Cisplatin-resistant cells express increased levels of a factor that recognizes damaged DNA

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chu, G.; Chang, E.

    1990-01-01

    Cancer treatment with the drug cisplatin is often thwarted by the emergence of drug-resistant cells. To study this phenomenon, the authors identified two independent cellular factors that recognize cisplatin-damaged DNA. One of the two factors, designated XPE binding factor, is deficient in complementation group E of xeroderma pigmentosum, an inherited disease characterized by defective repair of DNA damaged by ultraviolet radiation, cisplatin, and other agents. Human tumor cell lines selected for resistance to cisplatin showed more efficient DNA repair and increased expression of XPE binding factor. These results suggest that XPE binding factor may be responsible, at least in part, for the development of cisplatin resistance in human tumors and that the mechanism may be increased DNA repair

  2. Recognizing Cataracts

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... age-related cataract. They recommend eating plenty of green leafy vegetables, fruits, nuts and other healthy foods. Also, don’t smoke, because smoking may speed cataract development. To screen for early signs of eye disease, Bishop recommends ...

  3. [Principles of nutrition in patients with newly appointed stoma].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pachocka, Lucyna Małgorzata; Urbanik, Anna

    2016-01-01

    The treatment of intestinal stoma is often a difficult experience for patients and results in numerous problems in the physical, psychological and social aspects. Therefore, post-operative care of the patient with the newly appointed stoma should be taken by therapeutic team consisting of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, dieticians, psychologists and social workers. Appropriate nutritional education of patients aims to improve their quality of life and to prevent from unpleasant ailments formed after the operation. The specific type of stoma may decide about certain dietary recommendations. The presented work provides a practical dietary recommendations for patients with newly appointed stoma.

  4. Disease: H00329 [KEGG MEDICUS

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available lso recognized as an infrequent cause of non-gastrointestinal infections such as ocular infections, septicemia, meningitis, endocardi...tis, osteomyelitis, and surgical and traumatic wound infections. Infectious disease

  5. Emerging fungal diseases: the importance of the host.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Procop, Gary W; Roberts, Glenn D

    2004-09-01

    More yeasts and molds are now recognized to cause more human disease than ever before. This development is not due to a change in the virulence of these fungi, but rather to changes in the human host. These changes include immunosuppression secondary to the pandemic of HIV, the use of life-saving advances in chemotherapy and organ transplantation, and the use of corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive agents to treat a variety of diseases. Fungi that were once considered common saprophytes are now recognized as potential pathogens in these patients. This situation necessitates better communication than ever between the clinician, pathologist, and clinical mycologist to ensure the prompt and accurate determination of the cause of fungal diseases.

  6. Framework for benchmarking FA-based string recognizers

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Ngassam, EK

    2010-10-01

    Full Text Available of suggested algorithms by domain-specific FA-implementers requires prior knowledge of the behaviour (performance-wise) of each algorithm in order to make an informed choice. The authors propose a based string recognizers such that FA-implementers could capture...

  7. Autologous monoclonal antibodies recognize tumour-associated antigens in X-irradiated C57BL/6 mice

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Artus, A; Guillemain, B; Legrand, E; Astier-Gin, T; Mamoun, R; Duplan, J -F

    1986-09-01

    X-irradiation of C57BL/6 mice induces thymic lymphosarcomas which sometimes contain retroviruses which upon injection into normal mice mimic the effect of the irradiation. We examined whether specific antigenicities, viral or cellular, were expressed by tumour cells that could be recognized by antibodies from the irradiated animals. We developed monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) using splenocytes of the diseased animal. The reactivity of such MAbs towards thymoma cell lines established in vitro was investigated by means of an ELISA. At least 10 antibody specificities were detected on the 13 tumours investigated, allowing separation of the MAbs into three classes: (i) those recognizing the autologous tumour, heterologous tumours as well as normal thymic tissue, (ii) those specific for the autologous tumour, and (iii) those specific for one tumour, but not ones of autologous origin. The last two classes corresponded to specific tumour-associated antigens. Our panel of MAbs defined each tumour by the particular pattern of antigens harboured. It is striking that most of the antigens were present in the normal thymus and that only two tumours had additional antigenicities. Additionally, quantitative variations were observed in the levels of expression of these antigens.

  8. Newly-formed emotional memories guide selective attention processes: Evidence from event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schupp, Harald T; Kirmse, Ursula; Schmälzle, Ralf; Flaisch, Tobias; Renner, Britta

    2016-06-20

    Emotional cues can guide selective attention processes. However, emotional stimuli can both activate long-term memory representations reflecting general world knowledge and engage newly formed memory representations representing specific knowledge from the immediate past. Here, the self-completion feature of associative memory was utilized to assess the regulation of attention processes by newly-formed emotional memory. First, new memory representations were formed by presenting pictures depicting a person either in an erotic pose or as a portrait. Afterwards, to activate newly-built memory traces, edited pictures were presented showing only the head region of the person. ERP recordings revealed the emotional regulation of attention by newly-formed memories. Specifically, edited pictures from the erotic compared to the portrait category elicited an early posterior negativity and late positive potential, similar to the findings observed for the original pictures. A control condition showed that the effect was dependent on newly-formed memory traces. Given the large number of new memories formed each day, they presumably make an important contribution to the regulation of attention in everyday life.

  9. Newly-formed emotional memories guide selective attention processes: Evidence from event-related potentials

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schupp, Harald T.; Kirmse, Ursula; Schmälzle, Ralf; Flaisch, Tobias; Renner, Britta

    2016-01-01

    Emotional cues can guide selective attention processes. However, emotional stimuli can both activate long-term memory representations reflecting general world knowledge and engage newly formed memory representations representing specific knowledge from the immediate past. Here, the self-completion feature of associative memory was utilized to assess the regulation of attention processes by newly-formed emotional memory. First, new memory representations were formed by presenting pictures depicting a person either in an erotic pose or as a portrait. Afterwards, to activate newly-built memory traces, edited pictures were presented showing only the head region of the person. ERP recordings revealed the emotional regulation of attention by newly-formed memories. Specifically, edited pictures from the erotic compared to the portrait category elicited an early posterior negativity and late positive potential, similar to the findings observed for the original pictures. A control condition showed that the effect was dependent on newly-formed memory traces. Given the large number of new memories formed each day, they presumably make an important contribution to the regulation of attention in everyday life. PMID:27321471

  10. Tuberculosis disease mapping in Kedah using standardized morbidity ratio

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diah, Ijlal Mohd; Aziz, Nazrina; Kasim, Maznah Mat

    2017-10-01

    This paper presents the results of relative risk estimation that applied to TB data in Kedah using the most common approach, Standardized Morbidity Ratio (SMR). Disease mapping has been recognized as one of the methods that can be used by government and public health in order to control diseases since it can give a clear picture of the risk areas. To get good disease mapping, relative risk estimation is an important issue that need to be considered. TB risk areas will be recognized through the map. From the result, Kulim shows the lowest risk areas of contracting TB while Kota Setar has the highest risk area.

  11. Prognostic factors of nasopharynx tumors investigated by MR imaging and the value of MR imaging in the newly published TNM staging

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sakata, Koh-ichi; Hareyama, Masato; Tamakawa, Mituharu; Oouchi, Atushi; Sido, Mitsuo; Nagakura, Hisayasu; Akiba, Hidenari; Koito, Kazumitsu; Himi, Tetsuo; Asakura, Kohji

    1999-01-01

    Purpose: To examine the usefulness of MR imaging for predicting local control of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and the value of MR imaging in the newly published fifth edition of the TNM classification. Methods and Materials: We studied 29 patients with NPC with MR imaging and CT before and after treatment. Staging was done according to the fourth and newly published fifth editions of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) staging system. The radiotherapy protocol was designed to deliver 66 to 68 Gy to the primary tumor and clinically involved nodes. Results: MR proved better than CT at identifying obliteration of the pharyngobasilar fascia, invasion of the sinus of Morgagni, through which the cartilaginous portion of the eustachian tube and the levator veli palatini muscle pass, invasion of the skull base, and metastases to lymph nodes in the carotid and retropharyngeal spaces. All seven patients without invasion of the pharyngobasilar fascia had local control. The local control rates of patients with invasion of the skull base were not good (60 to 73%). There was no apparent relationship between tumor volume determined by T1-weighted MR images and local control when the tumor volume was more than 20 cc. The newly published N staging system appears to successfully identify the high-risk group for distant metastasis as N3. In our series, four of five patients with N3 disease developed distant metastases. Conclusion: Deep infiltration of the tumor is a more important prognostic factor in NPC than tumor volume. Since the newly published T staging system requires a search for tumor invasion into soft tissue such as parapharyngeal space and bony structures, MR imaging may be indispensable for the newly published NPC staging system

  12. Prioritizing zoonotic diseases in Ethiopia using a one health approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emily G. Pieracci

    2016-12-01

    Discussion: Multi-sectoral collaborations strengthen disease surveillance system development in humans and animals, enhance laboratory capacity, and support implementation of prevention and control strategies. To facilitate this, the creation of a One Health-focused Zoonotic Disease Unit is recommended. Enhancement of public health and veterinary laboratories, joint outbreak and surveillance activities, and intersectoral linkages created to tackle the prioritized zoonotic diseases will undoubtedly prepare the country to effectively address newly emerging zoonotic diseases.

  13. Relationship between Waist Circumference and Elevation of Carotid Intima-media Thickness in Newly-diagnosed Diabetic Patients

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    ZHANG Lei; JIA Wei Ping; SHEN Yun; ZHOU Jian; PAN Jie Min; YU Hao Yong; CHEN Hai Bing; LI Qing; LI Ming; BAO Yu Qian

    2014-01-01

    Objective Waist circumference, as a brief indicator of visceral obesity, is associated with multi-metabolic disorders and cardiovascular diseases. The present study was aimed to find out the relationship between waist circumference and carotid intima media thickness (C-IMT), as well as the best waist circumference cutoff for identifying C-IMT elevation in Chinese male patients with newly-diagnosed diabetes. Methods Five hundred and seventy-eight patients from Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism in Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University were enrolled. Both physical examination (for measurement of waist circumference) and carotid ultrasonography (for measurement of C-IMT) were performed. Results After grouping according to the quartiles of C-IMT, the waist circumference increased across all its quartiles. The waist circumference in 3rd and 4th quartiles (90.7±9.8 cm and 90.8±9.6 cm) was significant higher than in 1st and 2nd quartiles (P Conclusion Among newly-diagnosed diabetic male patients, waist circumference over 90 cm not only reflects sub-clinical atherosclerosis in early stage, but also predicts the progression of atherosclerosis.

  14. Recognizing Multi-user Activities using Wearable Sensors in a Smart Home

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wang, Liang; Gu, Tao; Tao, Xianping

    2010-01-01

    The advances of wearable sensors and wireless networks oer many opportunities to recognize human activities from sensor readings in pervasive computing. Existing work so far focuses mainly on recognizing activities of a single user in a home environment. However, there are typically multiple inha...

  15. Pollen parameters estimates of genetic variability among newly ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Pollen parameters estimates of genetic variability among newly selected Nigerian roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.) genotypes. ... Estimates of some pollen parameters where used to assess the genetic diversity among ... HOW TO USE AJOL.

  16. Tricks of the trade: time management tips for newly qualified doctors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Offiah, Gozie; Doherty, Eva

    2018-03-01

    The transition from medical student to doctor is an important milestone. The discovery that their time is no longer their own and that the demands of their job are greater than the time they have available is extremely challenging. At a recent surgical boot camp training programme, 60 first-year surgical trainees who had just completed their internship were invited to reflect on the lessons learnt regarding effective time management and to recommend tips for their newly qualified colleagues. They were asked to identify clinical duties that were considered urgent and important using the time management matrix and the common time traps encountered by newly qualified doctors. The surgical trainees identified several practical tips that ranged from writing a priority list to working on relationships within the team. These tips are generic and so applicable to all newly qualified medial doctors. We hope that awareness of these tips from the outset as against learning them through experience will greatly assist newly qualified doctors. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

  17. Chest Radiographic Findings in Newly Diagnosed Pulmonary ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Five hundred newly diagnosed cases of Pulmonary Tuberculosis were treated with directly observed short-course treatment and 100 of them had chest radiographic examination done. The various chest radiographic patterns in the 100 subjects were studied and included: Fluffy exudative changes 80(80%), fibrosis 70(70%) ...

  18. Failure of Neuronal Maturation in Alzheimer Disease Dentate Gyrus

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Bin; Yamamori, Hidenaga; Tatebayashi, Yoshitaka; Shafit-Zagardo, Bridget; Tanimukai, Hitoshi; Chen, She; Iqbal, Khalid; Grundke-Iqbal, Inge

    2011-01-01

    The dentate gyrus, an important anatomic structure of the hippocampal formation, is one of the major areas in which neurogenesis takes place in the adult mammalian brain. Neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus is thought to play an important role in hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. Neurogenesis has been reported to be increased in the dentate gyrus of patients with Alzheimer disease, but it is not known whether the newly generated neurons differentiate into mature neurons. In this study, the expression of the mature neuronal marker high molecular weight microtubule-associated protein (MAP) isoforms MAP2a and b was found to be dramatically decreased in Alzheimer disease dentate gyrus, as determined by immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization. The total MAP2, including expression of the immature neuronal marker, the MAP2c isoform, was less affected. These findings suggest that newly generated neurons in Alzheimer disease dentate gyrus do not become mature neurons, although neuroproliferation is increased. PMID:18091557

  19. Generation of human scFvs antibodies recognizing a prion protein epitope expressed on the surface of human lymphoblastoid cells

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Imperiale Valentina

    2007-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A hallmark of prion disease is the transformation of normal cellular prion protein (PrPc into an infectious disease-associated isoform, (PrPsc. Anti-prion protein monoclonal antibodies are invaluable for structure-function studies of PrP molecules. Furthermore recent in vitro and in vivo studies indicate that anti-PrP monoclonal antibodies can prevent the incorporation of PrPc into propagating prions. In the present article, we show two new human phage antibodies, isolated on recombinant hamster prion protein (rHaPrP. Results We adopted an antibody phage display strategy to isolate specific human antibodies directed towards rHaPrP which has been used as a bait for panning the synthetic ETH-2 antibody phage library. Two phage antibodies clones named MA3.B4 and MA3.G3 were isolated and characterized under genetic biochemical and immunocytochemical aspects. The clones were found to recognize the prion protein in ELISA studies. In flow-cytometry studies, these human single chain Fragment variable (scFv phage-antibodies show a well defined pattern of reactivity on human lymphoblastoid and myeloid cells. Conclusion Sequence analysis of the gene encoding for the antibody fragments and antigen recognition patterns determined by flow-cytometry analysis indicate that the isolated scFvs recognize novel epitopes in the PrPc molecule. These new anti PrPc human antibodies are unique reagents for prion protein detection and may represent a biologic platform to develop new reagents to treat PrPsc associated disease.

  20. Chest CT scans are frequently abnormal in asymptomatic patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vallipuram, Janaki; Dhalla, Sidika; Bell, Chaim M; Dresser, Linda; Han, Heekyung; Husain, Shahid; Minden, Mark D; Paul, Narinder S; So, Miranda; Steinberg, Marilyn; Vallipuram, Mayuran; Wong, Gary; Morris, Andrew M

    2017-04-01

    Chest computed tomography (CT) findings of nodules, ground glass opacities, and consolidations are often interpreted as representing invasive fungal infection in individuals with febrile neutropenia. We assessed whether these CT findings were present in asymptomatic individuals with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at low risk of invasive fungal disease. A retrospective study of consecutive asymptomatic adult patients with newly diagnosed AML over a 2-year period was performed at a tertiary care oncology center. Radiology reports of baseline chest CTs were reviewed. Of 145 CT scans, the majority (88%) had pulmonary abnormalities. Many (70%) had one or both of unspecified opacities (52%) and nodules (49%). Ground glass opacities (18%) and consolidations (12%) occurred less frequently. Radiologists suggested pneumonia as a possible diagnosis in 32% (n = 47) of scans. Chest CT may result in over-diagnosis of invasive fungal disease in individuals with febrile neutropenia if interpreted without correlation to the patients' clinical status.

  1. Newly graduated nurses' empowerment regarding professional competence and other work-related factors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuokkanen, Liisa; Leino-Kilpi, Helena; Numminen, Olivia; Isoaho, Hannu; Flinkman, Mervi; Meretoja, Riitta

    2016-01-01

    Although both nurse empowerment and competence are fundamental concepts of describing newly graduated nurses' professional development and job satisfaction, only few studies exist on the relationship between these concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine how newly graduated nurses assess their empowerment and to clarify professional competence compared to other work-related factors. A descriptive, cross-sectional and correlational design was applied. The sample comprised newly graduated nurses (n = 318) in Finland. Empowerment was measured using the 19-item Qualities of an Empowered Nurse scale and the Nurse Competence Scale measured nurses' self-assessed generic competence. In addition to demographic data, the background data included employment sector (public/private), job satisfaction, intent to change/leave job, work schedule (shifts/business hours) and assessments of the quality of care in the workplace. The data were analysed statistically by using Spearman's correlation coefficient as well as the One-Way and Multivariate Analysis of Variance. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to estimate the internal consistency. Newly graduated nurses perceived their level of empowerment and competence fairly high. The association between nurse empowerment and professional competence was statistically significant. Other variables correlating positively to empowerment included employment sector, age, job satisfaction, intent to change job, work schedule, and satisfaction with the quality of care in the work unit. The study indicates competence had the strongest effect on newly graduated nurses' empowerment. New graduates need support and career opportunities. In the future, nurses' further education and nurse managers' resources for supporting and empowering nurses should respond to the newly graduated nurses' requisites for attractive and meaningful work.

  2. Clinical applications of immunoglobulin in neuromuscular diseases: focus on inflammatory myopathies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paulo Victor Sgobbi de Souza

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available During recent years, an increasing number of neuromuscular diseases have been recognized either to be caused primarily by autoimmune mechanisms, or to have important autoimmune components. The involved pathophysiological mechanisms and clinical manifestations have been better recognized and many of these disorders are potentially treatable by immunosuppression or by immunomodulation with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg. IVIg has been tried in a variety of immune-mediated neurological diseases, being target of widespread use in central and peripheral nervous systems diseases. Objective To give an overview of the main topics regarding the mechanism of action and different therapeutic uses of IVIg in neurological practice, mainly in neuromuscular diseases.

  3. Prevalence of colorectal neoplasm among patients with newly diagnosed coronary artery disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Annie On On; Jim, Man Hong; Lam, Kwok Fai; Morris, Jeffrey S; Siu, David Chun Wah; Tong, Teresa; Ng, Fook Hong; Wong, Siu Yin; Hui, Wai Mo; Chan, Chi Kuen; Lai, Kam Chuen; Cheung, Ting Kin; Chan, Pierre; Wong, Grace; Yuen, Man Fung; Lau, Yuk Kong; Lee, Stephen; Szeto, Ming Leung; Wong, Benjamin C Y; Lam, Shiu Kum

    2007-09-26

    Colorectal neoplasm and coronary artery disease (CAD) share similar risk factors, and their co-occurrence may be associated. To investigate the prevalence of colorectal neoplasm in patients with CAD in a cross-sectional study and to identify the predisposing factors for the association of the 2 diseases. Patients in Hong Kong, China, were recruited for screening colonoscopy after undergoing coronary angiography for suspected CAD during November 2004 to June 2006. Presence of CAD (n = 206) was defined as at least 50% diameter stenosis in any 1 of the major coronary arteries; otherwise, patients were considered CAD-negative (n = 208). An age- and sex-matched control group was recruited from the general population (n = 207). Patients were excluded for use of aspirin or statins, personal history of colonic disease, or colonoscopy in the past 10 years. The prevalence of colorectal neoplasm in CAD-positive, CAD-negative, and general population participants was determined. Bivariate logistic regression was performed to study the association between colorectal neoplasm and CAD and to identify risk factors for the association of the 2 diseases after adjusting for age and sex. The prevalence of colorectal neoplasm in the CAD-positive, CAD-negative, and general population groups was 34.0%, 18.8%, and 20.8% (P < .001 by chi2 test), prevalence of advanced lesions was 18.4%, 8.7%, and 5.8% (P < .001), and prevalence of cancer was 4.4%, 0.5%, and 1.4% (P = .02), respectively. Fifty percent of the cancers in CAD-positive participants were early stage. After adjusting for age and sex, an association still existed between colorectal neoplasm and presence of CAD (odds ratio [OR], 1.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.25-2.70; P = .002) and between advanced lesions and presence of CAD (OR, 2.51; 95% CI, 1.43-4.35; P = .001). The metabolic syndrome (OR, 5.99; 95% CI, 1.43-27.94; P = .02) and history of smoking (OR, 4.74; 95% CI, 1.38-18.92; P = .02) were independent factors for the

  4. Diabetes education and self-management for ongoing and newly diagnosed (DESMOND)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skinner, T. Chas; Carey, Marian E.; Cradock, Sue

    2006-01-01

    diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes changes key illness beliefs and that these changes predict quality of life and metabolic control at 3-month follow-up. Practice implications: Newly diagnosed individuals are open to attending self-management programs and, if the program is theoretically driven, can......Objective: To determine the effects of a structured education program on illness beliefs, quality of life and physical activity in people newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Methods: Individuals attending a diabetes education and self-management for ongoing and newly diagnosed (DESMOND) program...... in 12 Primary Care Trusts completed questionnaire booklets assessing illness beliefs and quality of life at baseline and 3-month follow-up, metabolic control being assessed through assay of HbA1c. Results: Two hundred and thirty-six individuals attended the structured self-management education sessions...

  5. Skeletal and muscular status in juveniles with GFD treated clinical and newly diagnosed atypical celiac disease--preliminary data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Płudowski, Paweł; Karczmarewicz, Elzbieta; Socha, Jerzy; Matusik, Halina; Syczewska, Małgorzata; Lorenc, Roman S

    2007-01-01

    Undiagnosed and untreated celiac disease (CD) constitutes an increasing skeletal health problem due to its association with low bone density and fractures. Examinations of skeletal status in children using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) are prone to size-related misinterpretation. In contrary, the analysis of muscle-bone relationship seems to limit a possibility of misdiagnosis because skeletal status is evaluated from the functional perspective. The study was aimed to assess skeletal status of children suffering from CD with the use of muscle-bone functional algorithm. The study group comprised 29 celiac patients (13.7yr+/-2.9) on gluten-free diet (GFD), and 24 newly diagnosed atypical celiac patients, including subgroup with normal height (n=14; 12.6yr+/-3.9) and subgroup with short stature (n=10; 12.2yr+/-2.9). Muscular and skeletal status was evaluated by DXA (DPX-L, GE). Anthropometry, total body bone mineral density (TBBMD, g/cm(2)). and total body bone mineral content (TBBMC, g) as well as lean body mass (LBM, g) were evaluated. Muscle-bone interactions were estimated using TBBMC/LBM ratio. Previously established references for healthy controls were used for the calculation of Z-scores (age-matched) and SD-scores (height-matched). GFD treated celiacs and atypical celiacs with normal body height had TBBMD, TBBMC, LBM, and TBBMC/LBM ratio Z-scores and SD-scores within normal range for healthy controls. In contrary, atypical celiacs with short stature had significantly lower Z-scores for TBBMD (-2.3+/-0.4), TBBMC (-2.1+/-0.3), LBM (-1.4+/-0.3). and TBBMC/LBM ratio (-2.3+/-0.6) when compared to respective values observed in GFD treated celiacs (pnormal height (pvalues observed in GFD treated celiacs (+0.04+/-0.2; pnormal height (-0.4+/-0.2; pvalues of DXA assessed indicators of bone and muscle status as well as normal muscle-bone interactions. Untreated atypical celiacs may present a broad spectrum of heterogeneous abnormalities from normal to markedly

  6. Flagellation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in newly divided cells

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Kun; Lee, Calvin; Anda, Jaime; Wong, Gerard

    2015-03-01

    For monotrichous bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, after cell division, one daughter cell inherits the old flagellum from its mother cell, and the other grows a new flagellum during or after cell division. It had been shown that the new flagellum grows at the distal pole of the dividing cell when the two daughter cells haven't completely separated. However, for those daughter cells who grow new flagella after division, it still remains unknown at which pole the new flagellum will grow. Here, by combining our newly developed bacteria family tree tracking techniques with genetic manipulation method, we showed that for the daughter cell who did not inherit the old flagellum, a new flagellum has about 90% chances to grow at the newly formed pole. We proposed a model for flagellation of P. aeruginosa.

  7. Human genetics of infectious diseases: a unified theory

    OpenAIRE

    Casanova, Jean-Laurent; Abel, Laurent

    2007-01-01

    Since the early 1950s, the dominant paradigm in the human genetics of infectious diseases postulates that rare monogenic immunodeficiencies confer vulnerability to multiple infectious diseases (one gene, multiple infections), whereas common infections are associated with the polygenic inheritance of multiple susceptibility genes (one infection, multiple genes). Recent studies, since 1996 in particular, have challenged this view. A newly recognised group of primary immunodeficiencies predispos...

  8. Environmental Pollution: An Under-recognized Threat to Children's Health, Especially in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suk, William A; Ahanchian, Hamid; Asante, Kwadwo Ansong; Carpenter, David O; Diaz-Barriga, Fernando; Ha, Eun-Hee; Huo, Xia; King, Malcolm; Ruchirawat, Mathuros; da Silva, Emerson R; Sly, Leith; Sly, Peter D; Stein, Renato T; van den Berg, Martin; Zar, Heather; Landrigan, Philip J

    2016-03-01

    Exposures to environmental pollutants during windows of developmental vulnerability in early life can cause disease and death in infancy and childhood as well as chronic, non-communicable diseases that may manifest at any point across the life span. Patterns of pollution and pollution-related disease change as countries move through economic development. Environmental pollution is now recognized as a major cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). According to the World Health Organization, pollution is responsible for 8.9 million deaths around the world each year; of these, 94% (8.4 million) are in LMICs. Toxic chemical pollution is growing into a major threat to children's health in LMICs. The disease and disability caused by environmental pollution have great economic costs, and these costs can undercut trajectories of national development. To combat pollution, improved programs of public health and environmental protection are needed in countries at every level of development. Pollution control strategies and technologies that have been developed in high-income countries must now be transferred to LMICs to assist these emerging economies to avoid the mistakes of the past. A new international clearinghouse is needed to define and track the health effects of pollution, quantify the economic costs of these effects, and direct much needed attention to environmental pollution as a risk factor for disease.

  9. Perceptions of the clinical competence of newly registered nurses in the North West province

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M.R. Moeti

    2004-09-01

    Full Text Available The clinical competence of newly registered nurses relating to the care of individual Clients, depends on their ability to correlate theoretical knowledge learned in the classroom with practice and the development of clinical skills. Its foundation lies in the ability to identify and solve problems that emanate from critical thinking, analytical reasoning and reflective practice. It is clear that the quality of clinical exposure plays a leading role in the development of nursing professionals. Nursing skills alone cannot ensure quality care of clients without the application of theory. Facilitation of this theory to practice therefore remains an essential component of nursing education. This study was aimed at identifying areas of incompetence of newly registered nurses (1998- 2001 in the clinical area by determining the newly registered nurses1 and professional nurses1 perceptions of the competence of the newly registered nurses. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive survey was used to collect the data regarding the clinical competence of newly registered nurses (1998-2001.

  10. [Is aging a disease?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Novoselov, V M

    2017-01-01

    Recently, among gerontologists and the community, adjoining them for scientific interests, an acute discussion has arisen about the need to recognize the aging as a disease. The author discusses the philosophical, deontological, nosological, pathophysiological, clinical and biological aspects of this issue.

  11. 'Practising under your own Pin'- a description of the transition experiences of newly qualified midwives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Avis, Mark; Mallik, Maggie; Fraser, Diane M

    2013-11-01

    Transition experiences of newly qualified midwives were examined in depth during the third phase of a UK evaluation study of midwifery education. The fitness to practise and the retention of newly qualified nursing and midwifery graduates are pressing concerns for health care managers. The advantages of preceptorship are reported in the literature but the content and timing of schemes remain unclear. A semi-structured diary was kept for up to 6 months by 35 newly qualified midwives in 18 work sites covering all countries in the UK. The preceptor and supervisor of midwives for each newly qualified midwife completed short questionnaires about their preceptee's performance, and a further sub-sample of newly qualified midwives and preceptors participated in a semi-structured interview. Data were analysed to elicit aspects of newly qualified midwives transition experiences. Findings confirm that structured preceptorship schemes are not widely available. Newly qualified midwives primarily obtained transition support from members of the midwifery team. Although perceived as competent, there is no demarcation point in becoming confident to practise as a registered practitioner. Implications for managers include the importance of a supportive culture within clinical teams for successful transition and the introduction of structured preceptorship schemes facilitated by appropriate rotation patterns. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  12. Prognostic value of quantitative fluorodeoxyglucose measurements in newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ulaner, Gary A; Eaton, Anne; Morris, Patrick G; Lilienstein, Joshua; Jhaveri, Komal; Patil, Sujata; Fazio, Maurizio; Larson, Steven; Hudis, Clifford A; Jochelson, Maxine S

    2013-01-01

    The aim of this study was to determine the prognostic value of quantitative fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) measurements (maximum standardized uptake value [SUV max ], metabolic tumor volume [MTV], and total lesion glycolysis [TLG]) in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer (MBC). An IRB-approved retrospective review was performed of patients who underwent FDG positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) from 1/02 to 12/08 within 60 days of diagnosis MBC. Patients with FDG-avid lesions without receiving chemotherapy in the prior 30 days were included. Target lesions in bone, lymph node (LN), liver, and lung were analyzed for SUV max , MTV, and TLG. Medical records were reviewed for patient characteristics and overall survival (OS). Cox regression was used to test associations between quantitative FDG measurements and OS. A total of 253 patients were identified with disease in bone (n = 150), LN (n = 162), liver (n = 48), and lung (n = 66) at the time of metastatic diagnosis. Higher SUV max tertile was associated with worse OS in bone metastases (highest vs. lowest tertile hazard ratio [HR] = 3.1, P < 0.01), but not in LN, liver or lung (all P > 0.1). Higher MTV tertile was associated with worse OS in LN (HR = 2.4, P < 0.01) and liver (HR = 3.0, P = 0.02) metastases, but not in bone (P = 0.22) or lung (P = 0.14). Higher TLG tertile was associated with worse OS in bone (HR = 2.2, P = 0.02), LN (HR = 2.3, P < 0.01), and liver (HR = 4.9, P < 0.01) metastases, but not in lung (P = 0.19). We conclude measures of FDG avidity are prognostic biomarkers in newly diagnosed MBC. SUV max and TLG were both predictors of survival in breast cancer patients with bone metastases. TLG may be a more informative biomarker of OS than SUV max for patients with LN and liver metastases. Measures of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) avidity are prognostic biomarkers in newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer. Volumetric measurements, such as total lesion glycolysis (TLG

  13. Disease: H01142 [KEGG MEDICUS

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available H01142 Ehrlichia ewingii infection Human ehrlichiosis is a recently recognized tic...k-borne infection. Ehrlichia ewingii has been identified as a cause of human disease in addition to formerly... known pathogenic Ehrlichia species. Infectious disease ... Ehrlichia ewingii ... 16S rRNA [KO:K01977] ... Other dis... Manian FA, Liddell AM, Schmulewitz N, Storch GA ... TITLE ... Ehrlichia ewingii, a

  14. Allelic barley MLA immune receptors recognize sequence-unrelated avirulence effectors of the powdery mildew pathogen.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, Xunli; Kracher, Barbara; Saur, Isabel M L; Bauer, Saskia; Ellwood, Simon R; Wise, Roger; Yaeno, Takashi; Maekawa, Takaki; Schulze-Lefert, Paul

    2016-10-18

    Disease-resistance genes encoding intracellular nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeat proteins (NLRs) are key components of the plant innate immune system and typically detect the presence of isolate-specific avirulence (AVR) effectors from pathogens. NLR genes define the fastest-evolving gene family of flowering plants and are often arranged in gene clusters containing multiple paralogs, contributing to copy number and allele-specific NLR variation within a host species. Barley mildew resistance locus a (Mla) has been subject to extensive functional diversification, resulting in allelic resistance specificities each recognizing a cognate, but largely unidentified, AVR a gene of the powdery mildew fungus, Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (Bgh). We applied a transcriptome-wide association study among 17 Bgh isolates containing different AVR a genes and identified AVR a1 and AVR a13 , encoding candidate-secreted effectors recognized by Mla1 and Mla13 alleles, respectively. Transient expression of the effector genes in barley leaves or protoplasts was sufficient to trigger Mla1 or Mla13 allele-specific cell death, a hallmark of NLR receptor-mediated immunity. AVR a1 and AVR a13 are phylogenetically unrelated, demonstrating that certain allelic MLA receptors evolved to recognize sequence-unrelated effectors. They are ancient effectors because corresponding loci are present in wheat powdery mildew. AVR A1 recognition by barley MLA1 is retained in transgenic Arabidopsis, indicating that AVR A1 directly binds MLA1 or that its recognition involves an evolutionarily conserved host target of AVR A1 Furthermore, analysis of transcriptome-wide sequence variation among the Bgh isolates provides evidence for Bgh population structure that is partially linked to geographic isolation.

  15. A case of spontaneous coronary artery dissection presenting with acute anterior wall myocardial infarction in a young adult male - an increasingly recognized rare disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taha, Mohamed; Latt, Htun; Al-Khafaji, Jaafar; Ali, Mohamed; Seher, Richard

    2018-01-01

    Background : Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is increasingly recognized as an important cause of myocardial infarction and sudden death. Although some correlations have been noted in relation to aetiology, no direct causes have been identified in a large number of patients. Most of the patients are women in peripartum period or of childbearing age, with few if any risk factors for coronary heart disease. In men, however, risk factors for atherosclerosis are more prevalent in cases of SCAD Case report : We report a case of a 43-years-old healthy male, with no known risk factors, who presented with ischemic chest pain and elevated troponin levels. He underwent an emergent percutaneous transluminal coronary angiography which revealed a total occlusion of the left anterior descending artery at its origin with an evidence of spontaneous dissection as the cause of the occlusion, which was subsequently treated with placement of a drug-eluting stent and thrombectomy from the distal occluded portion. This case highlights the importance of including spontaneous coronary artery dissection as a cause of ischemic cardiac insults and illustrates the approach to treatment. Conclusion : Internists should have a low threshold of clinical suspicion for SCAD especially in a young patient with no known risk factors and should know the importance of emergency in management.

  16. Recognizing the Stranger: Recognition Scenes in the Gospel of John

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Larsen, Kasper Bro

    Recognizing the Stranger is the first monographic study of recognition scenes and motifs in the Gospel of John. The recognition type-scene (anagnōrisis) was a common feature in ancient drama and narrative, highly valued by Aristotle as a touching moment of truth, e.g., in Oedipus’ tragic self...... structures of the type-scene in order to show how Jesus’ true identity can be recognized behind the half-mask of his human appearance....

  17. MRI of vulvar Crohn disease

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Pai, Deepa; Dillman, Jonathan R.; Mahani, Maryam Ghadimi; Strouse, Peter J. [University of Michigan Health System, Department of Radiology, Section of Pediatric Radiology, C.S. Mott Children' s Hospital, F3503, Ann Arbor, MI (United States); Adler, Jeremy [University of Michigan Health System, Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, C. S. Mott Children' s Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

    2011-04-15

    Crohn disease is a chronic granulomatous inflammatory disorder that most commonly affects the gastrointestinal tract, particularly the distal small bowel and colon. While certain extraintestinal manifestations of Crohn disease are relatively common and well-known, others, such as metastatic cutaneous involvement, are quite rare and may be difficult to recognize, particularly in the pediatric population. This case report illustrates the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appearance of vulvar region cutaneous Crohn disease in an 11-year-old girl. (orig.)

  18. Pooling Objects for Recognizing Scenes without Examples

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kordumova, S.; Mensink, T.; Snoek, C.G.M.

    2016-01-01

    In this paper we aim to recognize scenes in images without using any scene images as training data. Different from attribute based approaches, we do not carefully select the training classes to match the unseen scene classes. Instead, we propose a pooling over ten thousand of off-the-shelf object

  19. Activity of intraarterial carboplatin as a single agent in the treatment of newly diagnosed extremity osteosarcoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petrilli, A S; Kechichian, R; Broniscer, A; Garcia, R J; Tanaka, C; Francisco, J; Lederman, H; Odone Filho, V; Camargo, O P; Bruniera, P; Pericles, P; Consentino, E; Ortega, J A

    1999-08-01

    Chemotherapy has dramatically improved the rates of cure and survival of patients with localized and metastatic osteosarcoma. Nonetheless, the number of chemotherapeutic agents active against osteosarcoma is limited to doxorubicin, cisplatin, high-dose methotrexate, and ifosfamide. Carboplatin, a cisplatin analogue, has been tested as a single agent in patients with recurrent osteosarcoma or as part of multiagent chemotherapy in newly diagnosed patients. We tested the activity and toxicity of two cycles of intraarterial carboplatin as a "window therapy" (600 mg/m2 per cycle) in 33 consecutive patients with extremity osteosarcoma before the start of multiagent chemotherapy. Response was based on clinical (tumor diameter, local inflammatory signs, and range of motion) and radiological parameters (plain local films and arteriographic studies prior to drug administration). Patients' age ranged between 8 and 18 years (median age 13 years). Primary tumor originated from the femur (15 patients), tibia (10 patients), fibula (4 patients), humerus (3 patients), and calcaneus (1 patient). Only 7 patients (21%) had metastatic disease at diagnosis (5 in the lung and 2 in other bones). A favorable clinical and radiological response was documented in 81% and 73% of the patients, respectively. Clinical and radiological progression occurred in 12% and 9% of the patients, respectively. Seventeen of the patients remain alive and disease-free. Survival and event-free survival at 3 years for nonmetastatic patients are 71% (SE = 9%) and 65% (SE = 9%), respectively; for metastatic patients, the figures are 17% (SE = 15%) and 14% (SE = 13%), respectively. We conclude that carboplatin is an active agent in the treatment of newly diagnosed extremity osteosarcoma. Copyright 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  20. Cellular Proliferation by Multiplex Immunohistochemistry Identifies High-Risk Multiple Myeloma in Newly Diagnosed, Treatment-Naive Patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ely, Scott; Forsberg, Peter; Ouansafi, Ihsane; Rossi, Adriana; Modin, Alvin; Pearse, Roger; Pekle, Karen; Perry, Arthur; Coleman, Morton; Jayabalan, David; Di Liberto, Maurizio; Chen-Kiang, Selina; Niesvizky, Ruben; Mark, Tomer M

    2017-12-01

    Therapeutic options for multiple myeloma (MM) are growing, yet clinical outcomes remain heterogeneous. Cytogenetic analysis and disease staging are mainstays of risk stratification, but data suggest a complex interplay between numerous abnormalities. Myeloma cell proliferation is a metric shown to predict outcomes, but available methods are not feasible in clinical practice. Multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC), using multiple immunostains simultaneously, is universally available for clinical use. We tested mIHC as a method to calculate a plasma cell proliferation index (PCPI). By mIHC, marrow trephine core biopsy samples were costained for CD138, a plasma cell-specific marker, and Ki-67. Myeloma cells (CD138 + ) were counted as proliferating if coexpressing Ki-67. Retrospective analysis was performed on 151 newly diagnosed, treatment-naive patients divided into 2 groups on the basis of myeloma cell proliferation: low (PCPI ≤ 5%, n = 87), and high (PCPI > 5%, n = 64). Median overall survival (OS) was not reached versus 78.9 months (P = .0434) for the low versus high PCPI groups. Multivariate analysis showed that only high-risk cytogenetics (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.02; P = .023), International Staging System (ISS) stage > I (HR = 2.30; P = .014), and PCPI > 5% (HR = 1.70; P = .041) had independent effects on OS. Twenty-three (36%) of the 64 patients with low-risk disease (ISS stage 1, without high-risk cytogenetics) were uniquely reidentified as high risk by PCPI. PCPI is a practical method that predicts OS in newly diagnosed myeloma and facilitates broader use of MM cell proliferation for risk stratification. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Newly Diagnosed Colonic Adenocarcinoma: The Presenting Sign in a Young Woman with Undiagnosed Crohn’s Disease in the Absence of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis and a Normal Microsatellite Instability Profile

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brett Matthew Lowenthal

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Ulcerative colitis has long been linked with an increased risk for colonic adenocarcinoma, whereas Crohn’s disease (CD has recently been reported to pose a similar increased risk. We report a 33-year-old healthy female with no family history who presented with abdominal pain and a colon mass. Histopathology revealed a moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma extending through the muscularis propria with metastatic lymph nodes and intact mismatch repair proteins by immunohistochemical expression and gene sequencing. The nonneoplastic grossly uninvolved background mucosa showed marked crypt distortion, crypt abscesses, CD-like lymphoid hyperplasia, transmural inflammation, and reactive epithelial atypia. Additional patient questioning revealed frequent loose stools since she was a teenager leading to diagnosis of a previously undiagnosed CD without primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC. The adenocarcinoma is suspected to be related to the underlying CD. Newly diagnosed adenocarcinoma in a young female as the presenting sign for CD in the absence of PSC is extremely rare.

  2. Combustion, performance and emissions characteristics of a newly ...

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    of a newly developed CRDI single cylinder diesel engine. AVINASH ... In case of unit injector and unit pump systems, fuel injection pressure depends on ... nozzle hole diameters were effective in reducing smoke and PM emissions. However ...

  3. Yield and Adaptability Evaluation of Newly Introduced Tomato ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    High yield is a major ambition to tomato plant breeders and farmers. The purpose of the ... Tabora Region on the growth and yield of newly introduced tomato varieties. The tested ..... (1985). Evaluation of some American tomatocultivars grown.

  4. Mentorship for newly appointed physicians: a strategy for enhancing patient safety?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harrison, Reema; McClean, Serwaa; Lawton, Rebecca; Wright, John; Kay, Clive

    2014-09-01

    Mentorship is an increasingly popular innovation from business and industry that is being applied in health-care contexts. This paper explores the concept of mentorship for newly appointed physicians in their first substantive senior post, and specifically its utilization to enhance patient safety. Semi-structured face to face and telephone interviews with Medical Directors (n = 5), Deputy Medical Directors (n = 4), and Clinical Directors (n = 6) from 9 acute NHS Trusts in the Yorkshire and Humber region in the north of England. A focused thematic analysis was used. A number of beneficial outcomes were associated with mentorship for newly appointed physicians including greater personal and professional support, organizational commitment, and general well-being. Providing newly appointed senior physicians with support through mentorship was considered to enhance the safety of patient care. Mentorship may prevent or reduce active failures, be used to identify threats in the local working environment, and in the longer term, address latent threats to safety within the organization by encouraging a healthier safety culture. Offering mentorship to all newly appointed physicians in their first substantive post in health care may be a useful strategy to support the development of their clinical, professional, and personal skills in this transitional period that may also enhance the safety of patient care.

  5. Newly elected IAEA Board of Governors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2000-01-01

    The document gives information about the election of 11 Member States to the IAEA Board of Governors, the 35-member policy-making body, during the 44th regular session of the IAEA's General Conference (18 - 22 September 2000, Austria Center, Vienna). The newly elected Member States are: Argentina, Egypt, Ghana, Ireland, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine. The other 24 Member States of the Board are also given

  6. Coeliac disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Reilly, Norelle R; Husby, Steffen; Sanders, David S

    2018-01-01

    Coeliac disease is increasingly recognized as a global problem in both children and adults. Traditionally, the findings of characteristic changes of villous atrophy and increased intraepithelial lymphocytosis identified in duodenal biopsy samples taken during upper gastrointestinal endoscopy have...... been required for diagnosis. Although biopsies remain advised as necessary for the diagnosis of coeliac disease in adults, European guidelines for children provide a biopsy-sparing diagnostic pathway. This approach has been enabled by the high specificity and sensitivity of serological testing. However......, these guidelines are not universally accepted. In this Perspective, we discuss the pros and cons of a biopsy-avoiding pathway for the diagnosis of coeliac disease, especially in this current era of the call for more biopsies, even from the duodenal bulb, in the diagnosis of coeliac disease. In addition, a contrast...

  7. Super-Memorizers Are Not Super-Recognizers

    OpenAIRE

    Ramon, M.; Miellet, S.; Dzieciol, A.M.; Konrad, B.N; Dresler, M.; Caldara, R.

    2016-01-01

    Humans have a natural expertise in recognizing faces. However, the nature of the interaction between this critical visual biological skill and memory is yet unclear. Here, we had the unique opportunity to test two individuals who have had exceptional success in the World Memory Championships, including several world records in face-name association memory. We designed a range of face processing tasks to determine whether superior/expert face memory skills are associated with distinctive perce...

  8. Federally-Recognized Tribes of the Columbia-Snake Basin.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    United States. Bonneville Power Administration

    1997-11-01

    This is an omnibus publication about the federally-recognized Indian tribes of the Columbia-Snake river basin, as presented by themselves. It showcases several figurative and literal snapshots of each tribe, bits and pieces of each tribe`s story. Each individual tribe or tribal confederation either submitted its own section to this publication, or developed its own section with the assistance of the writer-editor. A federally-recognized tribe is an individual Indian group, or confederation of Indian groups, officially acknowledged by the US government for purposes of legislation, consultation and benefits. This publication is designed to be used both as a resource and as an introduction to the tribes. Taken together, the sections present a rich picture of regional indian culture and history, as told by the tribes.

  9. Clinical evaluation of a newly designed orthodontic tooth brush - A clinical study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C S Saimbi

    2009-01-01

    In this study, the newly designed orthodontic tooth brush is compared with an ordinary tooth brush. Results of this study show that the newly designed orthodontic tooth brush is superior in its cleaning efficiency as compared to the ordinary tooth brush. The results show that plaque removing capacity of orthodontic tooth brush is nearly 95-99%.

  10. Newly qualified teachers´ possibilities to get foothold in a lifelong career course

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Krøjgaard, Frede; Frederiksen, Lisbeth Angela Lunde

    Keyword: Induction program, newly qualified teachers, NQT, retention, professional development In Contrary to many other countries in Europe Denmark does not have any kind of national program regarding teacher induction program (TIP) or support in general to newly qualified teachers what so ever...

  11. 78 FR 7460 - Stakeholder Meeting on the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory Program

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-02-01

    ...] Stakeholder Meeting on the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory Program AGENCY: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor. ACTION: Notice of stakeholder meeting. SUMMARY: OSHA invites interested parties to attend an informal stakeholder meeting concerning Nationally Recognized Testing...

  12. Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mayer, J D

    2000-04-01

    Emerging infectious diseases are the focus of increased attention and even alarm in the scholarly and popular literature. The emergence of new diseases and the resurgence of older and previously recognized infectious diseases both in developing and developed country poses challenges for understanding the ecological web of causation, including social, economic, environmental and biological components. This paper is a synthesis of the major characteristics of emerging diseases, in an interdisciplinary context. Political ecology is one framework for analysis that is promising in developing a modified ecology of disease.

  13. Critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wangensteen, Sigrid; Johansson, Inger S; Björkström, Monica E; Nordström, Gun

    2010-01-01

    wangensteen s., johansson i.s., björkström m.e. & nordström g. (2010) Critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(10), 2170–2181. Aim The aim of the study was to describe critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses in Norway, and to study whether background data had any impact on critical thinking dispositions. Background Competence in critical thinking is one of the expectations of nursing education. Critical thinkers are described as well-informed, inquisitive, open-minded and orderly in complex matters. Critical thinking competence has thus been designated as an outcome for judging the quality of nursing education programmes and for the development of clinical judgement. The ability to think critically is also described as reducing the research–practice gap and fostering evidence-based nursing. Methods A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed. The data were collected between October 2006 and April 2007 using the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. The response rate was 33% (n= 618). Pearson’s chi-square tests were used to analyse the data. Results Nearly 80% of the respondents reported a positive disposition towards critical thinking. The highest mean score was on the Inquisitiveness subscale and the lowest on the Truth-seeking subscale. A statistically significant higher proportion of nurses with high critical thinking scores were found among those older than 30 years, those with university education prior to nursing education, and those working in community health care. Conclusion Nurse leaders and nurse teachers should encourage and nurture critical thinking among newly graduated nurses and nursing students. The low Truth-seeking scores found may be a result of traditional teaching strategies in nursing education and might indicate a need for more student-active learning models. PMID:20384637

  14. ELEPHANT ENDOTHELIOTROPIC HERPESVIRUS 5, A NEWLY RECOGNIZED ELEPHANT HERPESVIRUS ASSOCIATED WITH CLINICAL AND SUBCLINICAL INFECTIONS IN CAPTIVE ASIAN ELEPHANTS (ELEPHAS MAXIMUS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atkins, Lisa; Zong, Jian-Chao; Tan, Jie; Mejia, Alicia; Heaggans, Sarah Y.; Nofs, Sally A.; Stanton, Jeffrey J.; Flanagan, Joseph P.; Howard, Lauren; Latimer, Erin; Stevens, Martina R.; Hoffman, Daryl S.; Hayward, Gary S.; Ling, Paul D.

    2013-01-01

    Elephant endotheliotropic herpesviruses (EEHVs) can cause acute hemorrhagic disease with high mortality rates in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). Recently, a new EEHV type known as EEHV5 has been described, but its prevalence and clinical significance remain unknown. In this report, an outbreak of EEHV5 infection in a herd of captive Asian elephants in a zoo was characterized. In February 2011, a 42-yr-old wild-born female Asian elephant presented with bilaterally swollen temporal glands, oral mucosal hyperemia, vesicles on the tongue, and generalized lethargy. The elephant had a leukopenia and thrombocytopenia. She was treated with flunixin meglumine, famciclovir, and fluids. Clinical signs of illness resolved gradually over 2 wk, and the white blood cell count and platelets rebounded to higher-than-normal values. EEHV5 viremia was detectable starting 1 wk before presentation and peaked at the onset of clinical illness. EEHV5 shedding in trunk secretions peaked after viremia resolved and continued for more than 2 mo. EEHV5 trunk shedding from a female herd mate without any detectable viremia was detected prior to onset of clinical disease in the 42-yr-old elephant, indicating reactivation rather than primary infection in this elephant. Subsequent EEHV5 viremia and trunk shedding was documented in the other five elephants in the herd, who remained asymptomatic, except for 1 day of temporal gland swelling in an otherwise-healthy 1-yr-old calf. Unexpectedly, the two elephants most recently introduced into the herd 40 mo previously shed a distinctive EEHV5 strain from that seen in the other five elephants. This is the first report to document the kinetics of EEHV5 infection in captive Asian elephants and to provide evidence that this virus can cause illness in some animals. PMID:23505714

  15. Tropical diseases of the myocardium: a review

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Groom ZC

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Zoe C Groom,1 Aristotle D Protopapas,2 Vasileios Zochios3,4 1Costello Medical Consulting Limited, Cambridge, 2Department of Surgery, Division of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London, 3Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, 4College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Abstract: Cardiovascular diseases are widely distributed throughout the world. Human parasitic infections are ubiquitous. Tropical parasites are increasingly recognized as causes of cardiovascular diseases. In this review, we address the most frequently reported parasites that directly infect the myocardium, including Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoal causative agent of American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease, and Taenia solium, the cestode causative agent of taeniasis and cysticercosis. We also discuss tropical endomyocardial fibrosis, trichinellosis and schistosomiasis. Health systems, attitudes, the perceptions of both patients and physicians as well as socioeconomic factors should all be explored and recognized as crucial factors for improving the control of cardiovascular diseases in the tropics. Clinicians throughout the world must remain aware of imported parasites as potential causes of cardiac diseases. Keywords: cardiomyopathy, Chagas disease, myocardium, parasitic infection, tropical infections

  16. Membrane microparticles and diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Z-H; Ji, C-L; Li, H; Qiu, G-X; Gao, C-J; Weng, X-S

    2013-09-01

    Membrane microparticles (MPs) are plasma membrane-derived vesicles shed by various types of activated or apoptotic cells including platelets, monocytes, endothelial cells, red blood cells, and granulocytes. MPs are being increasingly recognized as important regulators of cell-to-cell interactions. Recent evidences suggest they may play important functions not only in homeostasis but also in the pathogenesis of a number of diseases such as vascular diseases, cancer, infectious diseases and diabetes mellitus. Accordingly, inhibiting the production of MPs may serve as a novel therapeutic strategy for these diseases. Here we review recent advances on the mechanism underlying the generation of MPs and the role of MPs in vascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, inflammation, and pathogen infection.

  17. Cerebral correlates of psychotic syndromes in neurodegenerative diseases

    OpenAIRE

    Jellinger, Kurt A

    2012-01-01

    Abstract Psychosis has been recognized as a common feature in neurodegenerative diseases and a core feature of dementia that worsens most clinical courses. It includes hallucinations, delusions including paranoia, aggressive behaviour, apathy and other psychotic phenomena that occur in a wide range of degenerative disorders including Alzheimer?s disease, synucleinopathies (Parkinson?s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies), Huntington?s disease, frontotemporal degenerations, motoneuron and prion...

  18. Newly elected IAEA Board of Governors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2001-01-01

    The document gives information about the election of 11 Member States to the IAEA Board of Governors, the 35-member policy-making body, during the 45th regular session of the IAEA's General Conference (17-21 September 2001, Austria Center, Vienna). The newly elected Member States are: Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, Philippines, Romania, Spain, and Turkey. The other 24 Member States of the Board are also given

  19. Subjective emotional experience at different stages of Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vicente, Siobhan; Péron, Julie; Biseul, Isabelle; Ory, Sophie; Philippot, Pierre; Drapier, Sophie; Drapier, Dominique; Vérin, Marc

    2011-11-15

    Subjective emotional experience is thought to rely on a large cortical-subcortical network including orbitofrontal and cingulate frontostriatal circuits together with the mesolimbic dopaminergic system that modulates their activity. Parkinson's disease (PD) provides a model for exploring this issue. By using an original emotion induction procedure, the present study examined to what extent subjective experience of emotion of PD patients at different stages of the disease was modulated by emotion in the same way as healthy individuals. A battery of film excerpts was used to elicit different emotional feelings (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and neutral) in 15 newly diagnosed PD patients, 18 patients with advanced PD and 15 matched controls. The newly diagnosed patients were examined in two conditions: "on" and "off" dopaminergic medication. Participants reported the intensity of their emotional feelings on a scale consisting of 10 emotional categories. Results indicated that PD patients at different stages of the disease did not significantly differ from the controls in the self-reported emotional experience to the presented film excerpts. Moreover, analyses conducted within the newly diagnosed PD group (on-dopa vs. off-dopa conditions) indicated that the patients' emotional reactivity to the presented film excerpts was not significantly modulated by dopaminergic medication. These results thus question the possible role of dopaminergic pathways in subjective emotional experience, at least in this sample and in the context of emotion induction. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. A novel approach in recognizing magnetic material with simplified algorithm

    KAUST Repository

    Talukdar, Abdul Hafiz Ibne

    2011-04-01

    In this article a cost-effective and simple system (circuit and algorithm) which allows recognizing different kinds of films by their magneto-field conductive properties is demonstrated. The studied signals are generated by a proposed circuit. This signal was further analyzed (recognized) in frequency domain creating the Fourier frequency spectrum which is easily used to detect the response of magnetic sample. The novel algorithm in detecting magnetic field is presented here with both simulation and experimental results. © 2011 IEEE.

  1. Recognize and classify pneumoconiosis; Pneumokoniosen erkennen und klassifizieren

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hering, K.G.; Hofmann-Preiss, K. [Klinikum Westfalen, Knappschaftskrankenhaus, Dortmund (Germany)

    2014-12-15

    In the year 2012, out of the 10 most frequently recognized occupational diseases 6 were forms of pneumoconiosis. With respect to healthcare and economic aspects, silicosis and asbestos-associated diseases are of foremost importance. The latter are to be found everywhere and are not restricted to large industrial areas. Radiology has a central role in the diagnosis and evaluation of occupational lung disorders. In cases of known exposure mainly to asbestos and quartz, the diagnosis of pneumoconiosis, with few exceptions will be established primarily by the radiological findings. As these disorders are asymptomatic for a long time they are quite often detected as incidental findings in examinations for other reasons. Therefore, radiologists have to be familiar with the pattern of findings of the most frequent forms of pneumoconiosis and the differential diagnoses. For reasons of equal treatment of the insured a quality-based, standardized performance, documentation and evaluation of radiological examinations is required in preventive procedures and evaluations. Above all, a standardized low-dose protocol has to be used in computed tomography (CT) examinations, although individualized concerning the dose, in order to keep radiation exposure as low as possible for the patient. The International Labour Office (ILO) classification for the coding of chest X-rays and the international classification of occupational and environmental respiratory diseases (ICOERD) classification used since 2004 for CT examinations meet the requirements of the insured and the occupational insurance associations as a means of reproducible and comparable data for decision-making. (orig.) [German] Im Jahr 2012 waren 6 der 10 am haeufigsten anerkannten Berufskrankheiten Pneumokoniosen. Gesundheitspolitisch und oekonomisch stehen dabei die Silikose und asbestassoziierte Erkrankungen im Vordergrund. Insbesondere Letztere treten ubiquitaer auf und sind nicht an grosse Industriestandorte gebunden

  2. Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in newly diagnosed patients with head and neck cancer and their partners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Posluszny, Donna M; Dougall, Angela Liegey; Johnson, Jonas T; Argiris, Athanassios; Ferris, Robert L; Baum, Andrew; Bovbjerg, Dana H; Dew, Mary Amanda

    2015-09-01

    Head and neck cancer is a life-threatening illness requiring aversive treatments. Despite clear potential for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in both patients and their partners, research is scant. Newly diagnosed patients and partners (number of dyads = 42) completed questionnaires to assess symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression, as well as demographic, medical, and attitudinal variables. Partners had higher average levels of PTSD symptoms than patients (p = .023). More partners (28.6%) met criteria for estimated PTSD caseness than did patients (11.9%). There were no significant differences in levels of other anxiety or depression symptoms. Perceived threat of disease appeared to be a stronger correlate of PTSD symptom levels than medical variables in patients and partners. A diagnosis of head and neck cancer elicits significant levels of PTSD symptoms in patients, and even higher levels among partners. Identified correlates of distress, including perceived threat of disease, are potential intervention targets. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  3. Pathogenesis of salivary gland disease and xerostomia. The conception of Mikulicz's disease based on new knowledge

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Himi, Tetsuo; Kanaizumi, Etsuko; Ogasawara, Noriko; Yamamoto, Motohisa; Takahashi, Hiroki

    2007-01-01

    This review focuses on two topics of salivary gland diseases regarding xerostomia. First, the pathogenesis and treatment of xerostomia after radiotherapy against head and neck cancer is discussed. It is well known that the extent of radiation-induced salivary dysfunction and mucositis depends on the radiation dose and field. Moreover, the balance in the defense system of oropharyngeal cavity alters after radiotherapy. This altered balance may impair the ability to maintain the stable immunological control mechanism. Second, the newly established concept about Mikulicz's disease is discussed. Recently, elevated IgG4 concentration in serum and prominent infiltrating by plasmacytes expressing IgG4 in the salivary glands in Mikulicz's disease were revealed. Mikulicz's disease is different from Sjoegren's syndrome, and may be a systemic IgG4-related plasmacytic disease. (author)

  4. Realistic Creativity Training for Innovation Practitioners: The Know-Recognize-React Model

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Valgeirsdóttir, Dagný; Onarheim, Balder

    2017-01-01

    As creativity becomes increasingly recognized as important raw material for innovation, the importance of identifying ways to increase practitioners’ creativity through rigorously designed creativity training programs is highlighted. Therefore we sat out to design a creativity training program sp...... the transdisciplinary study described in this paper. Co-creation was employed as a method to ensure the three layers of focus would be taken into consideration. The result is a program called Creative Awareness Training which is based on the new Know-Recognize-React model.......As creativity becomes increasingly recognized as important raw material for innovation, the importance of identifying ways to increase practitioners’ creativity through rigorously designed creativity training programs is highlighted. Therefore we sat out to design a creativity training program...

  5. Recognizing Risk and Vulnerability in Research Ethics: Imagining the "What Ifs?"

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peter, Elizabeth; Friedland, Judith

    2017-04-01

    Research ethics committees (RECs) may misunderstand the vulnerability of participants, given their distance from the field. What RECs identify as the vulnerabilities that were not adequately recognized in protocols and how they attempt to protect the perceived vulnerability of participants and mitigate risks were examined using the response letters sent to researchers by three university-based RECs. Using a critical qualitative method informed by feminist ethics, we identified an overarching theme of recognizing and responding to cascading vulnerabilities and four subthemes: identifying vulnerable groups, recognizing potentially risky research, imagining the "what ifs," and mitigating perceived risks. An ethics approach that is up-close, as opposed to distant, is needed to foster closer relationships among participants, researchers, and RECs and to understand participant vulnerability and strength better.

  6. A practical approach for writer-dependent symbol recognition using a writer-independent symbol recognizer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    LaViola, Joseph J; Zeleznik, Robert C

    2007-11-01

    We present a practical technique for using a writer-independent recognition engine to improve the accuracy and speed while reducing the training requirements of a writer-dependent symbol recognizer. Our writer-dependent recognizer uses a set of binary classifiers based on the AdaBoost learning algorithm, one for each possible pairwise symbol comparison. Each classifier consists of a set of weak learners, one of which is based on a writer-independent handwriting recognizer. During online recognition, we also use the n-best list of the writer-independent recognizer to prune the set of possible symbols and thus reduce the number of required binary classifications. In this paper, we describe the geometric and statistical features used in our recognizer and our all-pairs classification algorithm. We also present the results of experiments that quantify the effect incorporating a writer-independent recognition engine into a writer-dependent recognizer has on accuracy, speed, and user training time.

  7. Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans secretome containing a newly described lipoprotein Licanantase enhances chalcopyrite bioleaching rate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bobadilla Fazzini, Roberto A.; Levican, Gloria

    2010-01-01

    The nature of the mineral–bacteria interphase where electron and mass transfer processes occur is a key element of the bioleaching processes of sulfide minerals. This interphase is composed of proteins, metabolites, and other compounds embedded in extracellular polymeric substances mainly consisting of sugars and lipids (Gehrke et al., Appl Environ Microbiol 64(7):2743–2747, 1998). On this respect, despite Acidithiobacilli—a ubiquitous bacterial genera in bioleaching processes (Rawlings, Microb Cell Fact 4(1):13, 2005)—has long been recognized as secreting bacteria (Jones and Starkey, J Bacteriol 82:788–789, 1961; Schaeffer and Umbreit, J Bacteriol 85:492–493, 1963), few studies have been carried out in order to clarify the nature and the role of the secreted protein component: the secretome. This work characterizes for the first time the sulfur (meta)secretome of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans strain DSM 17318 in pure and mixed cultures with Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans DSM 16786, identifying the major component of these secreted fractions as a single lipoprotein named here as Licanantase. Bioleaching assays with the addition of Licanantase-enriched concentrated secretome fractions show that this newly found lipoprotein as an active protein additive exerts an increasing effect on chalcopyrite bioleaching rate. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00253-010-3063-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. PMID:21191788

  8. Motor neuron disease associated with carcinoma | Gritzman | South ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Paraneoplastic complications are obscure and difficult to understand. The association of motor neuron disease and carcinoma may sometimes be more than coincidental, and 2 cases are described. One patient had motor neuron disease, limbic encephalitis (a recognized paraneoplastic disorder) and carcinoma of the ...

  9. Revisiting hansen's disease: Recognizing the many neurodermatologic faces and its diagnostic challenges

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bhaskara P Shelley

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Hansen's disease (HD looms still as a public health problem. Conventional wisdom and teaching largely view HD as a predominantly dermatologic disorder with much emphasis in the dermatology postgraduate curriculum. This review attempts to reorient this view and reemphasize that HD has primarily neurologic underpinnings since Mycobacterium leprae is an intracellular neurotropic bacterium. The main thrust of this article would, therefore, be a neurologist's perspective of HD. The cutaneous manifestations of HD are the sequelae of the neurobiology of M. leprae, its selective predilection to human Schwann cells, neurovascular bundle and its localization in the intracutaneous nerve plexus of the skin. We discuss the nuances of HD as a “great imitator,” the many faces of its neurodermatologic clinical presentation, the neurologic basis of HD clinical examination, and its diagnostic and therapeutic challenges.

  10. Correlation between bone scan findings and serum PSA level in prostate cancer patients in Bangladesh: both newly diagnosed and hormonally treated cases

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yasmeen, S.; Nasreen, F.; Kabir, M.F.

    2007-01-01

    Full text: The objective of the current study was to determine whether pre- treatment serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels can identify a group with low probability of osseous metastases and safely eliminate the need for bone scan as a routine part of the staging evaluation in Bangladeshi patients with newly diagnosed prostate carcinoma. Also, to find out a cut off value for serum PSA level for predicting positive bone scan in newly diagnosed Bangladeshi prostate cancer patients and to assess the role of PSA level in hormonally treated cases. Prostate cancer most commonly metastasizes to the bone. Bone scintigraphy is one of the best methods in detecting bone metastases, assessing the progression of the disease and response to therapy. For more than 30 yrs it has been known that bone scintigraphy is more sensitive than radiographic, clinical evaluation or chemical markers such as alkaline phosphatase or acid phosphatase in detection of early osseous metastatic prostate cancer. The introduction of PSA has dramatically changed the management of prostate cancer. Serum PSA level has proven to be a useful serum marker for detection of metastatic prostate cancer and it provides the best overall correlation. It also has considerable impact on bone scanning. Of special significance is the fact that patients who have a low PSA level in previously untreated carcinoma of prostate are extremely unlikely to have positive findings on a bone scan for metastases. The picture is different in patients who has received and responded to hormonal therapy. Bone scintigraphy appears to be extremely useful in patients whose PSA level begins to rise after surgical procedure. Patients, who were on anti- androgen therapy, even though they had visible metastatic disease on bone scans, had normal level of PSA Patients and methods: A total of 390 cases were studied. Some (n=242) were newly diagnosed without having any specific treatment other than surgery. Others (n=148) were old cases

  11. Ants recognize foes and not friends

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guerrieri, Fernando J.; Nehring, Volker; Jørgensen, Charlotte G.; Nielsen, John; Galizia, C. Giovanni; d'Ettorre, Patrizia

    2009-01-01

    Discriminating among individuals and rejecting non-group members is essential for the evolution and stability of animal societies. Ants are good models for studying recognition mechanisms, because they are typically very efficient in discriminating ‘friends’ (nest-mates) from ‘foes’ (non-nest-mates). Recognition in ants involves multicomponent cues encoded in cuticular hydrocarbon profiles. Here, we tested whether workers of the carpenter ant Camponotus herculeanus use the presence and/or absence of cuticular hydrocarbons to discriminate between nest-mates and non-nest-mates. We supplemented the cuticular profile with synthetic hydrocarbons mixed to liquid food and then assessed behavioural responses using two different bioassays. Our results show that (i) the presence, but not the absence, of an additional hydrocarbon elicited aggression and that (ii) among the three classes of hydrocarbons tested (unbranched, mono-methylated and dimethylated alkanes; for mono-methylated alkanes, we present a new synthetic pathway), only the dimethylated alkane was effective in eliciting aggression. Our results suggest that carpenter ants use a fundamentally different mechanism for nest-mate recognition than previously thought. They do not specifically recognize nest-mates, but rather recognize and reject non-nest-mates bearing odour cues that are novel to their own colony cuticular hydrocarbon profile. This begs for a reappraisal of the mechanisms underlying recognition systems in social insects. PMID:19364750

  12. Can Independent Judges Recognize Different Psychotherapies? An Experience with Manual-Guided Therapies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luborsky, Lester; And Others

    1982-01-01

    Tested whether independent judges could recognize three different manual-guided psychotherapies, drug counseling, supportive-expressive psychotherapy, and cognitive-behavioral using a special rating form containing scales for the characteristic aspects of each type. Results indicated that manual-guided therapies can be reliably recognized.…

  13. Environmental Pollution: An Under-recognized Threat to Children’s Health, Especially in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suk, William A.; Ahanchian, Hamid; Asante, Kwadwo Ansong; Carpenter, David O.; Diaz-Barriga, Fernando; Ha, Eun-Hee; Huo, Xia; King, Malcolm; Ruchirawat, Mathuros; da Silva, Emerson R.; Sly, Leith; Sly, Peter D.; Stein, Renato T.; van den Berg, Martin; Zar, Heather; Landrigan, Philip J.

    2016-01-01

    Summary Exposures to environmental pollutants during windows of developmental vulnerability in early life can cause disease and death in infancy and childhood as well as chronic, non-communicable diseases that may manifest at any point across the life span. Patterns of pollution and pollution-related disease change as countries move through economic development. Environmental pollution is now recognized as a major cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). According to the World Health Organization, pollution is responsible for 8.9 million deaths around the world each year; of these, 94% (8.4 million) are in LMICs. Toxic chemical pollution is growing into a major threat to children’s health in LMICs. The disease and disability caused by environmental pollution have great economic costs, and these costs can undercut trajectories of national development. To combat pollution, improved programs of public health and environmental protection are needed in countries at every level of development. Pollution control strategies and technologies that have been developed in high-income countries must now be transferred to LMICs to assist these emerging economies to avoid the mistakes of the past. A new international clearinghouse is needed to define and track the health effects of pollution, quantify the economic costs of these effects, and direct much needed attention to environmental pollution as a risk factor for disease. PMID:26930243

  14. Diagnosis of Periodontal Diseases: Building a Bridge from Today's Methods to Tomorrow's Technology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jeffcoat, Marjorie K.

    1994-01-01

    A discussion of advancements in diagnosis of periodontal diseases looks first at the screening process, reviews specific periodontal diseases and their clinical signs and symptoms, and explains both traditional and newly developed diagnostic tests. A framework for understanding the tests' clinical usefulness is also presented. (MSE)

  15. Radiation therapy of newly diagnosed, advanced prostatic cancer and hormonally relapsed prostatic cancer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Suzuki, Minoru; Fujiwara, Kazuhisa; Hayakawa, Katsumi; Hida, Shuichi

    1994-01-01

    Ten patients with newly diagnosed, advanced prostatic cancer were treated with radiotherapy and hormone therapy to improve tumor control and survival. Eight patients with hormonally relapsed prostatic cancer were treated with radiotherapy to improve their quality of life. Local control of the tumor was achieved in 9 of 10 patients with newly diagnosed, advanced prostatic cancer. Five of eight patients with hormonally relapsed prostatic cancer obtained improved quality of life. Combined radiotherapy and hormone therapy were effective in the treatment of newly diagnosed, advanced prostatic cancer, and radiotherapy was useful for improving the quality of life of patients with hormonally relapsed prostatic cancer. (author)

  16. Three Newly Naturalized Plants in Taiwan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ming-Jer Jung

    2009-11-01

    Full Text Available Three newly naturalized plants are reported in this paper. Hypochaeris microcephala (Sch. Bip. Cabrera var. albiflora (Kuntze Cabrera (Asteraceae is naturalized in urban areas of northern Taiwan. Indigofera pseudo-tinctoria Matsum. (Leguminosae is naturalized in low elevations of northern and southern Taiwan and in middle elevations of central Taiwan. Lamium purpureum L. (Laminaceae has become naturalized locally in middle elevations of central Taiwan. Descriptions, illustrations and color photos of these plants are provided.

  17. Integrating a mobile health setup in a chronic disease management network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ding, Hang; Ireland, Derek; Jayasena, Rajiv; Curmi, Jamie; Karunanithi, Mohan

    2013-01-01

    Supporting self management of chronic disease in collaboration with primary healthcare has been a national priority in order to mitigate the emerging disease burden on the already strained healthcare system. However, in practice, the uptake of self-management programs and compliance with clinical guidelines remain poor. Time constraints due to work commitments and lack of efficient monitoring tools have been the major barrier to the uptake and compliance. In this paper, we present a newly integrated mobile health system with a clinical chronic disease management network called cdmNet, which has already been validated to facilitate General Practitioners (GPs) to provide collaborative disease management services. The newly integrated solution takes advantage of the latest mobile web and wireless Bluetooth communication techniques to enable patients to record health data entries through ubiquitous mobile phones, and allows the data to be simultaneously shared by multidisciplinary care teams. This integration would enable patients to self-manage their chronic disease conditions in collaboration with GPs and hence, improve the uptake and compliance. Additionally, the proposed integration will provide a useful framework encouraging the translation of innovative mobile health technologies into highly regulated healthcare systems.

  18. Periodontal diseases of children and adolescents. An update.

    OpenAIRE

    Almas K; Paul T

    1996-01-01

    Plaque related periodontal diseases in children and adolescents have long been recognized, but recent studies have highlighted their prevalence and presentation. The aim of this article is to highlight the current classification of periodontal diseases of children and adolescents and to review the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases. This will help dental practitioners to diagnose and treat their juvenile and young adult patients suffering from different types of periodontal diseases.

  19. Slice&Dice: Recognizing Food Preparation Activities Using Embedded Accelerometers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Cuong; Olivier, Patrick

    Within the context of an endeavor to provide situated support for people with cognitive impairments in the kitchen, we developed and evaluated classifiers for recognizing 11 actions involved in food preparation. Data was collected from 20 lay subjects using four specially designed kitchen utensils incorporating embedded 3-axis accelerometers. Subjects were asked to prepare a mixed salad in our laboratory-based instrumented kitchen environment. Video of each subject's food preparation activities were independently annotated by three different coders. Several classifiers were trained and tested using these features. With an overall accuracy of 82.9% our investigation demonstrated that a broad set of food preparation actions can be reliably recognized using sensors embedded in kitchen utensils.

  20. Descriptive comparison of drug treatment-persistent, -nonpersistent, and nondrug treatment patients with newly diagnosed attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in Germany.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Braun, Sebastian; Russo, Leo; Zeidler, Jan; Linder, Roland; Hodgkins, Paul

    2013-05-01

    Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a heterogeneous behavioral disorder commonly found in children, with serious lifetime health and social consequences for both children and their parents. Public awareness of ADHD in Germany has increased in the past decade, but little is known about the costs of treating newly diagnosed patients in clinical practice. This study aimed to describe the resource utilization and treatment costs of patients aged 6 to 17 years with newly diagnosed ADHD, using patient data from a German sickness fund, and to quantify resource utilization by drug treatment and treatment persistence. To identify patients with newly diagnosed ADHD, the second largest German sickness fund was utilized. Complete claims data of all de-identified patients meeting eligibility criteria for 2007 and 2008 were extracted. Patients were divided into 1 of 3 treatment groups: drug treatment-persistent, drug treatment-nonpersistent, and nondrug treatment. The differences in costs and resource utilization are reported in a descriptive manner, with paired and unpaired 2-sample Wilcoxon tests used. Of 3407 newly diagnosed patients with ADHD, 1105 (32%) received an ADHD-specific drug following diagnosis; the remaining 2302 comprised the nondrug treatment group. Of the total number of drug-treated patients, 1-year observational data were available for only 786 methylphenidate users (71%). Of these, 503 patients (64%) comprised the drug treatment-persistent group (those having at least 1 prescription every 3 months during the 12 months following their first ADHD prescription) and 283 (36%) comprised the drug treatment-nonpersistent group. After excluding those patients with benefits when patients are treatment persistent compared to nonpersistent [corrected]. Therefore, future disease-management programs might consider treatment persistence as potentially reducing overall payer costs. Additionally, the clinical and psychosocial situations of patients and their

  1. Dermatological Diseases Associated with Pregnancy

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sävervall, Christine; Sand, Freja Lærke; Thomsen, Simon Francis

    2015-01-01

    Dermatoses unique to pregnancy are important to recognize for the clinician as they carry considerable morbidity for pregnant mothers and in some instances constitute a risk to the fetus. These diseases include pemphigoid gestationis, polymorphic eruption of pregnancy, intrahepatic cholestasis...

  2. Skin disorders in Parkinson's disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ravn, Astrid-Helene; Thyssen, Jacob P; Egeberg, Alexander

    2017-01-01

    Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders, characterized by a symptom triad comprising resting tremor, rigidity, and akinesia. In addition, non-motor symptoms of PD are well recognized and often precede the overt motor manifestations. Cutaneous manifestations...

  3. Production of antibodies which recognize opiate receptors on murine leukocytes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Carr, D.J.J.; Bost, K.L.; Blalock, J.E.

    1988-01-01

    An antibody has been developed which recognizes opiate receptors on cells of the immune system. This antibody blocks specific binding of the radiolabeled opiate receptor ligand, /sup 3/H-dihydromorphine, to receptors on murine splenocytes. Additionally, the anti-receptor antibody competes with ..beta..-endorphin, meta-enkephalin, and naloxone for the same binding site on the leukocytes. Moreover, the anti-receptor antibody possesses agonist activity similar to ..beta..-endorphin in suppressing cAMP production by lymphocytes. These results suggest the development of an antibody which recognizes classical opiate receptors on cells of the immune system.

  4. Recognized Obstructive Sleep Apnea is Associated With Improved In-Hospital Outcomes After ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mohananey, Divyanshu; Villablanca, Pedro A; Gupta, Tanush; Agrawal, Sahil; Faulx, Michael; Menon, Venugopal; Kapadia, Samir R; Griffin, Brian P; Ellis, Stephen G; Desai, Milind Y

    2017-07-20

    Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an independent risk factor for many cardiovascular conditions such as coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, systemic hypertension, pulmonary hypertension, and stroke. However, the association of OSA with outcomes in patients hospitalized for ST-elevation myocardial infarction remains controversial. We used the nation-wide inpatient sample between 2003 and 2011 to identify patients with a primary discharge diagnosis of ST-elevation myocardial infarction and then used the International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification code 327.23 to identify a group of patients with OSA. The primary outcome of interest was in-hospital mortality, and secondary outcomes were in-hospital cardiac arrest, length of stay and hospital charges. Our cohort included 1 850 625 patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction, of which 1.3% (24 623) had documented OSA. OSA patients were younger and more likely to be male, smokers, and have chronic pulmonary disease, depression, hypertension, known history of coronary artery disease, dyslipidemia, obesity, and renal failure ( P ST-elevation myocardial infarction patients with recognized OSA had significantly decreased mortality compared with patients without OSA. Although patients with OSA had longer hospital stays and incurred greater hospital charges, there was no difference in incidence of in-hospital cardiac arrest. © 2017 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wiley.

  5. ‘It is a dilemma’: perspectives of nurse practitioners on health screening of newly arrived migrants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Faustine K. Nkulu Kalengayi

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Background: Screening newly arrived migrants from countries with high burden of communicable diseases of public health significance is part of the Swedish national strategy against the spread of these diseases. However, little is known about its implementation. Objective: This study aimed at exploring caregivers’ experiences in screening newly arrived migrants to generate knowledge that could inform policy and clinical practice. Design: Using an interpretive description framework, we conducted semistructured interviews between November and December 2011 in four Swedish counties, with 15 purposively selected nurses with experience in screening migrants. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Participants described a range of challenges including discordant views between migrants and the nurses about medical screening, inconsistencies in rules and practices, and conflicting policies. Participants indicated that sociocultural differences resulted in divergent expectations with migrants viewing the participants as agents of migration authorities. They also expressed concern over being given a new assignment without training and being expected to share responsibilities with staff from other agencies without adequate coordination. Finally, they indicated that existing policies can be confusing and raise ethical issues. All these were compounded by language barriers, making their work environment extremely complex and stressful. Conclusions: These findings illuminate complex challenges that could limit access to, uptake, and delivery of health screening and undermine public health goals, and highlight the need for a multilevel approach. This entails avoiding the conflation of migration with health issues, harmonizing existing policies to make health care services more accessible and acceptable to migrants, and facilitating health professionals’ work in promoting public health, improving interagency collaboration and the skills of all

  6. Morphometry of lower lumbar vertebrae as seen on CT scans: newly recognized characteristics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    van Schaik, J.J.P.; Verbiest, H.; van Schaik, F.D.J.

    1985-01-01

    Transaxial computed tomographic (CT) sections represent a new approach to vertebral morphometry, allowing certain measurements to be made in vivo for the first time. The cross-sectional morphology of the bodies and pedicles of L3, L4, and L5 was studied in a series of 213 vertebrae. This revealed that the pedicles of L5 arise more laterally from the body of L5 than from L3. Further, the lateral surfaces of the L5 body are inclined obliquely, unlike those of L3. L4 is transitional in form between L3 and L5, more closely resembling the former. This morphology explains the fact, hitherto unnoticed, that the lateral outlines of the pedicles and the lateral borders of the body of L5 are not normally imaged on plain anteroposterior radiographs. It is evident that pathologic changes of the lateral borders of the body of L5 may be invisible also. In cases of transitional vertebrae in the lumbosacral region the presence or absence of the lateral outlines of the pedicles and of the lateral borders of the vertebral body may be of help in identifying the vertebrae on conventional projections

  7. Recognizing and Preventing Whooping Cough

    Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

    2015-01-22

    This podcast provides information about the symptoms of whooping cough and how vaccines can help prevent this serious disease for people of all ages. It is especially important for those who will have close contact with a baby to be up to date with their whooping cough vaccine.  Created: 1/22/2015 by National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Division of Bacterial Diseases (DBD), Meningitis and Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch (MVPDB).   Date Released: 1/22/2015.

  8. Clinical profile of newly presenting diabetic patients at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Nigeria

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Unadike, B.C.; Akpan, N.A.; Essien, I.O.

    2010-01-01

    Diabetes Mellitus is emerging as a major health challenge with the incidence and prevalence of the disease on the increase. It also contributes to overall morbidity and mortality with complications like cardiovascular disease, neuropathy, nephropathy, retinopathy and lower extremity amputation. There are few local studies on the clinical characteristics of the disease in our wet up and this study therefore set out to characterize the clinical profile of newly presenting diabetic patients in a health facility in Nigeria. It is a cross sectional, descriptive study carried out at the diabetes clinic of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital between January 2007 and September 2008. Data obtained included age, sex, anthropometric indices, symptomatology, co-morbidities, complications and treatment of diabetes. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 10. A total of two hundred and seventy patients were studied (120 males, 150 females). About 89.2% were Type 2 DM patients and majority of the study subjects were overweight. Diabetic neuropathy was the commonest complication present in 38.8% of the subjects. Polyuria was the commonest symptom and hypertension the commonest comorbidity. Majority of the subjects were on oral hypolgycaemic agents for the management of their disease with the sulphonyureas and biguanides being the most common medication that was taken by them. A few of the patients were also taking herbal medication for treatment of their disease. Majority of the patients presenting in our facility have Type 2 diabetes, were hypertensive and overweight. Hypertension was the commonest co-morbidity and diabetic neuropathy the commonest complication. Adequate health education, subsidies on medications and proper funding of the health sector is necessary to stem the tide of the burden attributable to the disease. (author)

  9. Headache in autoimmune diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    John, Seby; Hajj-Ali, Rula A

    2014-03-01

    Autoimmune diseases are a group of heterogeneous inflammatory disorders characterized by systemic or localized inflammation, leading to ischemia and tissue destruction. These include disorders like systemic lupus erythematosus and related diseases, systemic vasculitides, and central nervous system (CNS) vasculitis (primary or secondary). Headache is a very common manifestation of CNS involvement of these diseases. Although headache characteristics can be unspecific and often non-diagnostic, it is important to recognize because headache can be the first manifestation of CNS involvement. Prompt recognition and treatment is necessary not only to treat the headache, but also to help prevent serious neurological sequelae that frequently accompany autoimmune diseases. In this review, we discuss headache associated with autoimmune diseases along with important mimics. © 2014 American Headache Society.

  10. The effects of global change on the threat of exotic arthropods and arthropod-borne pathogens to livestock in the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    George, John E

    2008-12-01

    Arthropod-borne diseases are an important part of the group of foreign animal diseases that command attention from federal, state, and local animal health authorities in the United States because of the potential for adverse local and regional animal health impacts and also because of possible losses of export markets. Diseases of concern are listed by the US Animal Health Association and also by the Office International des Epizooties. Global change is causing the emergence of newly recognized diseases and altering enzootic and epizootic circumstances for known disease problems. Selected examples of arthropod-borne diseases of importance are discussed in terms of their potential for introduction, spread, and impact on livestock and human health in the United States.

  11. Validation of mentorship model for newly qualified professional ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Newly qualified professional nurses (NQPNs) allocated to community health care services require the use of validated model to practice independently. Validation was done to adapt and assess if the model is understood and could be implemented by NQPNs and mentors employed in community health care services.

  12. Magnetic resonance imaging perfusion is associated with disease severity and activity in multiple sclerosis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sowa, Piotr [Oslo University Hospital, Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Oslo (Norway); University of Oslo, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Oslo (Norway); Owren Nygaard, Gro [Oslo University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Oslo (Norway); Bjoernerud, Atle [Intervention Center, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo (Norway); University of Oslo, Department of Physics, Oslo (Norway); Gulowsen Celius, Elisabeth [Oslo University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Oslo (Norway); University of Oslo, Institute of Health and Society, Faculty of Medicine, Oslo (Norway); Flinstad Harbo, Hanne [University of Oslo, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Oslo (Norway); Oslo University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Oslo (Norway); Kristiansen Beyer, Mona [Oslo University Hospital, Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Oslo (Norway); Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Department of Life Sciences and Health, Oslo (Norway)

    2017-07-15

    The utility of perfusion-weighted imaging in multiple sclerosis (MS) is not well investigated. The purpose of this study was to compare baseline normalized perfusion measures in subgroups of newly diagnosed MS patients. We wanted to test the hypothesis that this method can differentiate between groups defined according to disease severity and disease activity at 1 year follow-up. Baseline magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including a dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion sequence was performed on a 1.5-T scanner in 66 patients newly diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS. From the baseline MRI, cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV), and mean transit time (MTT) maps were generated. Normalized (n) perfusion values were calculated by dividing each perfusion parameter obtained in white matter lesions by the same parameter obtained in normal-appearing white matter. Neurological examination was performed at baseline and at follow-up approximately 1 year later to establish the multiple sclerosis severity score (MSSS) and evidence of disease activity (EDA). Baseline normalized mean transit time (nMTT) was lower in patients with MSSS >3.79 (p = 0.016), in patients with EDA (p = 0.041), and in patients with both MSSS >3.79 and EDA (p = 0.032) at 1-year follow-up. Baseline normalized cerebral blood flow and normalized cerebral blood volume did not differ between these groups. Lower baseline nMTT was associated with higher disease severity and with presence of disease activity 1 year later in newly diagnosed MS patients. Further longitudinal studies are needed to confirm whether baseline-normalized perfusion measures can differentiate between disease severity and disease activity subgroups over time. (orig.)

  13. Magnetic resonance imaging perfusion is associated with disease severity and activity in multiple sclerosis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sowa, Piotr; Owren Nygaard, Gro; Bjoernerud, Atle; Gulowsen Celius, Elisabeth; Flinstad Harbo, Hanne; Kristiansen Beyer, Mona

    2017-01-01

    The utility of perfusion-weighted imaging in multiple sclerosis (MS) is not well investigated. The purpose of this study was to compare baseline normalized perfusion measures in subgroups of newly diagnosed MS patients. We wanted to test the hypothesis that this method can differentiate between groups defined according to disease severity and disease activity at 1 year follow-up. Baseline magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including a dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion sequence was performed on a 1.5-T scanner in 66 patients newly diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS. From the baseline MRI, cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV), and mean transit time (MTT) maps were generated. Normalized (n) perfusion values were calculated by dividing each perfusion parameter obtained in white matter lesions by the same parameter obtained in normal-appearing white matter. Neurological examination was performed at baseline and at follow-up approximately 1 year later to establish the multiple sclerosis severity score (MSSS) and evidence of disease activity (EDA). Baseline normalized mean transit time (nMTT) was lower in patients with MSSS >3.79 (p = 0.016), in patients with EDA (p = 0.041), and in patients with both MSSS >3.79 and EDA (p = 0.032) at 1-year follow-up. Baseline normalized cerebral blood flow and normalized cerebral blood volume did not differ between these groups. Lower baseline nMTT was associated with higher disease severity and with presence of disease activity 1 year later in newly diagnosed MS patients. Further longitudinal studies are needed to confirm whether baseline-normalized perfusion measures can differentiate between disease severity and disease activity subgroups over time. (orig.)

  14. Structural elements recognized by abacavir-induced T cells

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Yerly, Daniel; Pompeu, Yuri Andreiw; Schutte, Ryan J.

    2017-01-01

    of autoimmune destruction. The structural elements recognized by drug-specific T cell receptors (TCRs) in vivo are poorly defined. Drug-stimulated T cells express TCRs specific for peptide/HLA complexes, but the characteristics of peptides (sequence, or endogenous or exogenous origin) presented in the context...

  15. QMODULE: CAMAC modules recognized by the QAL compiler

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kellogg, M.; Minor, M.M.; Shlaer, S.; Spencer, N.; Thomas, R.F. Jr.; van der Beken, H.

    1977-10-01

    The compiler for the Q Analyzer Language, QAL, recognizes a certain set of CAMAC modules as having known characteristics. The conventions and procedures used to describe these modules are discussed as well as the tools available to the user for extending this set as required

  16. A POPULATION-BASED STUDY ON CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE IN KANYAKUMARI GOVERNMENT MEDICAL COLLEGE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ponnaian John Christopher

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND Chronic kidney disease encompasses a spectrum of different pathophysiologic processes associated with abnormal kidney function and a progressive decline in glomerular filtration rate. Our study deals with the risk factors, stages and the management among the general population of Kanyakumari district who came to Kanyakumari Government Medical College during the period of 2014-2015. MATERIALS AND METHODS The newly-diagnosed CKD patients who were admitted as inpatients in the Department of General Medicine in the period of 2014-2015 were studied retrospectively. Those who came as outpatients as well as previously diagnosed ESRD patients who had repeated admissions for maintenance haemodialysis were excluded from our study. We documented the age, sex, previous history of diabetes, hypertension, the mean duration of diabetes or hypertension, eGFR of the patient, stage of CKD and the treatment given. RESULTS The number of CKD patients admitted in our hospital during 2014-2015 were 314 of which newly detected CKD cases were 212. The most frequent cause of CKD in this population is diabetic nephropathy secondary to type 2 diabetes mellitus (90%. CKD is most common among males in this population. The mean age of association of diabetes in this population is 9-12 years. Patients with newly-diagnosed CKD often present with hypertension. eGFR was calculated for all CKD patients by CockgraftGault Equation. 18 out of 212 newly-diagnosed CKD patients (8.5% presented with ESRD (eGFR <15 mL/min./1.73 m2 and haemodialysis was initiated. Most evident complications among this patients were anaemia, easy fatigability, decreased appetite, progressive malnutrition and electrolyte abnormalities. CONCLUSION Diabetes, glomerulonephritis and hypertension associated CKD are the leading categories of aetiologies of CKD. When no overt evidence for a primary glomerular disease or tubulointerstitial disease process is present, CKD is often attributed to

  17. Selection of unadapted, pathogenic SHIVs encoding newly transmitted HIV-1 envelope proteins.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Del Prete, Gregory Q; Ailers, Braiden; Moldt, Brian; Keele, Brandon F; Estes, Jacob D; Rodriguez, Anthony; Sampias, Marissa; Oswald, Kelli; Fast, Randy; Trubey, Charles M; Chertova, Elena; Smedley, Jeremy; LaBranche, Celia C; Montefiori, David C; Burton, Dennis R; Shaw, George M; Markowitz, Marty; Piatak, Michael; KewalRamani, Vineet N; Bieniasz, Paul D; Lifson, Jeffrey D; Hatziioannou, Theodora

    2014-09-10

    Infection of macaques with chimeric viruses based on SIVMAC but expressing the HIV-1 envelope (Env) glycoproteins (SHIVs) remains the most powerful model for evaluating prevention and therapeutic strategies against AIDS. Unfortunately, only a few SHIVs are currently available. Furthermore, their generation has required extensive adaptation of the HIV-1 Env sequences in macaques so they may not accurately represent HIV-1 Env proteins circulating in humans, potentially limiting their translational utility. We developed a strategy for generating large numbers of SHIV constructs expressing Env proteins from newly transmitted HIV-1 strains. By inoculating macaques with cocktails of multiple SHIV variants, we selected SHIVs that can replicate and cause AIDS-like disease in immunologically intact rhesus macaques without requiring animal-to-animal passage. One of these SHIVs could be transmitted mucosally. We demonstrate the utility of the SHIVs generated by this method for evaluating neutralizing antibody administration as a protection against mucosal SHIV challenge. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Newly divided eosinophils limit ozone-induced airway hyperreactivity in nonsensitized guinea pigs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wicher, Sarah A; Jacoby, David B; Fryer, Allison D

    2017-06-01

    Ozone causes vagally mediated airway hyperreactivity and recruits inflammatory cells, including eosinophils, to lungs, where they mediate ozone-induced hyperreactivity 1 day after exposure but are paradoxically protective 3 days later. We aimed to test the role of newly divided eosinophils in ozone-induced airway hyperreactivity in sensitized and nonsensitized guinea pigs. Nonsensitized and sensitized guinea pigs were treated with 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) to label newly divided cells and were exposed to air or ozone for 4 h. Later (1 or 3 days later), vagally induced bronchoconstriction was measured, and inflammatory cells were harvested from bone marrow, blood, and bronchoalveolar lavage. Ozone induced eosinophil hematopoiesis. One day after ozone, mature eosinophils dominate the inflammatory response and potentiate vagally induced bronchoconstriction. However, by 3 days, newly divided eosinophils have reached the lungs, where they inhibit ozone-induced airway hyperreactivity because depleting them with antibody to IL-5 or a TNF-α antagonist worsened vagally induced bronchoconstriction. In sensitized guinea pigs, both ozone-induced eosinophil hematopoiesis and subsequent recruitment of newly divided eosinophils to lungs 3 days later failed to occur. Thus mature eosinophils dominated the ozone-induced inflammatory response in sensitized guinea pigs. Depleting these mature eosinophils prevented ozone-induced airway hyperreactivity in sensitized animals. Ozone induces eosinophil hematopoiesis and recruitment to lungs, where 3 days later, newly divided eosinophils attenuate vagally mediated hyperreactivity. Ozone-induced hematopoiesis of beneficial eosinophils is blocked by a TNF-α antagonist or by prior sensitization. In these animals, mature eosinophils are associated with hyperreactivity. Thus interventions targeting eosinophils, although beneficial in atopic individuals, may delay resolution of airway hyperreactivity in nonatopic individuals. Copyright

  19. Neuropsychological and psychological interventions for people with newly diagnosed epilepsy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jackson, Cerian F; Makin, Selina M; Baker, Gus A

    2015-07-22

    Many people with epilepsy report experiencing psychological difficulties such as anxiety, depression and neuropsychological deficits including memory problems. Research has shown that these difficulties are often present not only for people with chronic epilepsy but also for people with newly diagnosed epilepsy. Despite this, there are very few published interventions that detail means to help people with newly diagnosed epilepsy manage these problems. To identify and assess possible psychological and neuropsychological interventions for adults with newly diagnosed epilepsy. We searched the following databases on 30 June 2015: the Cochrane Epilepsy Group Specialized Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (Ovid), SCOPUS, PsycINFO, CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov and the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). This review includes all randomised controlled trials, quasi-randomised controlled trials, prospective cohort controlled studies, and prospective before and after studies which include psychological or neuropsychological interventions for people with newly diagnosed epilepsy. We excluded studies that included people with epilepsy and any other psychological disorder or neurological condition. We excluded studies carried out which recruited only children. We used the standard methodological procedure expected by The Cochrane Collaboration. Two authors independently completed data extraction and risk of bias analysis. The results of this were cross-checked and third author resolved any discrepancies. In the event of missing data, we contacted the study authors. Meta-analysis was not completed due to differences in the intervention and outcomes reported in the two studies. We included two randomised controlled trials assessing psychological interventions for people with newly diagnosed epilepsy. One study assessed a cognitive behavioural intervention (CBI) in an adolescent

  20. MANAGING NEWLY ESTABLISHED PESTS: Cooperative efforts contained spread of Pierce's disease and found genetic resistance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    George Bruening

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available An outbreak of Pierce's disease of grapevine in the Temecula Valley in the late 1990s was one in a decades-long series of sporadic appearances of this infection in California. However, the new outbreak was qualitatively different because of the rapidity with which it spread in the vineyard and its appearance almost simultaneously at distant locations. The causative agent of Pierce's disease is the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, and the distinct characteristics of the Temecula Valley outbreak were traced to the establishment of a new insect vector in California, the glassy-winged sharpshooter. Intensive and collaborative efforts among government agencies, industry and research institutions over 15 years have successfully contained the disease, and given scientists time to discover promising long-term potential solutions through genetic resistance.

  1. Hope, emotion regulation, and psychosocial well-being in patients newly diagnosed with cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peh, Chao Xu; Kua, Ee Heok; Mahendran, Rathi

    2016-05-01

    Patients newly diagnosed with cancer are often confronted with feelings of uncertainty and life threat. A significant proportion may report impairments in psychosocial well-being. Previous studies examining protective psychological factors such as hope and emotion regulation (ER) have yet to investigate these processes concurrently within a common self-regulation framework and/or focus on newly diagnosed patients. The present study aimed to examine how hope and ER may relate to psychosocial outcomes of patients newly diagnosed with cancer. The present study used a cross-sectional design with self-report questionnaires. Participants were newly diagnosed patients (N = 101) recruited from three cancer therapy clinics in a hospital. Patients completed measures of hope, ER (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and psychosocial well-being (life satisfaction and negative affectivity). Findings showed that (1) hope and reappraisal, but not suppression, were associated with well-being and (2) the interaction between hope and reappraisal was associated with well-being; reappraisal was not associated with well-being in high hope patients, while high reappraisal was associated with better well-being in low hope patients. Individual differences in hope and reappraisal appeared to be associated with psychosocial outcomes in newly diagnosed cancer patients. Hopeful thinking appeared to benefit patients' psychosocial well-being. In addition, an interaction effect between hope and reappraisal suggested that reappraisal as an ER strategy may be particularly adaptive for patients with low hope.

  2. Cutting Edge: A Critical Role of Lesional T Follicular Helper Cells in the Pathogenesis of IgG4-Related Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kamekura, Ryuta; Takano, Kenichi; Yamamoto, Motohisa; Kawata, Koji; Shigehara, Katsunori; Jitsukawa, Sumito; Nagaya, Tomonori; Ito, Fumie; Sato, Akinori; Ogasawara, Noriko; Tsubomatsu, Chieko; Takahashi, Hiroki; Nakase, Hiroshi; Himi, Tetsuo; Ichimiya, Shingo

    2017-10-15

    IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is a newly recognized systemic chronic fibroinflammatory disease. However, the pathogenesis of IgG4-RD remains unknown. To determine the pathophysiologic features of IgG4-RD, we examined T follicular helper (Tfh) cells in lesions and blood from patients with IgG4-RD. Patients with IgG4-related dacryoadenitis and sialadenitis (IgG4-DS) showed increased infiltration of Tfh cells highly expressing programmed death 1 and ICOS in submandibular glands. Tfh cells from IgG4-DS submandibular glands had higher expression of B cell lymphoma 6 and a greater capacity to help B cells produce IgG4 than did tonsillar Tfh cells. We also found that the percentage of programmed death 1 hi circulating Tfh cells in IgG4-DS patients was higher than that in healthy volunteers and was well correlated with clinical parameters. Our findings indicate that anomalous Tfh cells in tissue lesions of IgG4-RD have features distinct from those in lymphoid counterparts or blood and potentially regulate local IgG4 production in IgG4-RD. Copyright © 2017 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.

  3. [Celiac disease - disease of children and adults: symptoms, disease complications, risk groups and comorbidities].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Majsiak, Emilia; Cichoż-Lach, Halina; Gubska, Olena; Cukrowska, Bożena

    2018-01-23

    About 1% of human population suffers from celiac disease (CD) and it is one of the most commonly diagnosed autoimmune disorders. Until recently it was believed that CD affects mainly children, but as the newest studies show, up to 60% recently diagnosed patients are adults, often over the age of 60. CD's medical signs are nonspecific. Atypical course of the disease with extraintestinal symptoms is being increasingly observed. The disease may also be asymptomatic over many years. The studies show that the average diagnosis of CD takes more than 10 years since the first symptoms appear. Nonspecific medical signs cause undiagnosed patients suffering from CD to visit gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, allergists, gynaecologists and other medical specialists. However, most frequently general practitioners have the first encounter with patients suffering from CD, therefore they are able to recognize symptoms of the disease at the earliest and refer the patient to a gastroenterologist. Early diagnosis and beginning of the treatment reduce complications of untreated CD. The aim of this paper is to show general practitioners symptoms, disease complications, risk groups and comorbidities of CD.

  4. Coffee: The magical bean for liver diseases

    OpenAIRE

    Heath, Ryan D; Brahmbhatt, Mihir; Tahan, Asli C; Ibdah, Jamal A; Tahan, Veysel

    2017-01-01

    Coffee has long been recognized as having hepatoprotective properties, however, the extent of any beneficial effect is still being elucidated. Coffee appears to reduce risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, reduce advancement of fibrotic disease in a variety of chronic liver diseases, and perhaps reduce ability of hepatitis C virus to replicate. This review aims to catalog the evidence for coffee as universally beneficial across a spectrum of chronic liver diseases, as well as spotlight opportunit...

  5. Evaluation of speech recognizers for use in advanced combat helicopter crew station research and development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simpson, Carol A.

    1990-01-01

    The U.S. Army Crew Station Research and Development Facility uses vintage 1984 speech recognizers. An evaluation was performed of newer off-the-shelf speech recognition devices to determine whether newer technology performance and capabilities are substantially better than that of the Army's current speech recognizers. The Phonetic Discrimination (PD-100) Test was used to compare recognizer performance in two ambient noise conditions: quiet office and helicopter noise. Test tokens were spoken by males and females and in isolated-word and connected-work mode. Better overall recognition accuracy was obtained from the newer recognizers. Recognizer capabilities needed to support the development of human factors design requirements for speech command systems in advanced combat helicopters are listed.

  6. Smart responsive microcapsules capable of recognizing heavy metal ions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pi, Shuo-Wei; Ju, Xiao-Jie; Wu, Han-Guang; Xie, Rui; Chu, Liang-Yin

    2010-09-15

    Smart responsive microcapsules capable of recognizing heavy metal ions are successfully prepared with oil-in-water-in-oil double emulsions as templates for polymerization in this study. The microcapsules are featured with thin poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-benzo-18-crown-6-acrylamide) (P(NIPAM-co-BCAm)) membranes, and they can selectively recognize special heavy metal ions such as barium(II) or lead(II) ions very well due to the "host-guest" complexation between the BCAm receptors and barium(II) or lead(II) ions. The stable BCAm/Ba(2+) or BCAm/Pb(2+) complexes in the P(NIPAM-co-BCAm) membrane cause a positive shift of the volume phase transition temperature of the crosslinked P(NIPAM-co-BCAm) hydrogel to a higher temperature, and the repulsion among the charged BCAm/Ba(2+) or BCAm/Pb(2+) complexes and the osmotic pressure within the P(NIPAM-co-BCAm) membranes result in the swelling of microcapsules. Induced by recognizing barium(II) or lead(II) ions, the prepared microcapsules with P(NIPAM-co-BCAm) membranes exhibit isothermal and significant swelling not only in outer and inner diameters but also in the membrane thickness. The proposed microcapsules in this study are highly attractive for developing smart sensors and/or carriers for detection and/or elimination of heavy metal ions. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. DISABILITIES OF HANDS, FEET AND EYES IN NEWLY-DIAGNOSED LEPROSY PATIENTS IN EASTERN NEPAL

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    SCHIPPER, A; LUBBERS, WJ; HOGEWEG, M; DESOLDENHOFF, R

    The objective of the study was to determine the magnitude of hand/feet/eye disabilities in newly diagnosed leprosy patients by examining all newly diagnosed leprosy patients who presented at the Eastern Leprosy Control Project (supported by The Netherlands Leprosy Relief Association), made up of a

  8. A case report with Weber-Christian disease which recognized interesting abdominal lesions by abdominal ultrasonography and computerized tomography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ishizuka, Jin; Chiba, Junko; Ota, Kei; Mori, Kazuo; Toyota, Takayoshi; Goto, Yoshio

    1984-01-01

    A 59-year-old woman who had Weber-Christian disease associated with typical histological findings such as panniculitis was reported. The patient had painful subcutaneous nodules as the first symptom. She had diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis, which are reported to be rare complications of this disease. Abdominal ultrasonography and CT scanning revealed various sized cystic lesions and masses in the tail of pancreas. These findings have not yet been reported and seems to be rare in this disease. (Namekawa, K.)

  9. Delivering the diabetes education and self management for ongoing and newly diagnosed (DESMOND) programme for people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gillett, M.; Dallosso, H. M.; Dixon, S.

    2010-01-01

    intervention is £82 (-£831 to £1010) and the mean incremental cost per QALY gained is £2092. A probabilistic sensitivity analysis indicated that the likelihood that the DESMOND programme is cost effective at a threshold of £20 000 per QALY is 66% using trial based intervention costs and 70% using "real world......Objectives: To assess the long term clinical and cost effectiveness of the diabetes education and self management for ongoing and newly diagnosed (DESMOND) intervention compared with usual care in people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes. Design: We undertook a cost-utility analysis that used...... data from a 12 month, multicentre, cluster randomised controlled trial and, using the Sheffield type 2 diabetes model, modelled long term outcomes in terms of use of therapies, incidence of complications, mortality, and associated effect on costs and health related quality of life. A further cost...

  10. Genetic impact on cognition and brain function in newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease: ICICLE-PD study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rowe, James B.; Winder-Rhodes, Sophie E.; Hampshire, Adam; Owen, Adrian M.; Breen, David P.; Duncan, Gordon W.; Khoo, Tien K.; Yarnall, Alison J.; Firbank, Michael J.; Chinnery, Patrick F.; Robbins, Trevor W.; O’Brien, John T.; Brooks, David J.; Burn, David J.; Barker, Roger A.

    2014-01-01

    Parkinson’s disease is associated with multiple cognitive impairments and increased risk of dementia, but the extent of these deficits varies widely among patients. The ICICLE-PD study was established to define the characteristics and prevalence of cognitive change soon after diagnosis, in a representative cohort of patients, using a multimodal approach. Specifically, we tested the ‘Dual Syndrome’ hypothesis for cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease, which distinguishes an executive syndrome (affecting the frontostriatal regions due to dopaminergic deficits) from a posterior cortical syndrome (affecting visuospatial, mnemonic and semantic functions related to Lewy body pathology and secondary cholinergic loss). An incident Parkinson’s disease cohort (n = 168, median 8 months from diagnosis to participation) and matched control group (n = 85) were recruited to a neuroimaging study at two sites in the UK. All participants underwent clinical, neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging assessments. The three neuroimaging tasks (Tower of London, Spatial Rotations and Memory Encoding Tasks) were designed to probe executive, visuospatial and memory encoding domains, respectively. Patients were also genotyped for three polymorphisms associated with cognitive change in Parkinson’s disease and related disorders: (i) rs4680 for COMT Val158Met polymorphism; (ii) rs9468 for MAPT H1 versus H2 haplotype; and (iii) rs429358 for APOE-ε2, 3, 4. We identified performance deficits in all three cognitive domains, which were associated with regionally specific changes in cortical activation. Task-specific regional activations in Parkinson’s disease were linked with genetic variation: the rs4680 polymorphism modulated the effect of levodopa therapy on planning-related activations in the frontoparietal network; the MAPT haplotype modulated parietal activations associated with spatial rotations; and APOE allelic variation influenced the magnitude of

  11. Newly-graduated midwives transcending barriers: a grounded theory study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barry, Michele J; Hauck, Yvonne L; O'Donoghue, Thomas; Clarke, Simon

    2013-12-01

    Midwifery has developed its own philosophy to formalise its unique identity as a profession. Newly-graduated midwives are taught, and ideally embrace, this philosophy during their education. However, embarking in their career within a predominantly institutionalised and the medically focused health-care model may challenge this application. The research question guiding this study was as follows: 'How do newly graduated midwives deal with applying the philosophy of midwifery in their first six months of practice?' The aim was to generate a grounded theory around this social process. This Western Australian grounded theory study is conceptualised within the social theory of symbolic interactionism. Data were collected by means of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 11 recent midwifery graduates. Participant and interviewer's journals provided supplementary data. The 'constant comparison' approach was used for data analysis. The substantive theory of transcending barriers was generated. Three stages in transcending barriers were identified: Addressing personal attributes, Understanding the 'bigger picture', and finally, 'Evaluating, planning and acting' to provide woman-centred care. An overview of these three stages provides the focus of this article. The theory of transcending barriers provides a new perspective on how newly-graduated midwives deal with applying the philosophy of midwifery in their first six months of practice. A number of implications for pre and post registration midwifery education and policy development are suggested, as well as recommendations for future research. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson. Wilson's disease, Queen Square and neurology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Broussolle, E; Trocello, J-M; Woimant, F; Lachaux, A; Quinn, N

    2013-12-01

    This historical article describes the life and work of the British physician Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson (1878-1937), who was one of the world's greatest neurologists of the first half of the 20th century. Early in his career, Wilson spent one year in Paris in 1903 where he learned from Pierre-Marie at Bicêtre Hospital. He subsequently retained uninterrupted links with French neurology. He also visited in Leipzig the German anatomist Paul Flechsig. In 1904, Wilson returned to London, where he worked for the rest of his life at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (later the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and today the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) in Queen Square, and also at Kings' College Hospital. He wrote on 'the old motor system and the new', on disorders of motility and muscle tone, on the epilepsies, on aphasia, apraxia, tics, and pathologic laughing and crying, and most importantly on Wilson's disease. The other objective of our paper is to commemorate the centenary of Wilson's most important work published in 1912 in Brain, and also in Revue Neurologique, on an illness newly recognized and characterized by him entitled "Progressive lenticular degeneration, a familial nervous disease associated with liver cirrhosis". He analyzed 12 clinical cases, four of whom he followed himself, but also four cases previously published by others and a further two that he considered in retrospect had the same disease as he was describing. The pathological profile combined necrotic damage in the lenticular nuclei of the brain and hepatic cirrhosis. This major original work is summarized and discussed in the present paper. Wilson not only delineated what was later called hepato-lenticular degeneration and Wilson's disease, but also introduced for the first time the terms extrapyramidal syndrome and extrapyramidal system, stressing the role of the basal ganglia in motility. The present historical work emphasizes the special

  13. Newly patented process enables low-cost solution for increasing white light spectrum of LEDs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spanard, Jan-Marie

    2017-10-01

    A newly patented process for completing the spectral light array emitted by LED bulbs provides a low-cost method for producing better human centered lighting (HCL). This process uses non-luminescent colorant filters, filling out the jagged LED spectral emission into a full, white light array. While LED bulbs have the distinct economic advantages of using less energy, producing less heat and lasting years longer than traditional incandescent bulbs, the persistent metameric failure of LED bulbs has resulted in slower, and sometimes reluctant, adoption of LED lighting by the residential, retail and architectural markets. Adding missing wavelengths to LED generated bulbs via colorant filters increases the aesthetic appeal of the light by decreasing current levels of metameric failure, reducing the `flatness', `harshness', and `dullness' of LED generated light reported by consumers. LED phosphor-converted light can be successfully tuned to "whiter" white light with selective color filtering using permanent, durable transparent pigments. These transparent pigments are selectively applied in combination with existing manufacturing technologies and utilized as a final color-tuning step in bulb design. The quantity of emitted light chosen for color filtering can be adjusted from 1% to 100% of emitted light, creating a custom balance of light quantity with light quality. This invention recognizes that "better light" is frequently chosen over "more light" in the consumer marketplace.

  14. 76 FR 28954 - International Conservation and Management Measures Recognized by the United States

    Science.gov (United States)

    2011-05-19

    ... International Conservation and Management Measures Recognized by the United States AGENCY: National Marine... international conservation and management measures recognized by the United States. To fulfill this requirement, a list of agreements resulting in international conservation and management measures was first...

  15. Spirometry Use among Older Adults with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: 1999–2008

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Yue; Kuo, Yong-Fang; Goodwin, James S.; Sharma, Gulshan

    2013-01-01

    Rationale: Clinical practice guidelines recommend spirometry to diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and facilitate management. National trends in spirometry use in older adults with newly diagnosed COPD are not known. Objectives: To examine the rate and beneficiary characteristics associated with spirometry use in subjects with newly diagnosed COPD between 1999 and 2008. Methods: We examined newly diagnosed beneficiaries with COPD using a 5% Medicare population from 1999 to 2008. A new COPD diagnosis required two outpatient visits or one hospitalization with primary International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition code 491.xx, 492.xx, or 496 occurring at least 30 days apart with none in the prior 12 months. The primary measurement was spirometry performed within 365 days (±) of the first claim with a COPD diagnosis. Measurements and Main Results: Between 1999 and 2008, 64,985 subjects were newly diagnosed with COPD. Of these, 35,739 (55%) had spirometry performed within 1 year before or after the initial diagnosis of COPD. Spirometry use increased from 51.3% in 1999 to 58.3% in 2008 (P spirometry. In a multivariable analysis, compared with 1999, subjects diagnosed in 2008 had 10% higher odds (odds ratio, 1.10; 95% confidence interval, 1.06–1.13) of having spirometry performed. Conclusions: Despite an increase in the use of spirometry over time in newly diagnosed older adults with COPD, spirometry use remains low. Clinical practice guidelines and educational efforts should focus on increasing the use of spirometry to diagnose and manage COPD. PMID:24053440

  16. Relationship between ZnT8Ab, the SLC30A8 gene and disease progression in children with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Lotte B; Vaziri-Sani, Fariba; Pörksen, Sven

    2011-01-01

    Autoantibodies against the newly established autoantigen in type 1 diabetes, zinc transporter 8, ZnT8, are presented as two types, ZnT8RAb and ZnT8WAb. The rs13266634 variant of the SLC30A8 gene has recently been found to determine the type of ZnT8Ab. The aim of this study was to explore the impact...

  17. Recognizing Risk-of-Failure in Communication Design Projects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yee, Joyce; Lievesley, Matthew; Taylor, Louise

    2009-01-01

    The pace of commercial graphic design practice presents very few opportunities to conduct user research after a project's launch. This makes the design team's ability to anticipate and address risks during the design development phase even more important, recognized in the astute observation from Tim Brown, CEO of leading international design…

  18. Application of PET/CT in treatment response evaluation and recurrence prediction in patients with newly-diagnosed multiple myeloma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ying; Liu, Junru; Huang, Beihui; Chen, Meilan; Diao, Xiangwen; Li, Juan

    2017-04-11

    Multiple myeloma (MM) causes osteolytic lesions which can be detected by 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/Computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT). We prospectively involve 96 Newly diagnosed MM to take PET/CT scan at scheduled treatment time (figure 1), and 18F-FDG uptake of lesion was measured by SUVmax and T/Mmax. All MM patients took bortezomib based chemotherapy as induction and received ASCT and maintenance. All clinical features were analyzed with the PET/CT image changes, and some relationships between treatment response and FDG uptakes changes were found: Osteolytic lesions of MM uptakes higher FDG than healthy volunteers, and this trend is more obvious in extramedullary lesions. Compared to X-ray, PET/CT was more sensitive both in discoering bone as well as extramedullary lesions. In newly diagnosed MM, several adverse clinical factors were related to high FDG uptakes of bone lesions. Bone lesion FDG uptakes of MM with P53 mutation or with hypodiploidy and complex karyotype were also higher than those without such changes. In treatment response, PET/CT showed higher sensitivity in detecting tumor residual disease than immunofixation electrophoresis. But in relapse prediction, it might show false positive disease recurrences and the imaging changes might be influenced by infections and hemoglobulin levels. PET/CT is sensitive in discovering meduallary and extrameduallary lesions of MM, and the 18F-FDG uptake of lesions are related with clinical indictors and biological features of plasma cells. In evaluating treatment response and survival, PET/CT showed its superiority. But in predicting relapse or refractory, it may show false positive results.

  19. The effectiveness of newly developed written asthma action plan in improvement of asthma outcome in children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakupoch, Kingthong; Manuyakorn, Wiparat; Preutthipan, Aroonwan; Kamalaporn, Harutai

    2017-09-17

    Providing asthma education about controller medication use and appropriate management of asthma exacerbation are the keys to improving the disease outcome. Many asthma guidelines recommend that physicians provide written asthma action plan (WAAP) to all of their asthmatic patients. However, the benefit of WAAP is unclear. Thus, we have created a new WAAP which is simplified in Thai and more user friendly. To determine the effectiveness of the newly developed asthma action plan in management of children with asthma. Asthmatic children who meet inclusion criteria all received the WAAP and they were followed up for 6 months with measurement of outcome variables, such as asthma exacerbation that required emergency room visit, unscheduled OPD visit, admission and school absence in order to compare with the past 6 months before receiving the WAAP. The analyzed outcomes of forty-nine children show significantly reduced emergency room visit (P-value 0.005), unscheduled OPD visit (P-value 0.046), admission days (P-value 0.026) and school absence days (P-value 0.022). Well controlled group and mild severity group were not the factors that contribute to decreased emergency room visit but step up therapy may be the co-factor to decreased ER visit. The results of this study suggest that the provision of newly developed WAAP is useful for improving self-care of asthma patients and reducing asthma exacerbation.

  20. Realistic Creativity Training for Innovation Practitioners: The Know-Recognize-React Model

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Valgeirsdóttir, Dagný; Onarheim, Balder

    2017-01-01

    As creativity becomes increasingly recognized as important raw material for innovation, the importance of identifying ways to increase practitioners’ creativity through rigorously designed creativity training programs is highlighted. Therefore we sat out to design a creativity training program...... the transdisciplinary study described in this paper. Co-creation was employed as a method to ensure the three layers of focus would be taken into consideration. The result is a program called Creative Awareness Training which is based on the new Know-Recognize-React model....

  1. Lysosomes, Lysosomal Storage Diseases, and Inflammation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Calogera M. Simonaro PhD

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Lysosomes were originally described in the early 1950s by de Duve who was also the first to recognize the importance of these organelles in human disease. We know now that lysosomes are involved in numerous biological processes, and abnormalities in lysosomal function may result in a broad range of diseases. This review will briefly discuss the role of lysosomes in inflammation and how disruption of normal lysosomal function in the lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs leads to abnormalities in inflammation and immunity.

  2. Exploring selection and recruitment processes for newly qualified nurses: a sequential-explanatory mixed-method study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newton, Paul; Chandler, Val; Morris-Thomson, Trish; Sayer, Jane; Burke, Linda

    2015-01-01

    To map current selection and recruitment processes for newly qualified nurses and to explore the advantages and limitations of current selection and recruitment processes. The need to improve current selection and recruitment practices for newly qualified nurses is highlighted in health policy internationally. A cross-sectional, sequential-explanatory mixed-method design with 4 components: (1) Literature review of selection and recruitment of newly qualified nurses; and (2) Literature review of a public sector professions' selection and recruitment processes; (3) Survey mapping existing selection and recruitment processes for newly qualified nurses; and (4) Qualitative study about recruiters' selection and recruitment processes. Literature searches on the selection and recruitment of newly qualified candidates in teaching and nursing (2005-2013) were conducted. Cross-sectional, mixed-method data were collected from thirty-one (n = 31) individuals in health providers in London who had responsibility for the selection and recruitment of newly qualified nurses using a survey instrument. Of these providers who took part, six (n = 6) purposively selected to be interviewed qualitatively. Issues of supply and demand in the workforce, rather than selection and recruitment tools, predominated in the literature reviews. Examples of tools to measure values, attitudes and skills were found in the nursing literature. The mapping exercise found that providers used many selection and recruitment tools, some providers combined tools to streamline process and assure quality of candidates. Most providers had processes which addressed the issue of quality in the selection and recruitment of newly qualified nurses. The 'assessment centre model', which providers were adopting, allowed for multiple levels of assessment and streamlined recruitment. There is a need to validate the efficacy of the selection tools. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  3. Newly graduated nurses' occupational commitment and its associations with professional competence and work-related factors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Numminen, Olivia; Leino-Kilpi, Helena; Isoaho, Hannu; Meretoja, Riitta

    2016-01-01

    To explore newly graduated nurses' occupational commitment and its associations with their self-assessed professional competence and other work-related factors. As a factor affecting nurse turnover, newly graduated nurses' occupational commitment and its associations with work-related factors needs exploring to retain adequate workforce. Nurses' commitment has mainly been studied as organisational commitment, but newly graduated nurses' occupational commitment and its association with work-related factors needs further studying. This study used descriptive, cross-sectional, correlation design. A convenience sample of 318 newly graduated nurses in Finland participated responding to an electronic questionnaire. Statistical software, NCSS version 9, was used in data analysis. Frequencies, percentages, ranges, means and standard deviations summarised the data. Multivariate Analyses of Variance estimated associations between occupational commitment and work-related variables. IBM SPSS Amos version 22 estimated the model fit of Occupational Commitment Scale and Nurse Competence Scale. Newly graduated nurses' occupational commitment was good, affective commitment reaching the highest mean score. There was a significant difference between the nurse groups in favour of nurses at higher competence levels in all subscales except in limited alternatives occupational commitment. Multivariate analyses revealed significant associations between subscales of commitment and competence, turnover intentions, job satisfaction, earlier professional education and work sector, competence counting only through affective dimension. The association between occupational commitment and low turnover intentions and satisfaction with nursing occupation was strong. Higher general competence indicated higher overall occupational commitment. Managers' recognition of the influence of all dimensions of occupational commitment in newly graduated nurses' professional development is important. Follow

  4. Newly-formed emotional memories guide selective attention processes: Evidence from event-related potentials

    OpenAIRE

    Harald T. Schupp; Ursula Kirmse; Ralf Schmälzle; Tobias Flaisch; Britta Renner

    2016-01-01

    Emotional cues can guide selective attention processes. However, emotional stimuli can both activate long-term memory representations reflecting general world knowledge and engage newly formed memory representations representing specific knowledge from the immediate past. Here, the self-completion feature of associative memory was utilized to assess the regulation of attention processes by newly-formed emotional memory. First, new memory representations were formed by presenting pictures depi...

  5. Evidence of earlier thyroid dysfunction in newly diagnosed oral lichen planus patients: a hint for endocrinologists.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arduino, Paolo G; Karimi, Dora; Tirone, Federico; Sciannameo, Veronica; Ricceri, Fulvio; Cabras, Marco; Gambino, Alessio; Conrotto, Davide; Salzano, Stefano; Carbone, Mario; Broccoletti, Roberto

    2017-11-01

    The association between oral lichen planus (OLP) and hypothyroidism has been debated with conflicting results: some authors detected a statistically significant association between these two, while others did not confirm it. The aim of this study was to evaluate the thyroid status in patients with newly diagnosed OLP to test the null hypothesis that thyroid disease is not associated with an increased incidence of oral lesions, with a prospective case-control approach. A total of 549 patients have been evaluated, of whom 355 were female. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were obtained. Patients suffering from thyroid diseases were associated with an almost 3-fold increased odds of having OLP (OR 2.85, 95% CI: 1.65-4.94), after adjusting this analysis for age, gender, body mass index, smoking status, diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C infection. It would be appropriate to further investigate the possible concomitance of OLP among patients with thyroid disorder; endocrinologists should be aware of this association, especially because OLP is considered a potentially malignant oral disorder. © 2017 The authors.

  6. Clinical Manifestations and Treatment of Lyme Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sanchez, Joyce L

    2015-12-01

    Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States and is also seen in areas of Europe and Asia. The growing deer and Ixodes species tick populations in many areas underscore the importance of clinicians to properly recognize and treat the different stages of Lyme disease. Controversy regarding the cause and management of persistent symptoms following treatment of Lyme disease persists and is highlighted in this review. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Lifestyle and clinical factors associated with elevated C-reactive protein among newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Svensson, Elisabeth; Mor, Anil; Rungby, Jørgen

    2014-01-01

    BACKGROUND: We aimed to examine the prevalence of and modifiable factors associated with elevated C-reactive Protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation, in men and women with newly diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes mellitus (DM) in a population-based setting. METHODS: CRP was measured in 1,037 patients (57...... was primarily elevated among patients with no regular physical activity (aRR 1.5 (95% CI 1.1-1.9)), previous cardiovascular disease (aRR1.5 (95% CI 1.2-1.9) and other comorbidity. For both genders, elevated CRP was 1.4-fold increased in those with weight gain >30 kg since age 20 years. Sensitivity analyses...

  8. Antiplectin autoantibodies in subepidermal blistering diseases

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Buijsrogge, J. J. A.; de Jong, M. C. J. M.; Kloosterhuis, G. J.; Vermeer, M. H.; Koster, J.; Sonnenberg, A.; Jonkman, M. F.; Pas, H. H.

    2009-01-01

    Background Hemidesmosomal proteins may become targets of autoimmunity in subepidermal blistering diseases. Well-known recognized autoantigens are the intracellular plaque protein BP230, the transmembrane BP180 and its shed ecto-domain LAD-1. Objectives To establish the prevalence of autoimmunity

  9. Proctalgia fugax: would you recognize it?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Babb, R R

    1996-04-01

    Proctalgia fugax is characterized by sudden and sometimes severe rectal pain that occurs by day or night at irregular intervals. The pain results from dysfunction of the internal anal sphincter. Proctalgia fugax has a uniform clinical picture, and it can be easily diagnosed when recognized. The patient can be assured that nothing serious is wrong. Expensive tests, such as computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging of the pelvis, are not required. Treatment may be difficult, but if the attacks of pain are numerous and severe,, a calcium channel blocker such as nifedipine (Adalat, Procardia) should be tried.

  10. Changes of disease incidence among atomic-bomb survivors 1956-78

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hamada, Tadao; Matsushita, Hiroshi.

    1978-01-01

    Statistical observation was made concerning changes with time of incidences of various diseases in autopsy cases since 1956 when Atomic Bomb Hospital was established, and the following results were obtained. The incidence of lung cancer tended to increase in men and women of both groups (an exposed group and a non-exposed group). A marked decrease of the incidence of leukemia was recognized in men and women of both groups, and a decrease of that of malignant lymphoma was recognized in men. The incidence of liver cirrhosis and hepatic cancer tended to decrease in men and women of both groups. The incidence of colon cancer tended to increase in both groups, but that of stomach cancer decreased recently in men and women of both groups. Incidences of digestive organ diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular disorder, and respiratory organ diseases tended to increase in both groups, but urinary tract diseases, infectious diseases, and blood diseases tended to decrease in both groups, which suggested an increase of older persons' diseases due to aging of the exposed. Incidences of various diseases in the exposed changed almost in parallel with those in the non-exposed, and a difference in incidences of various diseases tended to be shortened. (Tsunoda, M.)

  11. Reproducibility and validity of patient-rated assessment of speech, swallowing, and saliva control in Parkinson’s Disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Machiel Zwarts; Johanna Kalf; Bastiaan Bloem; George Borm; Marten Munneke; Bert de Swart

    2012-01-01

    To report on the development and psychometric evaluation of the Radboud Oral Motor Inventory for Parkinson's Disease (ROMP), a newly developed patient-rated assessment of speech, swallowing, and saliva control in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). To evaluate reproducibility, 60 patients

  12. Finding aroma clues in the human breath to diagnose diseases

    Science.gov (United States)

    A. Dan Wilson

    2016-01-01

    History of human odor analysis in disease diagnosis The use of the sense of smell as an indicator of human disease probably originated with Hippocrates (circa 400 BC). Early medical practitioners recognized that the presence of human diseases changed the odors released from the body and breath. Physicians once relied heavily on their sense of smell to provide useful...

  13. National Insect and Disease Risk Map (NIDRM)--cutting edge software for rapid insect and disease risk model development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frank J. Krist

    2010-01-01

    The Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) of the U.S. Forest Service is leading an effort to produce the next version of the National Insect and Disease Risk Map (NIDRM) for targeted release in 2011. The goal of this effort is to update spatial depictions of risk of tree mortality based on: (1) newly derived 240-m geospatial information depicting the...

  14. Assessment of metal retention in newly constructed highway embankments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Werkenthin, Moritz; Kluge, Björn; Wessolek, Gerd

    2016-12-01

    Newly constructed embankments should provide both a specific bearing capacity to enable trafficability in emergency cases and a sufficient pollutant retention capacity to protect the groundwater. A number of lysimeters were installed along the A115 highway to determine total and dissolved metal concentrations in road runoff and in the soil solution of newly constructed embankments. Dissolved concentrations in soil solution of the embankments did not exceed the trigger values of the German legislation. Depending on the metal, total concentrations in soil solution were more than twice as high as dissolved concentrations. The high infiltration rates lead to increased groundwater recharge beneath the embankments (up to 4100 mm a -1 ). Although metal concentrations were not problematic from the legislators' point of view, the elevated infiltration rates beside the road facilitated the transfer of high metal loads into deeper soil layers and potentially into the groundwater as well.

  15. Obsessive–Compulsive Symptoms in Neurologic Disease: A Review

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. S. George

    1992-01-01

    Full Text Available Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD is an increasingly recognized disorder with a prevalence of 2–3% (Robins et al., 1984. Once thought to be psychodynamic in origin, OCD is now generally recognized as having a neurobiological cause. Although the exact pathophysiology of OCD in its pure form remains unknown, there are numerous reports of obsessive–compulsive symptoms arising in the setting of known neurological disease. In this paper, we review the reported cases of obsessive–compulsive symptoms associated with neurologic diseases and outline the known facts about the underlying neurobiology of OCD. Finally, we synthesize these findings into a proposed theory of the pathophysiology of OCD, in both its pure form and when it accompanies other neurological illness.

  16. Sizing Performance of the Newly Developed Eddy Current System

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cho, Chan Hee; Lee, Hee Jong; Yoo, Hyun Ju; Moon, Gyoon Young; Lee, Tae Hoon [Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co., Ltd., Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2013-10-15

    This paper describes the comparison results of sizing performance for two systems. The KHNP developed a new eddy current testing system for the inspection of steam generator tubing in domestic nuclear power plants. The equivalency assessment of the newly developed system with the EPRI-qualified system was already carried out. In this paper, the comparisons of depth-sizing performance for the artificial flaws between two systems were performed. The results show that the newly developed system is in good agreement with the qualified system. Therefore, it is expected that the newly developed eddy current system can be used for the inspection of steam generator tubing in nuclear power plants. There are some non-destructive examination (NDE) methods for the inspection of components in nuclear power plants, such as ultrasonic, radiographic, eddy current testing, etc. The eddy current testing is widely used for the inspection of steam generator (SG) tubing because it offers a relatively low cost approach for high speed, large scale testing of metallic materials in high pressure and temperature engineering systems. The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co., Ltd. (KHNP) developed an eddy current testing system for the inspection of steam generator tubing in nuclear power plants. This system includes not only hardware but software such as the frequency generator and data acquisition-analysis program. The foreign eddy current system developed by ZETEC is currently used for the inspection of steam generator tubing in domestic nuclear power plants. The equivalency assessment between two systems was already carried out in accordance with the EPRI steam generator examination guidelines.

  17. Workplace Violence and Job Outcomes of Newly Licensed Nurses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Hyoung Eun; Cho, Sung-Hyun

    2016-12-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of workplace violence toward newly licensed nurses and the relationship between workplace violence and job outcomes. An online survey was conducted of newly licensed registered nurses who had obtained their license in 2012 or 2013 in South Korea and had been working for 5-12 months after first being employed. The sample consisted of 312 nurses working in hospitals or clinics. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II was used to measure violence and nurse job outcomes. Multiple linear and logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between violence and job outcomes. Verbal abuse was most prevalent (59.6%), followed by threats of violence (36.9%), physical violence (27.6%), bullying (25.6%), and sexual harassment (22.4%). Approximately three quarters of the nurses had experienced at least one type of violence. The main perpetrators were patients and nurse colleagues, although the distribution of perpetrators varied depending on the type of violence. Bullying had a significant relationship with all four job outcomes (job satisfaction, burnout, commitment to the workplace, and intent to leave), while verbal abuse was associated with all job outcomes except for intent to leave. Violence perpetrated by nurse colleagues had a significant relationship with all four job outcomes, while violence by physicians had a significant inverse relationship with job satisfaction. Workplace violence is experienced by a high percentage of newly licensed nurses, and is associated with their job outcomes. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  18. Recognizing the needs – Student teachers´ learning to teach from teaching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pernilla Nilsson

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper is based on an exploration of the ways in which primary science student teachers recognize and learn about issues that shape their own professional learning. The paper discusses different perspectives of “knowledgebase needed for teaching” and Shulman’s concept of pedagogical content knowledge, and explores how elements of knowledge are to be recognized and further developed within primary teacher education. Primary science student teacher participants (n = 25 were stimulated to use portfolios as a tool to reflect upon situations within their six weeks teaching practice in pre- and primary schools in order to facilitate recognizing their knowledge needs. The results give an insight into what situations within the teaching practice that student teachers consider as important for their own learning to teach primary maths and science.

  19. Two Pathogens and One Disease: Detection and Identification of Flea-Borne Rickettsiae in Areas Endemic for Murine Typhus in California

    Science.gov (United States)

    EREMEEVA, MARINA E.; KARPATHY, SANDOR E.; KRUEGER, LAURA; HAYES, ERICA K.; WILLIAMS, ASHLEY M.; ZALDIVAR, YAMITZEL; BENNETT, STEPHEN; CUMMINGS, ROBERT; TILZER, ART; VELTEN, ROBERT K.; KERR, NELSON; DASCH, GREGORY A.; HU, RENJIE

    2018-01-01

    Results of an environmental assessment conducted in a newly emergent focus of murine typhus in southern California are described. Opossums, Didelphis virginiana Kerr, infested with cat fleas, Ctenocephalides felis Buché, in the suburban area were abundant. Animal and flea specimens were tested for the DNA of two flea-borne rickettsiae, Rickettsia typhi and Rickettsia felis. R. felis was commonly detected in fleas collected throughout this area while R. typhi was found at a much lower prevalence in the vicinity of just 7 of 14 case-patient homes identified. DNA of R. felis, but not R. typhi, was detected in renal, hepatic, and pulmonary tissues of opossums. In contrast, there were no hematologic polymerase chain reaction findings of R. felis or R. typhi in opossums, rats, and cats within the endemic area studied. Our data suggest a significant probability of human exposure to R. felis in the area studied; however, disease caused by this agent is not recognized by the medical community and may be misdiagnosed as murine typhus using nondiscriminatory serologic methods. PMID:23270180

  20. Uncoupling of collagen II metabolism in newly diagnosed, untreated rheumatoid arthritis is linked to inflammation and antibodies against cyclic citrullinated peptides

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Christensen, Anne Friesgaard; Hørslev-Petersen, Kim; Christgau, Stephan

    2010-01-01

    . METHODS: One hundred sixty patients with newly diagnosed, untreated RA entered the Cyclosporine, Methotrexate, Steroid in RA (CIMESTRA) trial. Disease activity and radiograph status were measured at baseline and 4 years. The N-terminal propeptide of collagen IIA (PIIANP) and the cross-linked C...... associations of collagen II anabolism (PIIANP) and collagen II degradation (CTX-II) with anti-CCP, synovitis, and radiographic progression indicate that at this early stage of RA, cartilage collagen degradation is mainly driven by synovitis, while anti-CCP antibodies may interfere with cartilage regeneration...

  1. Chenodeoxycholic acid reduces intestinal permeability in newly weaned piglets

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Meer, van der Y.; Gerrits, W.J.J.; Bosch, van den M.; Holst, J.J.; Moreto, M.; Buurman, W.A.; Kulik, W.; Kempen, van T.A.T.G.

    2012-01-01

    Piglets are highly susceptible to gut health-related problems. Intravenously administered chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) affects gut health mediated through glucagon-like peptide 2 (GLP-2). To test whether CDCA is a suitable feed additive for improving gut health, a trial was performed with newly

  2. [Malignant diseases of the inner nose--epidemiology and occupational medicine aspects].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartung, M

    1989-06-01

    Squamous cell carcinomas are the most frequent malignancies of the inner nose, followed by adenocarcinomas, adenoid cystic carcinomas, and other malignant neoplasms. Carcinomas of the nose can be recognized as occupational diseases if there has been a professional exposition to ionizing rays, certain arsenic compounds, hexavalent chrome compounds, nickel, oak or beech wood dust. The sources of danger relevant in industrial medicine are indicated. At present, adenocarcinomas induced by dust of wood are of special significance: 16 out of 22 carcinomas of the nose recognized as occupational diseases between 1978 and 1986 are due to oak and beech wood dust.

  3. Incremental Cancer Detection of Locoregional Restaging with Diagnostic Mammography Combined with Whole-Breast and Regional Nodal Ultrasound in Women with Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Candelaria, Rosalind P; Huang, Monica L; Adrada, Beatriz E; Bassett, Roland; Hunt, Kelly K; Kuerer, Henry M; Smith, Benjamin D; Chavez-MacGregor, Mariana; Yang, Wei Tse

    2017-02-01

    This study aims to determine if locoregional restaging with diagnostic mammography and ultrasound (US) of the whole breast and regional nodes performed for quality assurance in women with newly diagnosed breast cancer who were referred to a tertiary care center yields incremental cancer detection. An institutional review board-approved retrospective, single-institution database review was performed on the first 1000 women referred to our center in 2010 with a provisional breast cancer diagnosis. Locoregional restaging consisted of diagnostic full-field digital mammography combined with US of the whole breast and regional nodal basins. Bilateral whole-breast US was performed in women with contralateral mammographic abnormality or had heterogeneously or extremely dense parenchyma. Demographic, clinical, and pathologic factors were analyzed. Final analyses included 401 women. Of the 401 women, 138 (34%) did not have their outside images available for review upon referral. The median age was 54 years (range 21-92); the median tumor size was 2.9 cm (range 0.6-18.0) for women whose disease was upstaged and 2.2 cm (range 0.4-15.0) for women whose disease was not upstaged. Incremental cancer detection rates were 15.5% (62 of 401) in the ipsilateral breast and 3.9% (6 of 154) in the contralateral breast (P breast and regional nodal US that is performed for standardization of the imaging workup for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients can reduce underestimation of disease burden and impact therapeutic planning. Copyright © 2017 The Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Timing of revenue streams from newly recruited faculty: implications for faculty retention.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joiner, Keith A; Hiteman, Sarah; Wormsley, Steven; St Germain, Patricia

    2007-12-01

    To determine the timing and magnitude of revenues generated by newly recruited faculty, to facilitate configuration of recruitment packages appropriately matched to expected financial returns. The aggregate of all positive cash flows to central college of medicine administration -- from research, clinical care, tuition, philanthropy, and royalties and patents, from all faculty newly recruited to the University of Arizona College of Medicine between 1998 and 2004 -- was quantified using the net present value (npv) methodology, which incorporates the time value of money. Tenure-track faculty and, in particular, those with laboratory research programs, generated the highest positive central cash flows. The npv for positive cash flows (npv[+]) during 6 and 10 years for newly recruited assistant professors with laboratory research programs were $118,600 and $255,400, respectively, and, for professors with laboratory research programs, $172,600 and $298,000, respectively (associate professors were not analyzed because of limited numbers). Faculty whose appointments at the University of Arizona College of Medicine exceeded 15 years in duration were the most productive in central revenue generation, far in excess of their numbers proportionate to the total. The results emphasize the critical importance of faculty retention, because even those newly recruited faculty who are most successful in central revenue generation (tenure track with laboratory research programs) must be retained for periods well in excess of 10 years to recoup the initial central investment required for their recruitment.

  5. Comparison of newly developed anti-bone morphogenetic protein 4 llama-derived antibodies with commercially available BMP4 inhibitors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Calpe, Silvia; Correia, Ana C P; Sancho-Serra, Maria Del Carmen; Krishnadath, Kausilia K

    2016-01-01

    Due to improved understanding of the role of bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4) in an increasing number of diseases, the development of selective inhibitors of BMP4 is an attractive therapeutic option. The currently available BMP4 inhibitors are not suitable as therapeutics because of their low specificity and low effectiveness. Here, we compared newly generated anti-BMP4 llama-derived antibodies (VHHs) with 3 different types of commercially available BMP4 inhibitors, natural antagonists, small molecule BMPR inhibitors and conventional anti-BMP4 monoclonal antibodies. We found that the anti-BMP4 VHHs were as effective as the natural antagonist or small molecule inhibitors, but had higher specificity. We also showed that commercial anti-BMP4 antibodies were inferior in terms of both specificity and effectiveness. These findings might result from the fact that the VHHs C4C4 and C8C8 target a small region within the BMPR1 epitope of BMP4, whereas the commercial antibodies target other areas of the BMP4 molecule. Our results show that the newly developed anti-BMP4 VHHs are promising antibodies with better specificity and effectivity for inhibition of BMP4, making them an attractive tool for research and for therapeutic applications.

  6. Bacteroides gingivalis and Bacteroides intermedius recognize different sites on human fibrinogen

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lantz, M.S.; Allen, R.D.; Bounelis, P.; Switalski, L.M.; Hook, M. (Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham (USA))

    1990-02-01

    Bacteroides (Porphyromonas) gingivalis and Bacteroides (Porphyromonas) intermedius have been implicated in the etiology of human periodontal diseases. These organisms are able to bind and degrade human fibrinogen, and these interactions may play a role in the pathogenesis of periodontal disease. In attempts to map the bacterial binding sites along the fibrinogen molecule, we have found that strains of B. gingivalis and B. intermedius, respectively, recognize spatially distant and distinct sites on the fibrinogen molecule. Isolated reduced and alkylated alpha-, beta-, and gamma-fibrinogen chains inhibited binding of 125I-fibrinogen to both Bacteroides species in a concentration-dependent manner. Plasmin fragments D and to some extent fragment E, however, produced a concentration-dependent inhibition of 125I-fibrinogen binding to B. intermedius strains but did not affect binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. gingivalis strains. Radiolabeled fibrinogen chains and fragments were compared with 125I-fibrinogen with respect to specificity and reversibility of binding to bacteria. According to these criteria, gamma chain most closely resembled the native fibrinogen molecule in behavior toward B. gingivalis strains and fragments D most closely resembled fibrinogen in behavior toward B. intermedius strains. The ability of anti-human fibrinogen immunoglobulin G (IgG) to inhibit binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. intermedius strains was greatly reduced by absorbing the IgG with fragments D. Absorbing the IgG with fragments D had no effect on the ability of the antibody to inhibit binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. gingivalis strains. A purified staphylococcal fibrinogen-binding protein blocked binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. intermedius strains but not to B. gingivalis strains.

  7. Bacteroides gingivalis and Bacteroides intermedius recognize different sites on human fibrinogen

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lantz, M.S.; Allen, R.D.; Bounelis, P.; Switalski, L.M.; Hook, M.

    1990-01-01

    Bacteroides (Porphyromonas) gingivalis and Bacteroides (Porphyromonas) intermedius have been implicated in the etiology of human periodontal diseases. These organisms are able to bind and degrade human fibrinogen, and these interactions may play a role in the pathogenesis of periodontal disease. In attempts to map the bacterial binding sites along the fibrinogen molecule, we have found that strains of B. gingivalis and B. intermedius, respectively, recognize spatially distant and distinct sites on the fibrinogen molecule. Isolated reduced and alkylated alpha-, beta-, and gamma-fibrinogen chains inhibited binding of 125I-fibrinogen to both Bacteroides species in a concentration-dependent manner. Plasmin fragments D and to some extent fragment E, however, produced a concentration-dependent inhibition of 125I-fibrinogen binding to B. intermedius strains but did not affect binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. gingivalis strains. Radiolabeled fibrinogen chains and fragments were compared with 125I-fibrinogen with respect to specificity and reversibility of binding to bacteria. According to these criteria, gamma chain most closely resembled the native fibrinogen molecule in behavior toward B. gingivalis strains and fragments D most closely resembled fibrinogen in behavior toward B. intermedius strains. The ability of anti-human fibrinogen immunoglobulin G (IgG) to inhibit binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. intermedius strains was greatly reduced by absorbing the IgG with fragments D. Absorbing the IgG with fragments D had no effect on the ability of the antibody to inhibit binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. gingivalis strains. A purified staphylococcal fibrinogen-binding protein blocked binding of 125I-fibrinogen to B. intermedius strains but not to B. gingivalis strains

  8. Recognizing the importance of chronic disease in driving healthcare expenditure in Tanzania: analysis of panel data from 1991 to 2010.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Counts, Christopher J; Skordis-Worrall, Jolene

    2016-05-01

     Despite the growing chronic disease burden in low- and middle-income countries, there are significant gaps in our understanding of the financial impact of these illnesses on households. As countries make progress towards universal health coverage, specific information is needed about how chronic disease care drives health expenditure over time, and how this spending differs from spending on acute disease care.  A 19-year panel dataset was constructed using data from the Kagera Health and Development Surveys. Health expenditure was modelled using multilevel regression for three different sub-populations of households: (1) all households that spent on healthcare, (2) households affected by chronic disease and (3) households affected by acute disease. Explanatory variables were identified from a review of the health expenditure literature, and all variables were analysed descriptively.  Households affected by chronic disease spent 22% more on healthcare than unaffected households. Catastrophic expenditure and zero expenditure are both common in chronic disease-affected households. Expenditure predictors were different between households affected by chronic disease and those unaffected. Expenditure over time is highly heterogeneous and household-dependent.  The financial burden of healthcare is greater for households affected by chronic disease than those unaffected. Households appear unable to sustain high levels of expenditure over time, likely resulting in both irregular chronic disease treatment and impoverishment. The Tanzanian government's current efforts to develop a National Health Financing Strategy present an important opportunity to prioritize policies that promote the long-term financial protection of households by preventing the catastrophic consequences of chronic disease care payments. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  9. Best management practices for newly weaned calves for improved health and well-being.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilson, B K; Richards, C J; Step, D L; Krehbiel, C R

    2017-05-01

    Morbidity and mortality in newly weaned calves resulting from bovine respiratory disease (BRD) continue to be the most significant problems facing the beef industry. Morbidity attributed to BRD accounts for approximately 75% of total feedlot morbidity. Several experiments have documented the economic impacts of BRD. Direct costs attributable to BRD include death loss, treatment and labor costs, and prevention costs, while indirect costs associated with BRD include decreased growth performance and feed efficiency, increased days on feed, and decreased carcass merit and market value. In recent years, cattle treated for BRD have returned $50 to $250 less per head at harvest than cattle never treated for BRD. Best management practices for newly weaned calves vary depending on a multitude of factors including: season of year calves are purchased, calf genetics, length of time in the marketing and transport channels, previous management and vaccination programs, and other factors. In general, calves purchased directly from a ranch have fewer health problems than calves purchased through auction markets. The longer a calf is in the marketing chain, the more likely health problems will be encountered. Calves that have spent several days in the marketing chain may develop clinical BRD before or very soon after arrival, whereas cattle with less time in the marketing chain may get sick later (2 to 4 wk), due to the length of time it takes for BRD to develop. On or before arrival, calves should be given a risk score (high, medium, or low) that relates to the quantity and magnitude of stress they have encountered and the probability they will develop BRD. High-risk calves typically will have been recently weaned, received no vaccinations, not been castrated or dehorned, been commingled, and moved through an auction market. Low-risk calves will often originate from a single source and will have gone through a preconditioning program that includes vaccination, castration

  10. Microarray-based approach identifies microRNAs and their target functional patterns in polycystic kidney disease

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Boehn Susanne NE

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs play key roles in mammalian gene expression and several cellular processes, including differentiation, development, apoptosis and cancer pathomechanisms. Recently the biological importance of primary cilia has been recognized in a number of human genetic diseases. Numerous disorders are related to cilia dysfunction, including polycystic kidney disease (PKD. Although involvement of certain genes and transcriptional networks in PKD development has been shown, not much is known how they are regulated molecularly. Results Given the emerging role of miRNAs in gene expression, we explored the possibilities of miRNA-based regulations in PKD. Here, we analyzed the simultaneous expression changes of miRNAs and mRNAs by microarrays. 935 genes, classified into 24 functional categories, were differentially regulated between PKD and control animals. In parallel, 30 miRNAs were differentially regulated in PKD rats: our results suggest that several miRNAs might be involved in regulating genetic switches in PKD. Furthermore, we describe some newly detected miRNAs, miR-31 and miR-217, in the kidney which have not been reported previously. We determine functionally related gene sets, or pathways to reveal the functional correlation between differentially expressed mRNAs and miRNAs. Conclusion We find that the functional patterns of predicted miRNA targets and differentially expressed mRNAs are similar. Our results suggest an important role of miRNAs in specific pathways underlying PKD.

  11. Scandinavian exceptionalism? Civic integration and labour market activation for newly arrived immigrants

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Breidahl, Karen Nielsen

    2017-01-01

    models have been resilient: Based on an in-depth historical and comparative analysis of labour market activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark since the early 1990s, the article contributes to the overall question: To what extent do the institutional pathways...... of the Scandinavian welfare states prevail when confronted with newcomers? Activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants exemplifies how the ambition of states to promote functional, individual autonomy is also an important, ongoing process in diverse policy areas of the welfare state and not restricted...

  12. Distinguishing Newly Born Strange Stars from Neutron Stars with g-Mode Oscillations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fu Weijie; Wei Haiqing; Liu Yuxin

    2008-01-01

    The gravity-mode (g-mode) eigenfrequencies of newly born strange quark stars (SQSs) and neutron stars (NSs) are studied. It is found that the eigenfrequencies in SQSs are much lower than those in NSs by almost 1 order of magnitude, since the components of a SQS are all extremely relativistic particles while nucleons in a NS are nonrelativistic. We therefore propose that newly born SQSs can be distinguished from the NSs by detecting the eigenfrequencies of the g-mode pulsations of supernovae cores through gravitational radiation by LIGO-class detectors

  13. Seasonal variation of diseases in children : a 6-year prospective cohort study in a general hospital

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schrijver, Tessa V.; Brand, Paul L. P.; Bekhof, Jolita

    Seasonal variation in pediatrics has been well described in some infectious diseases, asthma, and diabetes, but data on seasonality for other diseases in children are sparse. To explore the extent of seasonal variation of the entire pediatric field, we analyzed diagnostic codes of all newly referred

  14. PMab-48 Recognizes Dog Podoplanin of Lymphatic Endothelial Cells.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yamada, Shinji; Itai, Shunsuke; Kaneko, Mika K; Kato, Yukinari

    2018-02-01

    Podoplanin, a type I transmembrane glycoprotein, is a specific marker of lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs). Recently, we developed PMab-38, an anti-dog podoplanin monoclonal antibody that did not stain canine LECs. In this study, we newly developed PMab-48 against dog podoplanin. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that PMab-48 reacts not only with canine squamous cell carcinoma cells but also with LECs of the normal colon. Therefore, PMab-48 may be useful in investigating the function of dog podoplanin in LECs.

  15. Newly democratic Mongolia offering exploration contracts

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Penttila, W.C.

    1992-01-01

    This paper reports that Mongolia, formerly the Mongolian People's Republic, is working to open its exploration prospects to international operators as it emerges as the world's 15th largest independent nation. The country, about the same size as Alaska with a population of 2 million, held its first free election in July 1990. The newly elected government drafted a constitution that took effect Feb. 12, 1992. The document modifies the previous government's structures to eliminate bureaucracy and allows for political pluralism. At the same time, the government is formulating energy policies, state oil company structure, and resource development philosophy

  16. Lessons from Tiananmen Square: Recognizing Bias in News Reporting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Braun, Joseph A., Jr.

    1990-01-01

    Recommends teaching students to recognize bias in news reports and how personal preferences infringe on objective judgment. Provides two class activities designed to help students understand this concept. Uses the Cinderella story from three cultures and group discussion to illustrate this technique. (NL)

  17. Ebola Virus Disease Candidate Vaccines Under Evaluation in Clinical Trials

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-06-02

    evidence that oral vaccines fail in populations with disturbed microbiota, poor nutrition , and high intestinal inflammation [102-104]. Additionally...countermeasure development against Ebola virus disease becoming a global public- health priority. This review summarizes the status quo of candidate...members of the mononegaviral family Filoviridae) cause two diseases recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO): Ebola virus disease (EVD) can be

  18. Monoclonal antibody therapy of inflammatory bowel disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Deventer, S. J.; Camoglio, L.

    1996-01-01

    Several anti-inflammatory drugs have therapeutic efficacy in inflammatory bowel disease, but their targets remain incompletely characterized. The development of monoclonal antibodies that either recognize epitopes on immune-competent cells, or neutralize pro-inflammatory cytokines, has helped to

  19. Diseases of American lobsters (Homarus americanus): a review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cawthorn, Richard J

    2011-01-01

    The American lobster fishery is a significant economic driver in coastal communities of North America. Increasingly, the impacts of infectious disease are recognized as important components and factors in the population ecology and subsequent management of the lobster fishery. Both environmental and anthropogenic factors impact marine diseases. The review herein highlights aspects of several important bacterial, fungal and protistan diseases, including gaffkemia, shell disease, vibriosis, disease caused by species of Lagenidium, Haliphthoros and Fusarium, paramoebiasis and Bumper Car disease. As the global environment continues to change, these diseases could more severely affect both wild caught and impounded lobsters. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. Literature Review: Is the Emotional Expression of Contempt Recognized Universally or Culturally?

    OpenAIRE

    Phoukhao, Julianna

    2017-01-01

    The universal facial expression of contempt is often described as one lip corner raised and tightened. This literature reviews whether or not this expression is recognized universally. After examining theories and methods, low agreement of this expression recognized as contempt was found across cultures. Evidence so far is not sufficient enough to support the unilateral lip corner as an universal expression for contempt. The expression and recognition of contempt is highly dependent on cultur...

  1. Craig Reynolds: Recognized for Excellence in Medicine | Poster

    Science.gov (United States)

    The Distinguished Alumni Award is one of the most prestigious awards at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. This award recognizes influential alumni who have achieved excellence in the art and science of medicine. One of this year’s recipients is Craig Reynolds, Ph.D., associate director, NCI. When asked how he felt about receiving this

  2. Duplex ultrasound: Indications and findings in a newly created ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Duplex ultrasound: Indications and findings in a newly created facility at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar. ... It is recommended that timely referrals be made, and mobile Doppler units be acquired to save more lives and limbs in the developing world. Keywords: Calabar, deep venous thrombosis, duplex ...

  3. Mapping subsurface in proximity to newly-developed sinkhole along roadway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-02-01

    MS&T acquired electrical resistivity tomography profiles in immediate proximity to a newly-developed sinkhole in Nixa Missouri : The sinkhole has closed a well-traveled municipal roadway and threatens proximal infrastructure. The intent of this inves...

  4. Newly developed central diabetes insipidus following kidney transplantation: a case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, K M; Kim, S M; Lee, J; Lee, S Y; Kwon, S K; Kim, H-Y

    2013-09-01

    Polyuria after kidney transplantation is a common, usually self-limiting disorder. However, persistent polyuria can cause not only patient discomfort, including polyuria and polydipsia, but also volume depletion that can produce allograft dysfunction. Herein, we have report a case of central diabetes insipidus newly diagnosed after kidney transplantation. A 45-year-old woman with end-stage kidney disease underwent deceased donor kidney transplantation. Two months after the transplantation, she was admitted for persistent polyuria, polydipsia, and nocturia with urine output of more than 4 L/d. Urine osmolarity was 100 mOsm/kg, which implied that the polyuria was due to water rather than solute diuresis. A water deprivation test was compatible with central diabetes insipidus; desmopressin treatment resulted in immediate symptomatic relief. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrated diffuse thickening of the pituitary stalk, which was considered to be nonspecific finding. MRI 12 months later showed no change in the pituitary stalk, although the patient has been in good health without polyuria or polydipsia on desmopressin treatment. The possibility of central diabetes insipidus should be considered in patients presenting with persistent polyuria after kidney transplantation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Association Analysis Suggests SOD2 as a Newly Identified Candidate Gene Associated With Leprosy Susceptibility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramos, Geovana Brotto; Salomão, Heloisa; Francio, Angela Schneider; Fava, Vinícius Medeiros; Werneck, Renata Iani; Mira, Marcelo Távora

    2016-08-01

    Genetic studies have identified several genes and genomic regions contributing to the control of host susceptibility to leprosy. Here, we test variants of the positional and functional candidate gene SOD2 for association with leprosy in 2 independent population samples. Family-based analysis revealed an association between leprosy and allele G of marker rs295340 (P = .042) and borderline evidence of an association between leprosy and alleles C and A of markers rs4880 (P = .077) and rs5746136 (P = .071), respectively. Findings were validated in an independent case-control sample for markers rs295340 (P = .049) and rs4880 (P = .038). These results suggest SOD2 as a newly identified gene conferring susceptibility to leprosy. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.

  6. Frequency of retinopathy in newly diagnosed patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus (dm)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khan, K.A.; Kamran, S.M.; Qureshi, M.N.

    2015-01-01

    This study was to determine the frequency of retinopathy in newly diagnosed type-II Diabetics. Study Design: Cross sectional descriptive study. Place and Duration of Study: It was conducted at Department of medicine, Military Hospital (MH), Rawalpindi from 1st Jan 2012 to 30 Jun 2012. Material and Methods: We included 200 patients of type-II DM from both genders diagnosed in last 03 months from both outdoor and indoor departments in the age range of 40 to 70 years by consecutive sampling. All patients having co morbidities affecting retina were excluded. Informed written consent was taken before enrollment. Formal approval of the study was taken from hospital ethical committee. Ocular Fundoscopy was performed with WelchAllyn Ophthalmoscope (REF 11470) as per standard protocols and both eyes were examined. The grade of DR (diabetic retinopathy) awarded as per highest changes in any of the two eyes. All tests were carried by a single person to avoid inter-observer variations. Findings of ocular fundoscopy were confirmed by ophthalmologist. All data was analyzed by using SPSS version 11. Results: Out of 200 subjects 63.5% were male and 36.5% were female. Age ranged from 40 to 70 years with mean age of 51.05+ 6.910 years. 29 (14.5%) subjects had Diabetic retinopathy. Out of 29 patients, 24 (82.8%) had preproliferative and 5 (17.2%) had proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Conclusion: A significant proportion of diabetic patients have retinopathy at the time of diagnosis of their disease which is more common in males and with increasing age. It is recommended to thoroughly screen the newly diagnosed diabetics for early detection of diabetic retinopathy and its management involving early referral to eye specialist. (author)

  7. Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in Children with Interstitial Lung Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dziekiewicz, M A; Karolewska-Bochenek, K; Dembiński, Ł; Gawronska, A; Krenke, K; Lange, J; Banasiuk, M; Kuchar, E; Kulus, M; Albrecht, P; Banaszkiewicz, A

    2016-01-01

    Gastroesophageal reflux disease is common in adult patients with interstitial lung disease. However, no data currently exist regarding the prevalence and characteristics of the disease in pediatric patients with interstitial lung disease. The aim of the present study was to prospectively assess the incidence of gastroesophageal reflux disease and characterize its features in children with interstitial lung disease. Gastroesophageal reflux disease was established based on 24 h pH-impedance monitoring (MII-pH). Gastroesophageal reflux episodes (GERs) were classified according to widely recognized criteria as acid, weakly acid, weakly alkaline, or proximal. Eighteen consecutive patients (15 boys, aged 0.2-11.6 years) were enrolled in the study. Gastroesophageal reflux disease was diagnosed in a half (9/18) of children. A thousand GERs were detected by MII-pH (median 53.5; IQR 39.0-75.5). Of these, 585 (58.5 %) episodes were acidic, 407 (40.7 %) were weakly acidic, and eight (0.8 %) were weakly alkaline. There were 637 (63.7 %) proximal GERs. The patients in whom gastroesophageal reflux disease was diagnosed had a significantly higher number of proximal and total GERs. We conclude that the prevalence of gastroesophageal reflux disease in children with interstitial lung disease is high; thus, the disease should be considered regardless of presenting clinical symptoms. A high frequency of non-acid and proximal GERs makes the MII-pH method a preferable choice for the detection of reflux episodes in this patient population.

  8. Therapeutic effects of intensive inpatient rehabilitation in advanced Parkinson's disease

    OpenAIRE

    Kaseda, Yumiko; Ikeda, Junko; Sugihara, Katsunobu; Yamawaki, Takemori; Kohriyama, Tatsuo; Matsumoto, Masayasu

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Background The importance of rehabilitation therapy in Parkinson's disease is well recognized. However, the effects of an inpatient rehabilitation program for advanced Parkinson's disease have not been fully investigated. Aim To assess the effects of intensive inpatient rehabilitation. Methods We enrolled 31 patients (mean age 69.5 ? 9.4 years; mean disease duration 8.8 ? 6.4 years) with advanced Parkinson's disease, without severe cognitive impairment. The median Hoehn?Yahr stage wa...

  9. Emerging tropical diseases in Australia. Part 5. Hendra virus

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tulsiani, Suhella; Graham, G C; Moore, P R

    2011-01-01

    gene of the virus and the discovery that the virus had an exceptionally large genome subsequently led to HeV being assigned to a new genus, Henipavirus, along with Nipah virus (a newly emergent virus in pigs). The regular outbreaks of HeV-related disease that have occurred in Australia since 1994 have...

  10. Cost effectiveness of screening of all newly recruited employees for diabetes at a tertiary care hospital.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ali, Niloufer Sultan; Khuwaja, Ali Khan

    2007-01-01

    Diabetes Mellitus is a disease which remains asymptomatic for long duration of time and usually diagnosed either when gets complicated or by routine or opportunistic screening. The practice of universal screening is not recommended, particularly in constraint resources. However, we embarked with a study to assess the yield of recommended screening for Type 2 diabetes in all the newly recruited employees at a tertiary care hospital in Karachi. All the information required for this study was collected from medical records of all newly recruited employees of nursing services department of a tertiary care hospital of Karachi, Pakistan, over a period of 5 months (August 2004 to December 2004). Out of 360 subjects, 326, whose information was found to be complete, were included for final analysis. Mean age of the study subjects was 25.3 +/- 4.7 years and their mean casual plasma glucose level was 99.1 +/- 16.3 mg/dl. 315 (96.6%) study subjects had casual plasma glucose level of 139 mg/dl or less. Only 10 (3.1%) study subjects had casual plasma glucose levels between 140 to 199 mg/dl. Just one employee, 41 years old, was found to have casual plasma glucose level of 213 mg/dl. In this study, screening of all individuals for diabetes had a very low yield. Recommendation of universal screening for diabetes does not represent a good use of resources and perhaps not cost-effective. However, periodic screening of high risk individuals should be warranted.

  11. Incremental prognostic value of coronary computed tomographic angiography high-risk plaque characteristics in newly symptomatic patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fujimoto, Shinichiro; Kondo, Takeshi; Takamura, Kazuhisa; Baber, Usman; Shinozaki, Tomohiro; Nishizaki, Yuji; Kawaguchi, Yuko; Matsumori, Rie; Hiki, Makoto; Miyauchi, Katsumi; Daida, Hiroyuki; Hecht, Harvey; Stone, Gregg W; Narula, Jagat

    2016-06-01

    The incremental prognostic value of the plaque features in coronary computed tomographic angiography (CTA) has not been well assessed. This study was designed to determine whether CTA high-risk plaques have prognostic value incremental to the Framingham risk score (FRS) and the severity of luminal obstruction. A total of 628 newly symptomatic patients without known coronary artery disease underwent CTA. They were followed for a median of 677 days during which there were 26 cardiac events, including cardiac death, acute myocardial infarction, and hospitalization for unstable angina. Incremental prognostic value of adding plaque characteristics to the number of diseased vessels and the FRS was evaluated using 3 Cox models and net reclassification indexes. The discrimination index was significantly increased by adding the number of diseased vessels to the FRS (change in c-statistic from 65.8% to 78.6%, p=0.028) but not significantly by further adding plaque characteristics (change in c-statistic from 78.6% to 80.0%, p=0.812). However, improved model-fitting by adding plaque characteristics into the linear combination with risk score and the number of diseased vessels (p=0.007 from likelihood ratio test) and the lowest value of Akaike's information criteria of that model indicated that plaque characteristics improved both predictive accuracy and discrimination perspective. More subjects reclassified by plaque characteristics were moved to directions consistent with their subsequent cardiac event status than in an inconsistent direction. Evaluation of CTA plaque characteristics may provide incremental prognostic value to the number of diseased vessels and the FRS. Copyright © 2015 Japanese College of Cardiology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. [Psycho-social factors of sexual failure among newly married Uyghur young males].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Erkin, Ashim; Hamrajan, Memtili; Kadirjan, Mijit; Adil, Eli; Elijan, Abdureshit; Ibrahim, Ubul; Abdulla, Tursun; Hasanjan, Abdurehim; Turgun, Hekim; Eli, Ablet; Eset, Metmusa

    2016-08-01

    To study the psycho-social risk factors of sexual failure among newly married young males in the Uyghur population. We conducted a paired case control study of 186 newly married Uyghur young males (aged 17-30 [23.4±2.9] yr) with sexual failure and another 186 (aged 18-34 [24.0±3.1] yr) with no such problem as controls. We performed a logistic regression analysis on the possible psycho-social risk factors of this condition. Logistic regression analysis showed that the risk factors of sexual failure among the newly married men included personality (OR=0.271, 95% CI 0.176-0.420), income (OR=0.391, 95% CI 0.264-0.580), history of masturbation (OR=0.824, 95% CI 0.710-0.956), premarital sex (OR=0.757, 95% CI 0.677-0.847), sense of obligation (OR=1.756, 95% CI 1.157-2.693), equality of the social status (OR=0.574, 95% CI 0.435-0.756), degree of mutual care (OR=1.605, 95% CI 1.268-2.032), female's psychological obstacle (OR=2.832, 95% CI 1.221-6.569), and religion (OR=0.643, 95% CI 0.472-0.967). There was a statistical significance in the correlation between these factors and sexual failure in the newly married males (all Ppsycho-social factors, which necessitates sexual education among young males and particularly pre-marriage sexual education and psychological guide among both males and females.

  13. Incidental radiologic findings at breast cancer diagnosis and likelihood of disease recurrence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brothers, Joel M; Kidwell, Kelley M; Brown, Richard K J; Henry, N Lynn

    2016-01-01

    Despite guidelines recommending against its routine use, perioperative imaging for distant metastases is frequently performed in newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, uncovering incidental findings of uncertain significance. We assessed the clinical significance of incidental findings by determining if their presence is associated with disease recurrence. A retrospective review of staging imaging was performed in patients with stage II or III invasive breast cancer diagnosed during 2008-2009 at a large academic medical center. Data related to perioperative imaging and disease recurrence were abstracted from the medical record. Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between incidental findings and time to disease recurrence. A total of 169 of 340 patients (49.7 %) underwent staging evaluation for distant metastases (CT chest, abdomen, pelvis, bone scan, and/or PET-CT). Of these, 146 (86.4 %) had at least one suspicious or indeterminate finding. Follow-up studies were performed in 73 (43.2 %) patients. Nineteen patients were diagnosed with metastatic disease at diagnosis, 18 of whom had stage III disease. In patients without metastatic disease at diagnosis, 32 later developed recurrence. Non-calcified pulmonary nodules were associated with shorter time to disease recurrence (hazard ratio 2.51, 95 % CI 1.13-5.57, p = 0.02). Imaging for distant metastases frequently reveals indeterminate findings, most of which are not associated with disease recurrence. The association between pulmonary nodules and recurrence warrants validation in an independent cohort. Overall, these findings support current guidelines recommending against routine extent of disease evaluation in patients with newly diagnosed stage II breast cancer.

  14. Eosinophils in Autoimmune Diseases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniela Čiháková

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Eosinophils are multifunctional granulocytes that contribute to initiation and modulation of inflammation. Their role in asthma and parasitic infections has long been recognized. Growing evidence now reveals a role for eosinophils in autoimmune diseases. In this review, we summarize the function of eosinophils in inflammatory bowel diseases, neuromyelitis optica, bullous pemphigoid, autoimmune myocarditis, primary biliary cirrhosis, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and other autoimmune diseases. Clinical studies, eosinophil-targeted therapies, and experimental models have contributed to our understanding of the regulation and function of eosinophils in these diseases. By examining the role of eosinophils in autoimmune diseases of different organs, we can identify common pathogenic mechanisms. These include degranulation of cytotoxic granule proteins, induction of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, release of proteases degrading extracellular matrix, immune modulation through cytokines, antigen presentation, and prothrombotic functions. The association of eosinophilic diseases with autoimmune diseases is also examined, showing a possible increase in autoimmune diseases in patients with eosinophilic esophagitis, hypereosinophilic syndrome, and non-allergic asthma. Finally, we summarize key future research needs.

  15. Eosinophils in Autoimmune Diseases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diny, Nicola L.; Rose, Noel R.; Čiháková, Daniela

    2017-01-01

    Eosinophils are multifunctional granulocytes that contribute to initiation and modulation of inflammation. Their role in asthma and parasitic infections has long been recognized. Growing evidence now reveals a role for eosinophils in autoimmune diseases. In this review, we summarize the function of eosinophils in inflammatory bowel diseases, neuromyelitis optica, bullous pemphigoid, autoimmune myocarditis, primary biliary cirrhosis, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and other autoimmune diseases. Clinical studies, eosinophil-targeted therapies, and experimental models have contributed to our understanding of the regulation and function of eosinophils in these diseases. By examining the role of eosinophils in autoimmune diseases of different organs, we can identify common pathogenic mechanisms. These include degranulation of cytotoxic granule proteins, induction of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, release of proteases degrading extracellular matrix, immune modulation through cytokines, antigen presentation, and prothrombotic functions. The association of eosinophilic diseases with autoimmune diseases is also examined, showing a possible increase in autoimmune diseases in patients with eosinophilic esophagitis, hypereosinophilic syndrome, and non-allergic asthma. Finally, we summarize key future research needs. PMID:28496445

  16. Three newly recorded Linyphiid spiders (Araneae: Linyphiidae from Korea

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sue Yeon Lee

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Three Linyphiid spiders, Caviphantes pseudosaxetorum Wunderlich, 1979, Erigone edentata Saito and Ono, 2001, and Savignia kawachiensis Oi, 1960, are reported for the first time from Korea with taxonomic illustrations and redescription. In this study, the genus Caviphantes Oi, 1960 is also newly recorded to Korean spider fauna.

  17. Analysis of Gait Pattern to Recognize the Human Activities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jay Prakash Gupta

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Human activity recognition based on the computer vision is the process of labelling image sequences with action labels. Accurate systems for this problem are applied in areas such as visual surveillance, human computer interaction and video retrieval. The challenges are due to variations in motion, recording settings and gait differences. Here we propose an approach to recognize the human activities through gait. Activity recognition through Gait is the process of identifying an activity by the manner in which they walk. The identification of human activities in a video, such as a person is walking, running, jumping, jogging etc are important activities in video surveillance. We contribute the use of Model based approach for activity recognition with the help of movement of legs only. Experimental results suggest that our method are able to recognize the human activities with a good accuracy rate and robust to shadows present in the videos.

  18. Recognizing intentions in infant-directed speech: evidence for universals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bryant, Gregory A; Barrett, H Clark

    2007-08-01

    In all languages studied to date, distinct prosodic contours characterize different intention categories of infant-directed (ID) speech. This vocal behavior likely exists universally as a species-typical trait, but little research has examined whether listeners can accurately recognize intentions in ID speech using only vocal cues, without access to semantic information. We recorded native-English-speaking mothers producing four intention categories of utterances (prohibition, approval, comfort, and attention) as both ID and adult-directed (AD) speech, and we then presented the utterances to Shuar adults (South American hunter-horticulturalists). Shuar subjects were able to reliably distinguish ID from AD speech and were able to reliably recognize the intention categories in both types of speech, although performance was significantly better with ID speech. This is the first demonstration that adult listeners in an indigenous, nonindustrialized, and nonliterate culture can accurately infer intentions from both ID speech and AD speech in a language they do not speak.

  19. How legumes recognize rhizobia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Via, Virginia Dalla; Zanetti, María Eugenia; Blanco, Flavio

    2016-01-01

    Legume plants have developed the capacity to establish symbiotic interactions with soil bacteria (known as rhizobia) that can convert N2 to molecular forms that are incorporated into the plant metabolism. The first step of this relationship is the recognition of bacteria by the plant, which allows to distinguish potentially harmful species from symbiotic partners. The main molecular determinant of this symbiotic interaction is the Nod Factor, a diffusible lipochitooligosaccharide molecule produced by rhizobia and perceived by LysM receptor kinases; however, other important molecules involved in the specific recognition have emerged over the years. Secreted exopolysaccharides and the lipopolysaccharides present in the bacterial cell wall have been proposed to act as signaling molecules, triggering the expression of specific genes related to the symbiotic process. In this review we will briefly discuss how transcriptomic analysis are helping to understand how multiple signaling pathways, triggered by the perception of different molecules produced by rhizobia, control the genetic programs of root nodule organogenesis and bacterial infection. This knowledge can help to understand how legumes have evolved to recognize and establish complex ecological relationships with particular species and strains of rhizobia, adjusting gene expression in response to identity determinants of bacteria.

  20. [Impact of Increased Supply of Newly Licensed Nurses on Hospital Nurse Staffing and Policy Implications].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Yunmi; You, Sunju; Kim, Jinhyun

    2017-12-01

    This study aimed to analyze the impact of increasing the supply of newly licensed nurses on improving the hospital nurse staffing grades for the period of 2009~2014. Using public administrative data, we analyzed the effect of newly licensed nurses on staffing in 1,594 hospitals using Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) ordered logistic regression, and of supply variation on improving staffing grades in 1,042 hospitals using GEE logistic regression. An increase of one newly licensed nurse per 100 beds in general units had significantly lower odds of improving staffing grades (grades 6~0 vs. 7) (odds ratio=0.95, p=.005). The supply of newly licensed nurses increased by 32% from 2009 to 2014, and proportion of hospitals whose staffing grade had improved, not changed, and worsened was 19.1%, 70.1%, and 10.8% respectively. Compared to 2009, the supply variation of newly licensed nurses in 2014 was not significantly related to the increased odds of improving staffing grades in the region (OR=1.02, p=.870). To achieve a balance in the regional supply and demand for hospital nurses, compliance with nurse staffing legislation and revisions in the nursing fee differentiation policy are needed. Rather than relying on increasing nurse supply, retention policies for new graduate nurses are required to build and sustain competent nurse workforce in the future. © 2017 Korean Society of Nursing Science

  1. Longitudinal trends and subgroup analysis in publication patterns for preclinical data of newly approved drugs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Köster, Ursula; Nolte, Ingo; Michel, Martin C

    2016-02-01

    Having observed a large variation in the number and type of original preclinical publications for newly registered drugs, we have explored whether longitudinal trends and/or factors specific for certain drugs or their manufacturers may explain such variation. Our analysis is based on 1954 articles related to 170 newly approved drugs. The number of preclinical publications per compound declined from a median of 10.5 in 1991 to 3 in 2011. A similar trend was observed for the number of in vivo studies in general, but not in the subset of in vivo studies in animal models of disease. The percentage of compounds with studies using isolated human cells or cell lines almost doubled over time from 37 to 72%. Number of publications did not exhibit major differences between compounds intended for human versus veterinary use, therapeutic areas, small molecules versus biologicals, or innovator versus follow-up compounds; however, some companies may publish fewer studies per compound than others. However, there were qualitative differences in the types of models being used depending on the therapeutic area; specifically, compounds for use in oncology very often used isolated cells and cell lines, often from human origin. We conclude that the large variation in number and type of reported preclinical data is not easily explained. We propose that pharmaceutical companies should consistently provide a comprehensive documentation of the preclinical data they generate as part of their development programs in the public domain to enable a better understanding of the drugs they intend to market.

  2. Genetic engineering in nonhuman primates for human disease modeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sato, Kenya; Sasaki, Erika

    2018-02-01

    Nonhuman primate (NHP) experimental models have contributed greatly to human health research by assessing the safety and efficacy of newly developed drugs, due to their physiological and anatomical similarities to humans. To generate NHP disease models, drug-inducible methods, and surgical treatment methods have been employed. Recent developments in genetic and developmental engineering in NHPs offer new options for producing genetically modified disease models. Moreover, in recent years, genome-editing technology has emerged to further promote this trend and the generation of disease model NHPs has entered a new era. In this review, we summarize the generation of conventional disease model NHPs and discuss new solutions to the problem of mosaicism in genome-editing technology.

  3. Comprehensive Context Recognizer Based on Multimodal Sensors in a Smartphone

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sungyoung Lee

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Recent developments in smartphones have increased the processing capabilities and equipped these devices with a number of built-in multimodal sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS interfaces, Wi-Fi access, and proximity sensors. Despite the fact that numerous studies have investigated the development of user-context aware applications using smartphones, these applications are currently only able to recognize simple contexts using a single type of sensor. Therefore, in this work, we introduce a comprehensive approach for context aware applications that utilizes the multimodal sensors in smartphones. The proposed system is not only able to recognize different kinds of contexts with high accuracy, but it is also able to optimize the power consumption since power-hungry sensors can be activated or deactivated at appropriate times. Additionally, the system is able to recognize activities wherever the smartphone is on a human’s body, even when the user is using the phone to make a phone call, manipulate applications, play games, or listen to music. Furthermore, we also present a novel feature selection algorithm for the accelerometer classification module. The proposed feature selection algorithm helps select good features and eliminates bad features, thereby improving the overall accuracy of the accelerometer classifier. Experimental results show that the proposed system can classify eight activities with an accuracy of 92.43%.

  4. Hope in newly diagnosed cancer patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duggleby, Wendy; Ghosh, Sunita; Cooper, Dan; Dwernychuk, Lynne

    2013-11-01

    Hope is important to cancer patients as it helps them deal with their diagnosis. Little is known about hope in newly diagnosed cancer patients. Based on the Transcending Possibilities conceptual model of hope, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of hope with pain, energy, and psychological and demographic characteristics in newly diagnosed adult oncology outpatients. Data from 310 New Patient Assessment Forms from cancer outpatients' health records were collected. Health records from the first six months of 2009 were reviewed and data were collected on hope, energy, pain, depression, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, and demographic variables. A generalized linear modeling approach was used to study the relationship of hope scores with these variables. Hypothesized variables and variables that were significant at the P = 0.01 level from the univariate analysis were entered into the multivariate model, with hope scores as the dependent variable. Hope scores were significantly negatively related to age (P = 0.02). More specifically, oncology patients who were 65 years of age or older had significantly less hope than those under the age of 65 years (P = 0.01). Gender (P = 0.009) also was a significant factor, with men having higher hope scores than women. No other variables were significant. Older adults comprise the majority of persons in Canada with cancer. The lower hope scores found in this age group compared with their younger counterparts underscore the importance of further research. This study provides a foundation for future research in this important area for oncology patients. Copyright © 2013 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Bridges to Excellence--recognizing high-quality care: analysis of physician quality and resource use.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosenthal, Meredith B; de Brantes, Francois S; Sinaiko, Anna D; Frankel, Matthew; Robbins, Russell D; Young, Sara

    2008-10-01

    To examine whether physicians who sought and received Bridges to Excellence (BTE) recognition performed better than similar physicians on a standardized set of population-based performance measures. Cross-sectional comparison of performance data. Using a claims dataset of all commercially insured members from 6 health plans in Massachusetts, we examined population-based measures of quality and resource use for physicians recognized by the BTE programs Physician Office Link and Diabetes Care Link, compared with nonrecognized physicians in the same specialties. Differences in performance were tested using generalized linear models. Physician Office Link-recognized physicians performed significantly better than their nonrecognized peers on measures of cervical cancer screening, mammography, and glycosylated hemoglobin testing. Diabetes Care Link-recognized physicians performed significantly better on all 4 diabetes process measures of quality, with the largest differences observed in microalbumin screening (17.7%). Patients of Physician Office Link-recognized physicians had a significantly greater percentage of their resource use accounted for by evaluation and management services (3.4%), and a smaller percentage accounted for by facility (-1.6%), inpatient ancillary (-0.1%), and nonmanagement outpatient services (-1.0%). After adjustment for patient age and sex, and case mix, Physician Office Link-recognized physicians had significantly fewer episodes per patient (0.13) and lower resource use per episode (dollars 130), but findings were mixed for Diabetes Care Link-recognized physicians. Our findings suggest that the BTE approach to ascertaining physician quality identifies physicians who perform better on claims-based quality measures and primary care physicians who use a less resource-intensive practice style.

  6. A review of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) of parasitic origin ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    fore a now recognized mode of transmission – sexual contact. This in turn has led to giardiasis being classified as a sexually transmitted disease by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. This review identifies its occurrence mainly in homosexual populations of the developed world ...

  7. Skin Manifestations of Endocrine Diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demirkesen, Cuyan

    2015-01-01

    Endocrine diseases may result in changes in cutaneous function and morphology, which cause various skin manifestations, including nonspecific or pathognomonic signs. Some of these manifestations are already known dermatologic diseases with only increased frequency in this patient group. As a result the skin may the play role of a screen displaying endocrine disorders, either due to hormone excess or deficiency. Awareness of the skin manifestations may permit prompt and adequate approach to the patients, and therefore facilitate the early diagnosis of the endocrine disease and even be life saving. Some of these manifestations may be recognized clinically, but sometimes they need to be confirmed histopathologically. In this article, many endocrine diseases and their associated skin lesions will be reviewed briefly.

  8. Cognitive functions in newly diagnosed patients with HIV infection in a tertiary health facility: Assessment using community screening interview for dementia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    T.A. Sumonu

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: Neurocognitive dysfunction is a detrimental complication of HIV infection. In this study we attempt to characterize the pattern of cognitive dysfunction in a sample of Nigerian patients with newly diagnosed HIV infection. Methods: We conducted a prospective study in which 50 patients with newly diagnosed HIV infection were studied along with 50 normal control subjects. The participants were evaluated with the medical history, general, physical and neurological examination. Laboratory evaluation and chest X-Ray were done for all patients. The Community Screening Interview for Dementia (CSID questionnaire was administered to all the study participants. Results: About 70% of the patients were in advanced disease stage. The mean age (SD of the patients and controls in years were 36.44±8.22 and 35.40±11.53 respectively. More than half (56% of the patients had secondary level of education (12years of education. About 20% of the patients had severe neurocognitive impairment while 48% had minor neurocognitive disorder. The patients with HIV infection performed poorly in the domains of language, memory, orientation, attention/calculation and praxis relative to controls (p0.05 but the presence of opportunistic infections had negative impact on the performances on orientation and total CSID scores in the patients with HIV infection (p<0.05. Conclusion: Patients with newly diagnosed HIV infection have poor cognitive functions when compared to normal controls and some presence of opportunistic infections in the patient is a significant risk factor for cognitive impairment. Keywords: Human immunodeficiency virus infection, Cognitive functions, Dementia, Nigeria

  9. Recognizing limitations in eddy current testing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Van Drunen, G.; Cecco, V.S.

    1981-11-01

    This paper addresses known limitations and constraints in eddy current nondestructive testing. Incomplete appreciation for eddy current limitations is believed to have contributed to both under-utilization and misapplication of the technique. Neither situation need arise if known limitations are recognized. Some, such as the skin depth effect, are inherent to electromagnetic test methods and define the role of eddy current testing. Others can be overcome with available technology such as surface probes to find circumferential cracks in tubes and magnetic saturation of ferromagnetic alloys to eliminate permeability effects. The variables responsible for limitations in eddy current testing are discussed and where alternative approaches exist, these are presented. Areas with potential for further research and development are also identified

  10. Comorbidities and risk factors associated with newly diagnosed epilepsy in the U.S. pediatric population.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oh, Ahyuda; Thurman, David J; Kim, Hyunmi

    2017-10-01

    Neurobehavioral comorbidities can be related to underlying etiology of epilepsy, epilepsy itself, and adverse effects of antiepileptic drugs. We examined the relationship between neurobehavioral comorbidities and putative risk factors for epilepsy in children with newly diagnosed epilepsy. We conducted a retrospective analysis of children aged ≤18years in 50 states and the District of Columbia, using the Truven Health MarketScan® commercial claims and encounters database from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2013. The eligible study cohort was continuously enrolled throughout 2013 as well as enrolled for any days during a baseline period of at least the prior 2years. Newly diagnosed cases of epilepsy were defined by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification-coded diagnoses of epilepsy or recurrent seizures and evidence of prescribed antiepileptic drugs during 2013, when neither seizure codes nor seizure medication claims were recorded during baseline periods. Twelve neurobehavioral comorbidities and eleven putative risk factors for epilepsy were measured. More than 6 million children were analyzed (male, 51%; mean age, 8.8years). A total of 7654 children were identified as having newly diagnosed epilepsy (125 per 100,000, 99% CI=122-129). Neurobehavioral comorbidities were more prevalent in children with epilepsy than children without epilepsy (60%, 99% CI=58.1-61.0 vs. 23%, CI=23.1-23.2). Children with epilepsy were far more likely to have multiple comorbidities (36%, 99% CI=34.3-37.1) than those without epilepsy (8%, 99% CI=7.45-7.51, Pepilepsy were detected in 28% (99% CI=26.9-29.6) of children with epilepsy. After controlling for demographics, neurobehavioral comorbidities, family history of epilepsy, and other risk factors than primary interest, neonatal seizures had the strongest independent association with the development of epilepsy (OR=29.8, 99% CI=23.7-37.3, Pepilepsy, those with both epilepsy and risk factors were

  11. NREL: News - Students Recognized for Creativity during Energy Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Event Recognized for Creativity during Energy Education Event Golden, Colo., May 13, 2002 Tapping the power of the sun was the theme of the May 11 Solarbrate Education event at the U.S. Department Assistance Foundation, Oakwood Homes, Home Depot, E-Star Colorado, Governor's Office of Energy Management

  12. Systematic analysis of phosphotyrosine antibodies recognizing single phosphorylated EPIYA-motifs in CagA of Western-type Helicobacter pylori strains.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Judith Lind

    -phospho CagA peptides, and that all of them recognized phosphotyrosines in mammalian proteins. These data are valuable in judicious application of commercial anti-phosphotyrosine antibodies and in characterization of CagA phosphorylation during infection and disease development.

  13. Death Concerns among Individuals Newly Diagnosed with Lung Cancer

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lehto, Rebecca; Therrien, Barbara

    2010-01-01

    Confronting the reality of death is an important challenge for individuals facing life-threatening illness such as lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death. Few studies, however, document the nature of death-related concerns in individuals newly diagnosed with lung cancer. The aims of this exploratory study were to examine unsolicited…

  14. Changes in immunological status among newly-diagnosed HIV-infected in Denmark 1995-2005

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hoegh, S.; Lohse, N.; Hansen, A.B.

    2008-01-01

    INTRODUCTION: The incidence of new HIV diagnoses in Denmark has remained stable since 1991, but it has increased among the subgroup of homosexual men in recent years. This may reflect an actual increase in newly infected, e.g. as a result of increased risk behaviour, or it may reflect increased HIV....... MATERIALS AND METHODS: Observational study based on the Danish HIV Cohort Study, which includes all adults seen at Danish HIV clinics since 1995. RESULTS: From 2000 to 2004 the number of newly-infected homosexual men increased (from 69 to 123), particularly in persons under 30 years (from 5 to 42......). The median CD4 cell count at the time of diagnosis increased in this group (median 19.1 cells/microL per year [95% CI: 3.7-11.3]), while it remained stable among heterosexually infected. The number of newly-diagnosed homosexually infected under 30 years with a CD4 cell count over 400 cells/microL increased...

  15. Automated Facial Coding Software Outperforms People in Recognizing Neutral Faces as Neutral from Standardized Datasets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter eLewinski

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Little is known about people’s accuracy of recognizing neutral faces as neutral. In this paper, I demonstrate the importance of knowing how well people recognize neutral faces. I contrasted human recognition scores of 100 typical, neutral front-up facial images with scores of an arguably objective judge – automated facial coding (AFC software. I hypothesized that the software would outperform humans in recognizing neutral faces because of the inherently objective nature of computer algorithms. Results confirmed this hypothesis. I provided the first-ever evidence that computer software (90% was more accurate in recognizing neutral faces than people were (59%. I posited two theoretical mechanisms, i.e. smile-as-a-baseline and false recognition of emotion, as possible explanations for my findings.

  16. Recognizing and responding to uncertainty: a grounded theory of nurses' uncertainty.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cranley, Lisa A; Doran, Diane M; Tourangeau, Ann E; Kushniruk, Andre; Nagle, Lynn

    2012-08-01

    There has been little research to date exploring nurses' uncertainty in their practice. Understanding nurses' uncertainty is important because it has potential implications for how care is delivered. The purpose of this study is to develop a substantive theory to explain how staff nurses experience and respond to uncertainty in their practice. Between 2006 and 2008, a grounded theory study was conducted that included in-depth semi-structured interviews. Fourteen staff nurses working in adult medical-surgical intensive care units at two teaching hospitals in Ontario, Canada, participated in the study. The theory recognizing and responding to uncertainty characterizes the processes through which nurses' uncertainty manifested and how it was managed. Recognizing uncertainty involved the processes of assessing, reflecting, questioning, and/or being unable to predict aspects of the patient situation. Nurses' responses to uncertainty highlighted the cognitive-affective strategies used to manage uncertainty. Study findings highlight the importance of acknowledging uncertainty and having collegial support to manage uncertainty. The theory adds to our understanding the processes involved in recognizing uncertainty, strategies and outcomes of managing uncertainty, and influencing factors. Tailored nursing education programs should be developed to assist nurses in developing skills in articulating and managing their uncertainty. Further research is needed to extend, test and refine the theory of recognizing and responding to uncertainty to develop strategies for managing uncertainty. This theory advances the nursing perspective of uncertainty in clinical practice. The theory is relevant to nurses who are faced with uncertainty and complex clinical decisions, to managers who support nurses in their clinical decision-making, and to researchers who investigate ways to improve decision-making and care delivery. ©2012 Sigma Theta Tau International.

  17. Unmet information needs and limited health literacy in newly diagnosed breast cancer patients over the course of cancer treatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Halbach, Sarah Maria; Ernstmann, Nicole; Kowalski, Christoph; Pfaff, Holger; Pförtner, Timo-Kolja; Wesselmann, Simone; Enders, Anna

    2016-09-01

    To investigate unmet information needs in newly diagnosed breast cancer patients over the course of cancer treatment and its association with health literacy. We present results from a prospective, multicenter cohort study (PIAT). Newly diagnosed breast cancer patients (N=1060) were surveyed directly after breast cancer surgery, 10 and 40 weeks later. Pooled linear regression modeling was employed analyzing changes in unmet information needs over time and its association with health literacy. Unmet information needs on side effects and medication and medical examination results and treatment options were high and increased during the first 10 weeks after breast cancer surgery. Considering health promotion and social issues, unmet information needs started high and decreased during post-treatment. Patients with limited health literacy had higher unmet information needs. Our results indicate a mismatch in information provision and breast cancer patients' information needs. Patients with limited health literacy may be at a distinct disadvantage in having their information needs met over the course of breast cancer treatment. Strategies are needed to reduce unmet information needs in breast cancer patients considering treatment-phase and health literacy and thereby enable them to better cope with their diseases. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Development and characterization of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies against canine distemper virus hemagglutinin protein.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bi, Zhenwei; Xia, Xingxia; Wang, Yongshan; Mei, Yongjie

    2015-04-01

    Canine distemper virus (CDV) causes a serious multisystemic disease in dogs and other carnivora. Hemagglutinin (H) protein-specific antibodies are mainly responsible for protective immunity against CDV infection. In the present study, six neutralizing MAbs to the H protein of CDV were newly obtained and characterized by immunizing BALB/c mice with a recent Chinese field isolate. Competitive binding inhibition assay revealed that they recognized four distinct antigenic regions of the H protein. Immunofluorescence assay and western blotting showed that all MAbs recognize the conformational rather than the linear epitopes of the H protein. Furthermore, in immunofluorescence and virus neutralization assays, two of the MAbs were found to react only with the recent Chinese field isolate and not with older CDV strains, including vaccine strain Onderstepoort, indicating there are neutralization-related antigenic variations between the recent Chinese field isolate and the older CDV strains examined in this study. The newly established MAbs are useful for differentiating the expanding CDV strains and could be used in immunotherapy and immunodiagnosis against infection with CDV. © 2015 The Societies and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

  19. Electrically and mechanically induced macroscopic body couple, a newly recognized phenomenon of electromechanical interaction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chen, P.J.

    1986-01-01

    Microscopically, when the molecules of certain materials are under the influence of external stimuli such as mechanical and electrical forces, several processes can happen. In particular, the centers of charge of the positive and negative ions of a molecule may displace with respect to each other. This notion leads to the macroscopic concept of polarization which has been exploited in the classical studies of piezoelectric and ferroelectric materials. In addition, the ions of the molecule may also rotate angularly relative to one another. Here an entirely new macroscopic concept of body couple which differs from the classical concept is introduced. It is shown that the simplest representations of the proposed constitutive relations lead to an equation within the context of the classical bending theory of thin plates whose solution is in remarkable agreement with recent experimental results concerning the bending of thin virgin ferroelectric ceramic discs under the action of small d.c. voltages. These experimental results cannot be explained by the classical notion of polarization. Therefore, the concept of macroscopic body couple introduced here is a fundamental feature which must be taken into account in the considerations of electromechanical interactions

  20. The History of East Asia as Newly Recognized from the Perspective of Korean Historians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cho Young-hun

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Miyazima Hiroshi and Bae Hang-seob, eds. Tong Asia nŭn myŏt si inga?: Tong Asia-sa ŭi saeroun ihae rŭl ch’ajasŏ 동아시아는 몇 시인가?: 동아시아사의 새로운 이해를 찾아서 [What time is East Asia? In search of a new understanding of East Asian history]. Seoul: Nŏmŏ puksŭ, 2015. ISBN: 9788994606392. The Eurocentrism and modern-centrism that have established themselves as the predominant discourses of historians may need to be further pushed aside by new discourses. Sinocentrism, decentralism, multiple modernities, alternative modernity—these are just a few of the candidates. No one knows what the dominant discourse is going to be down the road. Fourteen authors, including editors Miyazima Hiroshi and Bae Hang-seob, contributed to the collection What Time Is East Asia? In Search of a New Understanding of East Asian History in 2015. This book presents a new historical discourse that emerged in Korea as a critique of Eurocentrism and modern-centrism. The title refers to a question posed by Alexander Woodside in his 2006 book, Lost Modernities, and is meant to suggest that the historical experience of East Asia cannot be grasped by historical perspectives based on Eurocentrism...

  1. In vitro cultivation of a newly recognized Babesia sp. in dogs in North Carolina.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lehtinen, Lauren E; Birkenheuer, Adam J; Droleskey, Robert E; Holman, Patricia J

    2008-02-14

    A novel large Babesia sp. from an infected dog was cultivated in vitro by microaerophilous stationary phase culture methodology. A primary culture initiated in enriched RPMI-1640 medium supplemented with 40% canine serum and incubated in a 2% oxygen environment supported parasite growth in vitro. Subsequent subcultures into enriched HL-1 medium with 20% fetal bovine serum also supported parasite propagation. Cultures were successfully introduced to 5% carbon dioxide in air atmosphere at passage 4. To date, the parasites have been continuously cultured through 35 passages, although the parasitemias are low, ranging from 0.2 to 0.3%. Parasites cultured in RPMI with canine serum were cryopreserved and successfully recovered from liquid nitrogen storage. The small subunit ribosomal rRNA gene sequence was identical in blood-derived and culture-derived parasites, differing in a single base position from the previously reported sequence for this Babesia sp. The ultrastructure of the parasite was consistent with that of other large Babesia spp., except that the spherical body contained numerous round particles unlike the inclusions previously described in Babesia spp.

  2. T cells recognizing a peptide contaminant undetectable by mass spectrometry

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Brezar, Vedran; Culina, Slobodan; Østerbye, Thomas

    2011-01-01

    Synthetic peptides are widely used in immunological research as epitopes to stimulate their cognate T cells. These preparations are never completely pure, but trace contaminants are commonly revealed by mass spectrometry quality controls. In an effort to characterize novel major histocompatibility...... complex (MHC) Class I-restricted ß-cell epitopes in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice, we identified islet-infiltrating CD8+ T cells recognizing a contaminating peptide. The amount of this contaminant was so small to be undetectable by direct mass spectrometry. Only after concentration by liquid...... chromatography, we observed a mass peak corresponding to an immunodominant islet-specific glucose-6-phosphatase catalytic subunit-related protein (IGRP)(206-214) epitope described in the literature. Generation of CD8+ T-cell clones recognizing IGRP(206-214) using a novel method confirmed the identity...

  3. Do Preschoolers Recognize The Emotional Expressiveness of Colors in Realistic and Abstract Art Paintings?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pouliou, Dimitra; Bonoti, Fotini; Nikonanou, Niki

    2018-01-01

    The present study was designed to examine preschoolers' ability to recognize the emotional expressiveness of an art painting, through its colors. To attain this aim 78 children, 3-5 years old were presented with realistic and abstract paintings conveying either happiness or sadness and were asked to choose those which matched the appropriate emotion. In total 16 paintings were used, which varied in color, while their subject matter was held as constant as possible after they had been previously rated by a group of adults to ensure that they conveyed the two emotions under investigation. Results showed that children's ability to recognize the emotional expressiveness of a painting through its colors appears at 3 years old and increases significantly at 4 and 5 years old. It was also found that the mood of happiness was more easily recognized than that of sadness, while the style of art paintings (realistic vs. abstract) did not affect children's ability to recognize emotions.

  4. Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is recognized by ECT2 during mitosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Mo; Bian, Chunjing; Yu, Xiaochun

    2014-01-01

    Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is an unique posttranslational modification and required for spindle assembly and function during mitosis. However, the molecular mechanism of poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) in mitosis remains elusive. Here, we show the evidence that PAR is recognized by ECT2, a key guanine nucleotide exchange factor in mitosis. The BRCT domain of ECT2 directly binds to PAR both in vitro and in vivo. We further found that α-tubulin is PARylated during mitosis. PARylation of α-tubulin is recognized by ECT2 and recruits ECT2 to mitotic spindle for completing mitosis. Taken together, our study reveals a novel mechanism by which PAR regulates mitosis.

  5. Nonmotor symptoms in a malaysian Parkinson's disease population.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Azmin, Shahrul; Khairul Anuar, Abdul Manaf; Tan, Hui Jan; Nafisah, Wan Yahya; Raymond, Azman Ali; Hanita, Othman; Shah, Shamsul Azhar; Norlinah, Mohamed Ibrahim

    2014-01-01

    Background. The nonmotor symptoms are important determinants of health and quality of life in Parkinson's disease but are not well recognized and addressed in clinical practice. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of nonmotor symptoms and their impact on quality of life in patients with Parkinson's disease. Methods. This was a cross-sectional study among patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease. Exclusion criteria were a Mini Mental State Examination score of diet playing a role in this observation requires further study.

  6. α-Synuclein oligomers and clinical implications for Parkinson disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalia, Lorraine V.; Kalia, Suneil K.; McLean, Pamela J.; Lozano, Andres M.; Lang, Anthony E.

    2012-01-01

    Protein aggregation within the central nervous system has been recognized as a defining feature of neurodegenerative diseases since the early 20th century. Since that time, there has been a growing list of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson disease, which are characterized by inclusions of specific pathogenic proteins. This has led to the long-held dogma that these characteristic protein inclusions, which are composed of large insoluble fibrillar protein aggregates and visible by light microscopy, are responsible for cell death in these diseases. However, the correlation between protein inclusion formation and cytotoxicity is inconsistent suggesting another form of the pathogenic proteins may be contributing to neurodegeneration. There is emerging evidence implicating soluble oligomers, smaller protein aggregates not detectable by conventional microscopy, as potential culprits in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. The protein α-synuclein is well recognized to contribute to the pathogenesis of Parkinson disease and is the major component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites. However, α-synuclein also forms oligomeric species with certain conformations being toxic to cells. The mechanisms by which these α-synuclein oligomers cause cell death are being actively investigated as they may provide new strategies for diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson disease and related disorders. Here we review the possible role of α-synuclein oligomers in cell death in Parkinson disease and discuss the potential clinical implications. PMID:23225525

  7. Differential Recognition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-Specific Epitopes as a Function of Tuberculosis Disease History.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scriba, Thomas J; Carpenter, Chelsea; Pro, Sebastian Carrasco; Sidney, John; Musvosvi, Munyaradzi; Rozot, Virginie; Seumois, Grégory; Rosales, Sandy L; Vijayanand, Pandurangan; Goletti, Delia; Makgotlho, Edward; Hanekom, Willem; Hatherill, Mark; Peters, Bjoern; Sette, Alessandro; Arlehamn, Cecilia S Lindestam

    2017-09-15

    Individuals with a history of tuberculosis (TB) disease are at elevated risk of disease recurrence. The underlying cause is not known, but one explanation is that previous disease results in less-effective immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). We hypothesized that the repertoire of Mtb-derived epitopes recognized by T cells from individuals with latent Mtb infection differs as a function of previous diagnosis of active TB disease. T-cell responses to peptide pools in samples collected from an adult screening and an adolescent validation cohort were measured by IFN-γ enzyme-linked immunospot assay or intracellular cytokine staining. We identified a set of "type 2" T-cell epitopes that were recognized at 10-fold-lower levels in Mtb-infected individuals with a history of TB disease less than 6 years ago than in those without previous TB. By contrast, "type 1" epitopes were recognized equally well in individuals with or without previous TB. The differential epitope recognition was not due to differences in HLA class II binding, memory phenotypes, or gene expression in the responding T cells. Instead, "TB disease history-sensitive" type 2 epitopes were significantly (P < 0.0001) more homologous to sequences from bacteria found in the human microbiome than type 1 epitopes. Preferential loss of T-cell reactivity to Mtb epitopes that are homologous to bacteria in the microbiome in persons with previous TB disease may reflect long-term effects of antibiotic TB treatment on the microbiome.

  8. Neurological manifestations in Fabry's disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Møller, Anette Torvin; Jensen, Troels Staehelin

    2007-01-01

    . Neurological symptoms, such as burning sensations (occasionally accompanied by acroparesthesia) and stroke, are among the first to appear, and occur in both male and female patients. A delay in establishing the diagnosis of Fabry's disease can cause unnecessary problems, especially now that enzyme replacement...... treatment is available to prevent irreversible organ damage. Females with Fabry's disease who present with pain have often been ignored and misdiagnosed because of the disorder's X-linked inheritance. This Review will stress the importance of recognizing neurological symptoms for the diagnosis of Fabry...

  9. Study on mid and long-term strategic plan formulation for newly-constructed NPP

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Song Lin

    2014-01-01

    Mid and Long-term strategic plan plays a key role for the management of a newly constructed nuclear power company. Among others, process, goals, and risk management, are the primary concerns during plan preparing. The article analyzed these three areas for Fuqing NPP, including the formulating process for the plan, the mid and long-term goal setting of the company, the major risk analysis and countermeasure selection therefore. Through that solutions and suggestions for strategic plan formulation were concluded for newly-constructed NPP. (author)

  10. How to recognize late-onset hypogonadism in men with sexual dysfunction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corona, Giovanni; Rastrelli, Giulia; Vignozzi, Linda; Mannucci, Edoardo; Maggi, Mario

    2012-01-01

    Late-onset hypogonadism (LOH) has been considered the most common form of male hypogonadism with a prevalence of approximately 1 in 100 men. Diagnosis of LOH should be made in symptomatic men with unequivocally low serum testosterone (T) levels. However, its clinical presentation is often insidious and difficult to recognize because it is characterized by nonspecific symptoms that make differential diagnosis with physiological ageing problematic. Sexual dysfunction is the most important determinant for medical consultation and the most specific symptom associated with low T. We therefore analysed a consecutive series of 1734 subjects who attended our unit for sexual dysfunction to investigate the associations between low T (different thresholds), sexual parameters, medical history data (delayed puberty, pituitary disease or cryptorchidism) and their physical exam results. Metabolic parameters, in particular waist circumference, display the greatest accuracy in detecting low T. We found that only the association of several symptoms and signs could significantly raise the clinical suspicion of low T. Structured inventories, which cluster together symptoms and signs of hypogonadism, can help clinicians suspect androgen deficiency. In particular, structured interviews, such as ANDROTEST, have been demonstrated to have a greater accuracy when compared to self reported questionnaires in detecting low T levels. PMID:22286862

  11. Limitations of fecal calprotectin at diagnosis in untreated pediatric Crohn's disease

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shaoul, Ron; Sladek, Marlgozata; Turner, Dan

    2012-01-01

    Fecal Calprotectin (FC) is a validated screening test for intestinal inflammation in Crohn's disease (CD). The objective of the study was to prospectively evaluate the limitations of FC for identifying CD in newly diagnosed untreated pediatric patients and to assess the association of FC levels w...

  12. Interstitial Lung Disease in a 70-Year-Old Man with Ulcerative Colitis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Collins, Hampton W; Frye, Jeanetta W

    2018-01-01

    Interstitial lung disease is a rare but increasingly recognized extraintestinal manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease that can have devastating consequences if left untreated. We report a case of ulcerative colitis-associated interstitial lung disease presenting with acute hypoxic respiratory failure during an ulcerative colitis flare. Gastroenterologists and pulmonologists should be aware of the numerous bronchopulmonary signs and symptoms that can suggest systemic illness in inflammatory bowel disease.

  13. Maintaining Professional Commitment as a Newly Credentialed Athletic Trainer in the Secondary School Setting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mazerolle, Stephanie M; Myers, Sarah L; Walker, Stacy E; Kirby, Jessica

    2018-03-01

      Professional commitment, or one's affinity and loyalty to a career, has become a topic of interest in athletic training. The expanding research on the topic, however, has omitted newly credentialed athletic trainers (ATs). For an impressionable group of practitioners, transitioning to clinical practice can be stressful.   To explore the professional commitment of newly credentialed ATs in the secondary school setting.   Secondary school.   Qualitative study.   A total of 31 newly credentialed ATs (6 men, 25 women; mean age = 24 ± 3 years) participated. Of these, 17 ATs (4 men, 13 women; mean age = 25 ± 4 years) were employed full time in the secondary school setting, and 14 ATs (2 men, 12 women; mean age = 23.0 ± 2.0 years) were graduate assistant students in the secondary school setting.   All participants completed semistructured interviews, which focused on their experiences in the secondary school setting and transitioning into the role and setting. Transcripts were analyzed using the phenomenologic approach. Creditability was established by peer review, member checks, and researcher triangulation.   Four main findings related to the professional commitment of newly credentialed ATs in the secondary school setting were identified. Work-life balance, professional relationships formed with the student-athletes, enjoyment gained from working in the secondary school setting, and professional responsibility emerged as factors facilitating commitment.   Affective commitment is a primary facilitator of professional commitment. Newly credentialed ATs who enjoy their jobs and have time to engage in nonwork roles are able to maintain a positive professional commitment. Our findings align with the previous literature and help strengthen our understanding that rejuvenation and passion are important to professional commitment.

  14. Los Alamos Plutonium Facility newly generated TRU waste certification

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gruetzmacher, K.; Montoya, A.; Sinkule, B.; Maez, M.

    1997-01-01

    This paper presents an overview of the activities being planned and implemented to certify newly generated contact handled transuranic (TRU) waste produced by Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) Plutonium Facility. Certifying waste at the point of generation is the most important cost and labor saving step in the WIPP certification process. The pedigree of a waste item is best known by the originator of the waste and frees a site from expensive characterization activities such as those associated with legacy waste. Through a cooperative agreement with LANLs Waste Management Facility and under the umbrella of LANLs WIPP-related certification and quality assurance documents, the Plutonium Facility will be certifying its own newly generated waste. Some of the challenges faced by the Plutonium Facility in preparing to certify TRU waste include the modification and addition of procedures to meet WIPP requirements, standardizing packaging for TRU waste, collecting processing documentation from operations which produce TRU waste, and developing ways to modify waste streams which are not certifiable in their present form

  15. Newly velocity field of Sulawesi Island from GPS observation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarsito, D. A.; Susilo, Simons, W. J. F.; Abidin, H. Z.; Sapiie, B.; Triyoso, W.; Andreas, H.

    2017-07-01

    Sulawesi microplate Island is located at famous triple junction area of the Eurasian, India-Australian, and Philippine Sea plates. Under the influence of the northward moving Australian plate and the westward motion of the Philippine plate, the island at Eastern part of Indonesia is collide and with the Eurasian plate and Sunda Block. Those recent microplate tectonic motions can be quantitatively determine by GNSS-GPS measurement. We use combine GNSS-GPS observation types (campaign type and continuous type) from 1997 to 2015 to derive newly velocity field of the area. Several strategies are applied and tested to get the optimum result, and finally we choose regional strategy to reduce error propagation contribution from global multi baseline processing using GAMIT/GLOBK 10.5. Velocity field are analyzed in global reference frame ITRF 2008 and local reference frame by fixing with respect alternatively to Eurasian plate - Sunda block, India-Australian plate and Philippine Sea plates. Newly results show dense distribution of velocity field. This information is useful for tectonic deformation studying in geospatial era.

  16. Degradation of dibenzofuran via multiple dioxygenation by a newly isolated Agrobacterium sp. PH-08.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le, T T; Murugesan, K; Nam, I-H; Jeon, J-R; Chang, Y-S

    2014-03-01

    To demonstrate the biodegradation of dibenzofuran (DF) and its structural analogs by a newly isolated Agrobacterium sp. PH-08. To assess the biodegradation potential of newly isolated Agrobacterium sp. PH-08, various substrates were evaluated as sole carbon sources in growth and biotransformation experiments. ESI LC-MS/MS analysis revealed the presence of angular degrading by-products as well as lateral dioxygenation metabolites in the upper pathway. The metabolites in the lower pathway also were detected. In addition, the cometabolically degraded daughter compounds of DF-related compounds such as BP and dibenzothiophene (DBT) in dual substrate degradation were observed. Strain PH-08 exhibited the evidence of meta-cleavage pathway as confirmed by the activity and gene expression of catechol-2,3-dioxygenase. Newly isolated bacterial strain, Agrobacterium sp. PH-08, grew well with and degraded DF via both angular and lateral dioxygenation as demonstrated by metabolites identified through ESI LC-MS/MS and GC-MS analyses. The other heterocyclic pollutants were also cometabolically degraded. Few reports have described the complete degradation of DF by a cometabolic lateral pathway. Our study demonstrates the novel results that the newly isolated strain utilized the DF as a sole carbon source and mineralized it via multiple dioxygenation. © 2013 The Society for Applied Microbiology.

  17. Therapeutic potential of curcumin in gastrointestinal diseases

    OpenAIRE

    Rajasekaran, Sigrid A

    2011-01-01

    Curcumin, also known as diferuloylmethane, is derived from the plant Curcuma longa and is the active ingredient of the spice turmeric. The therapeutic activities of curcumin for a wide variety of diseases such as diabetes, allergies, arthritis and other chronic and inflammatory diseases have been known for a long time. More recently, curcumin’s therapeutic potential for preventing and treating various cancers is being recognized. As curcumin’s therapeutic promise is being explored more system...

  18. Newly graduated nurses use of knowledge sources in clinical decison-making - a qualitative study

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Voldbjerg, Siri

    of clinical decisions, based on transparent, articulate and reflective use of knowledge sources. Furthermore, it is implied that nurses are able to retrieve, asses, implement and evaluate research evidence. To meet these requirements, nursing educations around the world have organised curricula to educate...... graduated nurses do not work within a framework of evidence-based practice. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore which knowledge sources newly graduated nurses’ use in their clinical decision-making and why they use them in order to understand why newly graduated nurses use research and components...... within evidence-based practice to a limited extent. The thesis is based on a synthesis of findings from two studies. The aim of the first study was to explore which knowledge sources newly graduated nurses use in clinical decision making as reported within international qualitative research. The purpose...

  19. Deterministic SLIR model for tuberculosis disease mapping

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aziz, Nazrina; Diah, Ijlal Mohd; Ahmad, Nazihah; Kasim, Maznah Mat

    2017-11-01

    Tuberculosis (TB) occurs worldwide. It can be transmitted to others directly through air when active TB persons sneeze, cough or spit. In Malaysia, it was reported that TB cases had been recognized as one of the most infectious disease that lead to death. Disease mapping is one of the methods that can be used as the prevention strategies since it can displays clear picture for the high-low risk areas. Important thing that need to be considered when studying the disease occurrence is relative risk estimation. The transmission of TB disease is studied through mathematical model. Therefore, in this study, deterministic SLIR models are used to estimate relative risk for TB disease transmission.

  20. Characterization of newly isolated lytic bacteriophages active against Acinetobacter baumannii.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maia Merabishvili

    Full Text Available Based on genotyping and host range, two newly isolated lytic bacteriophages, myovirus vB_AbaM_Acibel004 and podovirus vB_AbaP_Acibel007, active against Acinetobacter baumannii clinical strains, were selected from a new phage library for further characterization. The complete genomes of the two phages were analyzed. Both phages are characterized by broad host range and essential features of potential therapeutic phages, such as short latent period (27 and 21 min, respectively, high burst size (125 and 145, respectively, stability of activity in liquid culture and low frequency of occurrence of phage-resistant mutant bacterial cells. Genomic analysis showed that while Acibel004 represents a novel bacteriophage with resemblance to some unclassified Pseudomonas aeruginosa phages, Acibel007 belongs to the well-characterized genus of the Phikmvlikevirus. The newly isolated phages can serve as potential candidates for phage cocktails to control A. baumannii infections.