Leukemia

The transcript of a Witness Seminar held at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, on 15 May 2001.First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2003.©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2003. All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 May 2001. Introduction by Professor Sir David Weatherall, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.This transcript examines some of the major discoveries and developments in the management of leukaemia over the past 30 years, such as the discovery of the alkylating agents (chlorambucil and busulphan) at London’s Chester Beatty Research Institute, exchange transfusion and the exciting development of combined chemotherapy (daunorubicin and cytosine arabinoside) that led to more than 60 per cent of adults with acute myelogenous leukaemia achieving complete remission. The introduction of clinical trials and issues related to funding were also discussed. Those who contributed included Professor Daniel Catovsky, Professor David Galton, Professor John Goldman (Chair), Professor Frank Hayhoe, Professor Victor Hoffbrand, Professor Humphrey Kay, Professor John Lilleyman, Professor Ian MacLennan, Dr Gordon Piller, Dr Rosemary Shannon, and Dr Eve Wiltshaw. Christie D A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2003) Leukaemia, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 15. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity, no. 210183

Azure-Based Smart Monitoring System for Anemia-Like Pallor

Increasing costs of diagnostic healthcare have necessitated the development of hardware independent non-invasive Point of Care (POC) systems. Although anemia prevalence rates in global populations vary between 10% and 60% in various demographic groups, smart monitoring systems have not yet been developed for screening and tracking anemia-like pallor. In this work, we present two cloud platform-hosted POC applications that are directed towards smart monitoring of anemia-like pallor through eye and tongue pallor site images. The applications consist of a front-end graphical user interface (GUI) module and two different back-end image processing and machine learning modules. Both applications are hosted on a browser accessible tomcat server ported to an Azure Virtual Machine (VM). We observe that the first application spatially segments regions of interest from pallor site images with higher pallor classification accuracy and relatively longer processing times when compared to the lesser accurate yet faster second application. Also, both applications achieve 65%–98% accuracy in separating normal images from images with pallor or abnormalities. The optimized front-end module is significantly light-weight with a run-through time ratio of 10−5 with respect to the back-end modules. Thus, the proposed applications are portable and hardware independent, allowing for their use in pallor monitoring and screening tasks

Azure-Based Smart Monitoring System for Anemia-Like Pallor

Increasing costs of diagnostic healthcare have necessitated the development of hardware independent non-invasive Point of Care (POC) systems. Although anemia prevalence rates in global populations vary between 10% and 60% in various demographic groups, smart monitoring systems have not yet been developed for screening and tracking anemia-like pallor. In this work, we present two cloud platform-hosted POC applications that are directed towards smart monitoring of anemia-like pallor through eye and tongue pallor site images. The applications consist of a front-end graphical user interface (GUI) module and two different back-end image processing and machine learning modules. Both applications are hosted on a browser accessible tomcat server ported to an Azure Virtual Machine (VM). We observe that the first application spatially segments regions of interest from pallor site images with higher pallor classification accuracy and relatively longer processing times when compared to the lesser accurate yet faster second application. Also, both applications achieve 65%–98% accuracy in separating normal images from images with pallor or abnormalities. The optimized front-end module is significantly light-weight with a run-through time ratio of 10−5 with respect to the back-end modules. Thus, the proposed applications are portable and hardware independent, allowing for their use in pallor monitoring and screening tasks

Smoking and Second Hand Smoking in Adolescents with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Report from the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) Cohort Study

The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of smoking and second hand smoking [SHS] in adolescents with CKD and their relationship to baseline parameters at enrollment in the CKiD, observational cohort study of 600 children (aged 1-16 yrs) with Schwartz estimated GFR of 30-90 ml/min/1.73m2. 239 adolescents had self-report survey data on smoking and SHS exposure: 21 [9%] subjects had “ever” smoked a cigarette. Among them, 4 were current and 17 were former smokers. Hypertension was more prevalent in those that had “ever” smoked a cigarette (42%) compared to non-smokers (9%), p\u3c0.01. Among 218 non-smokers, 130 (59%) were male, 142 (65%) were Caucasian; 60 (28%) reported SHS exposure compared to 158 (72%) with no exposure. Non-smoker adolescents with SHS exposure were compared to those without SHS exposure. There was no racial, age, or gender differences between both groups. Baseline creatinine, diastolic hypertension, C reactive protein, lipid profile, GFR and hemoglobin were not statistically different. Significantly higher protein to creatinine ratio (0.90 vs. 0.53, p\u3c0.01) was observed in those exposed to SHS compared to those not exposed. Exposed adolescents were heavier than non-exposed adolescents (85th percentile vs. 55th percentile for BMI, p\u3c 0.01). Uncontrolled casual systolic hypertension was twice as prevalent among those exposed to SHS (16%) compared to those not exposed to SHS (7%), though the difference was not statistically significant (p= 0.07). Adjusted multivariate regression analysis [OR (95% CI)] showed that increased protein to creatinine ratio [1.34 (1.03, 1.75)] and higher BMI [1.14 (1.02, 1.29)] were independently associated with exposure to SHS among non-smoker adolescents. These results reveal that among adolescents with CKD, cigarette use is low and SHS is highly prevalent. The association of smoking with hypertension and SHS with increased proteinuria suggests a possible role of these factors in CKD progression and cardiovascular outcomes