7 research outputs found
Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer is one of the commonest cancers affecting individuals across the world. An improvement in survival has been attributed to multidisciplinary management, better diagnostics, improved surgical options for the primary and metastatic disease and advances in adjuvant therapy. In this book, international experts share their experience and knowledge on these different aspects in the management of colorectal cancer. An in depth analysis of screening for colorectal cancer, detailed evaluation of diagnostic modalities in staging colorectal cancer, recent advances in adjuvant therapy and principles and trends in the surgical management of colorectal cancer is provided. This will certainly prove to be an interesting and informative read for any clinician involved in the management of patients with colorectal cancer
Health and wellness evaluation and monitoring of donkey foals
The subject of "Health and Wellness Evaluation and Monitoring of Donkey Foals"
involves the utilization of ultrasound to identify structural changes in the umbilical
cord of newly born donkey foals, clinical assessment of SAA levels in newborn
donkey foals and lactating female donkeys, and the analysis of donkey colostrum and
milk. In addition, the health status of newborn donkey foals is evaluated through three
stages of metabolomic analysis of donkey milk, which includes feeding of probiotic
supplements. First, umbilical infections can cause serious health problems in equine foals, making
early diagnosis critical. This study aimed to evaluate the umbilical remnants of
donkey foals during the first week of life using ultrasonography. Fifteen healthy
donkey foals were included, and ultrasonographic measurements of the umbilical vein, arteries, and urachus were taken at 24 hours, 3 days, and 7 days after birth using a
portable ultrasound machine and a 5-7.5 MHz multifrequency linear probe. Statistical
analysis was conducted to assess any differences in measurements over time, with a
significance level of p < 0.05. The study found no significant differences in the
measurements of the umbilical remnants over time, but a correlation was observed
between body weight and the left artery at T0. The regression of the umbilical
remnant during the first week of life was slower than in equine foals but comparable
to results observed in calves. Therefore, these findings highlight the importance of
considering the different regression timing when assessing donkey foals with
umbilical remnant diseases in their first week of life. Meanwhile, the first post-partum period in equids requires close monitoring of
biochemical parameters and inflammatory markers such as serum amyloid A (SAA). However, there is limited information on SAA levels for donkeys during this stage. To address this, a study was conducted on 50 donkeys, including jennies and foals, to
assess routine biochemical profiles and SAA levels. Results showed that jennies had
higher alkaline phosphatase levels and lower bilirubin and cholesterol levels at 30
days of lactation compared to post-partum. Neonatal donkey foals had significantly higher levels of various biochemical parameters within 48 hours of birth, while older
foals at 30 days showed higher levels of phosphate and triglycerides. Notably, SAA
levels were significantly higher during the peripartum period in jennies and newborn
donkey foals compared to those recorded in lactating jennies and older foals at 30
days after birth. These findings highlight the importance of assessing SAA levels in
donkeys during the peripartum period and one month after foaling to monitor their
health status during this critical stage of adaptation to extrauterine life and lactation. Furthermore, donkey milk, which played a significant role in ancient times, has
regained its popularity as a functional food in the modern era. The increasing demand
for donkey milk is strongly linked to its suitability for infants who cannot be breastfed
and individuals with cow milk protein allergies. Donkey milk is also similar in
composition to human milk, making it a suitable alternative. The use of probiotics to
improve the health and productivity of dairy livestock has shown promising results. This study analyzed colostrum and milk samples from 20 healthy Ragusana jennies
using 1H NMR analysis, identifying 65 metabolites including sugars, amino acids, fatty acids, nucleotides, and others. The study found that 18 metabolites showed
different concentrations in colostrum and milk, with some metabolites decreasing
while others increased during lactation. In addition, the study revealed that probiotic
supplementation affected the concentration of 15 metabolites in milk, highlighting the
potential of nutritional interventions to improve milk quality and quantity. The
findings of this study suggest a conserved metabolic response to lactation across
different mammalian species, with similarities observed in the metabolome between
donkeys and women. Additionally, the changes in metabolic fingerprint between
colostrum and milk indicate that donkey milk is tailored to support foal development. However, further research is needed to evaluate the generalizability of these findings
to other breeds and species. The objective of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the health condition of
neonatal donkey foals. This will be achieved by employing a three-fold approach, evaluation of the health status of neonatal donkey foals, which will aid in the
development of effective management strategies to improve their well-being and
productivity. It is worth noting that the study will focus on a specific breed of donkeys, and further research will be needed to ascertain the generalizability of the findings to
other breeds and species
Multi-atlas and Gaussian Mixture Modeling Based Perirectal Fat Segmentation from CT Images
Accurate perirectal fat segmentation in CT images aids in estimating radiation dose delivered to the region of fat around the rectum during radiation therapy treatment of prostate cancer. Such a process is important in determining the resulting toxicity of the neighboring tissues. However automatic or semi-automatic segmentation of the perirectal fat in CT images is a challenging task due to inter patient anatomical variability, contrast variability and imaging artifacts. We propose a combined schema of multi-atlas and multi parametric Gaussian mixture modeling for perirectal fat segmentation in CT images. Multi-atlas based soft segmentation and multi parametric Gaussian mixture modeling aids in identifying the volume of interest (VOI). Thereafter expectation maximization (EM) based soft clustering of the intensities of the VOI refined with positional probabilities of the perirectal fat provides the segmentation of the perirectal fat. The proposed method achieves a mean sensitivity value of 0.88 +/- 0.07 and a mean specificity value of 0.998 +/- 0.001 with 5 patient datasets in a leave-one-patient-out validation framework. Qualitative results show a good approximation of the perirectal fat volume compared to the ground truth