Does the cardiovascular drug levosimendan prevent iodinated contrast medium nephrotoxicity with glycerol aggravation in rats?

Background We investigated whether levosimendan prevents contrast medium nephrotoxicity with glycerol aggravation in rats. Methods Forty-eight Wistar albino rats were assigned to eight groups (n = 6 x 8). No medication was administered to group I (controls); glycerol (intramuscular injection of 25% glycerol, 10 mL/kg) group II; intravenous iohexol 10 mL/kg to group III; glycerol and iohexol to group IV; iohexol and intraperitoneal levosimendan 0.25 mg/kg to group V; glycerol, iohexol, and levosimendan 0.25 mg/kg to group VI; iohexol and levosimendan 0.5 mg/kg to group VII; and glycerol, iohexol, and levosimendan 0.5 mg/kg to group VIII. One-day water withdrawal and glycerol injection prompted renal damage; iohexol encouraged nephrotoxicity; levosimendan was administered 30 min after glycerol injection and continued on days 2, 3, and 4. The experiment was completed on day 5. Serum blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine levels, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, glutathione (GSH), malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), nuclear factor kappa ss (NFK-ss), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and histopathological marks were assessed. One-way analysis of variance and Duncan's multiple comparison tests were used. Results Levosimendan changed serum BUN (p = 0.012) and creatinine (p = 0.018), SOD (p = 0.026), GSH (p = 0.012), and MDA (p = 0.011). Levosimendan significantly downregulated TNF-alpha (p = 0.022), NFK-ss (p = 0.008), and IL-6 (p = 0.033). Histopathological marks of hyaline and haemorrhagic cast were improved in levosimendan-injected groups. Conclusion Levosimendan showed nephroprotective properties due to its vasodilator, oxidative distress decreasing and inflammatory cytokine preventing belongings

Comparing computer supported or concrete material assisted instructions in terms of effectiveness and classroom management

2nd World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES-2010) Location: Bahceschir Univ, Istanbul, TURKEY Date: FEB 04-08, 2010This study aimed to compare computer supported and concrete material assisted instructions in terms of effectiveness and classroom management. It was conducted with action research model and with 16 sixth grade pupils in a primary school in Trabzon in the 2008-2009 educational year. The data was based on the results of pre and post tests conducted with students, researcher observations and unstructured interviews. Two homogenous groups were formed according to the pretest; one to be concrete material (CM) group and the other one to be computer supported material (CSM) group. Afterward, answers to 11 questions, which were prepared to comply with the concerned learning gain were sought in both groups. Finally, the pre achievement test was re-applied. The results showed that CSM group students were more successful than CM group, classroom management was easier in CSM group and both of the groups enjoyed the applications

A whole-slide image grading benchmark and tissue classification for cervical cancer precursor lesions with inter-observer variability

he cervical cancer developing from the precancerous lesions caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) has been one of the preventable cancers with the help of periodic screening. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL) are two types of grading conventions widely accepted by pathologists. On the other hand, inter-observer variability is an important issue for final diagnosis. In this paper, a whole-slide image grading benchmark for cervical cancer precursor lesions is created and the “Uterine Cervical Cancer Database” introduced in this article is the first publicly available cervical tissue microscopy image dataset. In addition, a morphological feature representing the angle between the basal membrane (BM) and the major axis of each nucleus in the tissue is proposed. The presence of papillae of the cervical epithelium and overlapping cell problems are also discussed. Besides that, the inter-observer variability is also evaluated by thorough comparisons among decisions of pathologists, as well as the final diagnosis. [Figure not available: see fulltext.].Istanbul Technical University ; Yildiz Technical Universit

Gene expression and histopathological evaluation of thiamine pyrophosphate on optic neuropathy induced with ethambutol in rats

Cetin, Nihal/0000-0003-3233-8009;WOS: 000385691100004PubMed: 27803853AIM: To compare the effects of thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) and thiamine (TM) in oxidative optic neuropathy in rats induced by ethambutol. METHODS: the animals were divided into four groups: a control group (CG), an ethambutol control (ETC) group, TM plus ethambutol group (TMG), and TPP plus ethambutol group (TPPG). One hour after intraperitoneal administration of TM 20 mg/kg to the TMG group and TPP 20 mg/kg to TPPG group, 30 mg/kg ethambutol was given via gavage to all the groups but the CG. This procedure was repeated once daily for 90d. After that period, all rats were exposed to high levels of anaesthesia in order to investigate the gene expression of malondialdehyde and glutathione in removed optic nerve tissue and histopathologically to examine these tissues. RESULTS: Malondialdehyde gene expression significantly increased, whereas glutathione gene expression significantly decreased in the ETC group compared to the CG. TM could not prevent the increase of malondialdehyde gene expression and the decrease of glutathione, while TPP significantly could suppress. Histopathologically, significant vacuolization in the optic nerve, single-cell necrosis in the glial cells, and a decrease in oligodendrocytes were observed in the ETC group. Vacuolization in the optic nerve, a decrease in oligodendrocytes and single-cell necrosis were found in the TMG group, while no pathological finding was observed in the TPPG group except for mild vacuolization. CONCLUSION: TPP protects the optic nerve against the ethambutol-induced toxicity but TM does not. TPP can be beneficial in prophilaxis of optic neuropathy in ethambutol therapy

Classification of cervical precursor lesions via local histogram and cell morphometric features

Cervical squamous intra-epithelial lesions (SIL) are precursor cancer lesions and their diagnosis is important because patients have a chance to be cured before cancer develops. In the diagnosis of the disease, pathologists decide by considering the cell distribution from the basal to the upper membrane. The idea, inspired by the pathologists' point of view, is based on the fact that cell amounts differ in the basal, central, and upper regions of tissue according to the level of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN). Therefore, histogram information can be used for tissue classification so that the model can be explainable. In this study, two different classification schemes are proposed to show that the local histogram is a useful feature for the classification of cervical tissues. The first classifier is Kullback Leibler divergence-based, and the second one is the classification of the histogram by combining the embedding feature vector from morphometric features. These algorithms have been tested on a public dataset.The method we propose in the study achieved an accuracy performance of 78.69% in a data set where morphology-based methods were 69.07% and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) patch-based algorithms were 75.77%. The proposed statistical features are robust for tackling real-life problems as they operate independently of the lesions manifold.Scientific Research Projects Coordination Department (BAP), Istanbul Technical University ; Yildiz Technical Universit

Segmentation of precursor lesions in cervical cancer using convolutional neural networks

Ülkemizde ve dünyada en sık görülen kanser tiplerinden olan rahim ağzı (serviks) kanseri, kanser öncüsü lezyonlarından gelişmektedir. Kanser öncüsü bu lezyonların saptanması, hastanın kanser olmadan tedavi olmasına olanak sağladığiçin önemlidir ve analizleri yapan patologlar tarafından tanısı konmaktadır. Bu çalışmada evrişimsel sinir ağları (ESA) yöntemi kullanılarak kanser öncüsü lezyonların otomatik tespitini gerçekletiren bir sistem tasarlanmıştır. Eğitim aşamasında sistemin görüntülerden lezyonları tanıma başarımı %92 olarak elde edilmektedir. Eğitim aşamasından sonra bütün görüntüler 60×60 boyutlarında bir pencere ile evriştirilerek bölütlenmektedir. İlgili lezyonların Dice katsayısına göre %81.71 başarı ile bölütlendiği bir model oluşturulmuştur.Cervical carcinoma is one of the frequently seen cancers in the world and in our country, develops from precursor lesions. These precursor lesions are analyzed by pathologists so that the diagnosis of the disease can be made. In this study, a system that performs automatic detection of pre-cancerous lesions was performed using the convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In the training phase, lesion recognition performance of the proposed system has reached 92%. Thereafter, whole image was segmented by using 60 × 60 pixel tiles during the training phase. After all, the precursor lesions were segmented with 81.71% Dice coefficient

Food composition of fruits in Turkey: research outputs from the new Turkish Food Composition Database, TürKomp

In this study, both macro- and micro-nutrients of a total of 18 regional fruits were analyzed in order to launch a new and reliable food composition database (FCDB) of Turkish food composition, TürKomp. The new high quality analytical data were compared with some well-known FCDBs datasets. The new data produced in TürKomp is expected to be an invaluable source that would be used in dietary programmes and nutrition surveys in Turkey