PTEROCARPUS MARSUPIUM HEARTWOOD EXTRACT RESTORES LEARNING, MEMORY AND COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN A STZ-NA INDUCED DIABETES ANIMAL MODEL

Objective: Study was designed to assess the P.marsupium heartwood aqueous extract effect on diabetes induced cognitive impairment.Methods: Diabetes mellitus was induced by Streptozotocin (STZ) & Nicotinamide (NA) intraperitoneal route injection. Animals were divided into 7 groups for comparing the activity of P.marsupium at two doses 250 mg/kg & 500 mg/kg b. w against standard (Glibenclamide) & controls groups. Rats having blood glucose above 250 mg/dL were considered as diabetic. Learning & memory was tested using Morris water maze. Time taken to reach the platform (escape latencies) by animals was noted from day 1 to 8 and probe trial was conducted on day 9 to record the time spent in the different quadrants.Results: Blood glucose levels were significantly (p<0.001) reduced in plant treated and glibenclamide groups when compared to diabetic controls. Also both the treated groups had decreased escape latencies in learning phase. During probe trial, test and standard treated groups spent significantly more time in target quadrant with less entries into other quadrants compared to untreated diabetic controls.Conclusion: The results of this investigation revealed that extract of P. marsupium provides beneficial effects on learning and memory in diabetes rats by providing the potential antihyperglycemic action.Keywords: Cognitive impairment, Diabetes mellitus, Diabetic neuropathy, Morris water maze, Pterocarpus marsupium heartwood

Transfer Learning with Deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for Pneumonia Detection using Chest X-ray

Pneumonia is a life-threatening disease, which occurs in the lungs caused by either bacterial or viral infection. It can be life-endangering if not acted upon in the right time and thus an early diagnosis of pneumonia is vital. The aim of this paper is to automatically detect bacterial and viral pneumonia using digital x-ray images. It provides a detailed report on advances made in making accurate detection of pneumonia and then presents the methodology adopted by the authors. Four different pre-trained deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)- AlexNet, ResNet18, DenseNet201, and SqueezeNet were used for transfer learning. 5247 Bacterial, viral and normal chest x-rays images underwent preprocessing techniques and the modified images were trained for the transfer learning based classification task. In this work, the authors have reported three schemes of classifications: normal vs pneumonia, bacterial vs viral pneumonia and normal, bacterial and viral pneumonia. The classification accuracy of normal and pneumonia images, bacterial and viral pneumonia images, and normal, bacterial and viral pneumonia were 98%, 95%, and 93.3% respectively. This is the highest accuracy in any scheme than the accuracies reported in the literature. Therefore, the proposed study can be useful in faster-diagnosing pneumonia by the radiologist and can help in the fast airport screening of pneumonia patients.Comment: 13 Figures, 5 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2003.1314

The molecular epidemiology of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia bacteraemia in a tertiary referral hospital in the United Arab Emirates 2000–2004

BACKGROUND: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is recognised as an important cause of nosocomial infection, especially in immunocompromised patients, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality. The treatment of S. maltophilia infection presents a therapeutic challenge. The precise modes of transmission of S. maltophilia in the hospital environment are not known and such knowledge is essential to target interventions to prevent spread. There are few published data on the patterns of nosocomial infection in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A recent study showed that S. maltophilia is an established cause of bloodstream infection in Tawam Hospital in the UAE. Little is known about its epidemiology in the hospital. METHODS: We describe the clinical characteristics of 25 episodes of S. maltophilia bacteraemia which occurred from 2000–2004. The strains were characterised using pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). RESULTS: All episodes were hospital-acquired and malignancy and central venous catheters were predisposing factors. Catheter-associated infection comprised 88% infection. Catheter removal was important for the successful management of catheter-associated infection. The results of PFGE suggested that there were as many strains as patients. S. maltophilia strains isolated from the same patient had indistinguishable PFGE profiles. CONCLUSION: PFGE is a valid and reproducible typing method for S. maltophilia. The precise sources and modes of spread of S. maltophilia in the hospital are still not known. Knowledge that person to person transmission was not a major mode of transmission enabled infection control interventions for S. maltophilia to be targeted more effectively

Early fluid bolus in adults with sepsis in the emergency department : a systematic review, meta-analysis and narrative synthesis

Background: Early intravenous fluids for patients with sepsis presenting with hypoperfusion or shock in the emergency department remains one of the key recommendations of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines to reduce mortality. However, compliance with the recommendation remains poor. While several interventions have been implemented to improve early fluid administration as part of sepsis protocols, the extent to which they have improved compliance with fluid resuscitation is unknown. The factors associated with the lack of compliance are also poorly understood. Methods: We conducted a systematic review, meta-analysis and narrative review to investigate the effectiveness of interventions in emergency departments in improving compliance with early fluid administration and examine the non-interventional facilitators and barriers that may influence appropriate fluid administration in adults with sepsis. We searched MEDLINE Ovid/PubMed, Ovid EMBASE, CINAHL, and SCOPUS databases for studies of any design to April 2021. We synthesised results from the studies reporting effectiveness of interventions in a meta-analysis and conducted a narrative synthesis of studies reporting non-interventional factors. Results: We included 31 studies out of the 825 unique articles identified in the systematic review of which 21 were included in the meta-analysis and 11 in the narrative synthesis. In meta-analysis, interventions were associated with a 47% improvement in the rate of compliance [(Random Effects (RE) Relative Risk (RR) = 1.47, 95% Confidence Interval (CI), 1.25–1.74, p-value < 0.01)]; an average 24 min reduction in the time to fluids [RE mean difference = − 24.11(95% CI − 14.09 to − 34.14 min, p value < 0.01)], and patients receiving an additional 575 mL fluids [RE mean difference = 575.40 (95% CI 202.28–1353.08, p value < 0.01)]. The compliance rate of early fluid administration reported in the studies included in the narrative synthesis is 48% [RR = 0.48 (95% CI 0.24–0.72)]. Conclusion: Performance improvement interventions improve compliance and time and volume of fluids administered to patients with sepsis in the emergency department. While patient-related factors such as advanced age, co-morbidities, cryptic shock were associated with poor compliance, important organisational factors such as inexperience of clinicians, overcrowding and inter-hospital transfers were also identified. A comprehensive understanding of the facilitators and barriers to early fluid administration is essential to design quality improvement projects

Diagnostic Utility of Cerebral White Matter Integrity in Early Alzheimer's Disease

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Neuroscience on August 2010, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.3109/00207454.2010.494788.We compared white matter integrity with brain atrophy in healthy controls and participants with very mild dementia (Clinical Dementia Rating 0 vs. 0.5) from the Brain Aging Project, a longitudinal study of aging and memory at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Structural magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) including fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity were performed on 27 patients with very mild dementia (Clinical Dementia Rating = 0.5) of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), and 32 cognitively normal subjects. Patient groups were compared across 6 volumetric measures and 14 DTI regions of interest. Very mildly demented patients showed expected disease-related patterns of brain atrophy with reductions in whole-brain and hippocampal volumes most prominent. DTI indices of white matter integrity were mixed. Right parahippocampus showed significant but small disease-related reductions in fractional anisotropy. Right parahippocampus and left internal capsule showed greater mean diffusivity in early DAT compared with controls. A series of discriminant analyses demonstrated that gray matter atrophy was a significantly better predictor of dementia status than were DTI indices. Brain atrophy was most strongly related to very mild DAT. Modest disease-related white matter anomalies were present in temporal cortex, and deep white matter had limited discriminatory diagnostic power, probably because of the very mild stage of disease in these participants

Review on Photomicrography based Full Blood Count (FBC) Testing and Recent Advancements

With advancements in related sub-fields, research on photomicrography in life science is emerging and this is a review on its application towards human full blood count testing which is a primary test in medical practices. For a prolonged period of time, analysis of blood samples is the basis for bio medical observations of living creatures. Cell size, shape, constituents, count, ratios are few of the features identified using DIP based analysis and these features provide an overview of the state of human body which is important in identifying present medical conditions and indicating possible future complications. In addition, functionality of the immune system is observed using results of blood tests. In FBC tests, identification of different blood cell types and counting the number of cells of each type is required to obtain results. Literature discuss various techniques and methods and this article presents an insightful review on human blood cell morphology, photomicrography, digital image processing of photomicrographs, feature extraction and classification, and recent advances. Integration of emerging technologies such as microfluidics, micro-electromechanical systems, and artificial intelligence based image processing algorithms and classifiers with cell sensing have enabled exploration of novel research directions in blood testing applications.

Cardiorespiratory fitness and preserved medial temporal lobe volume in Alzheimer's Disease

This is not the final published version.Exercise and cardiorespiratory (CR) fitness may moderate age-related regional brain changes in nondemented older adults (ND). The relationship of fitness to Alzheimer's disease (AD) related brain change is understudied, particularly in the hippocampus which is disproportionately affected in early AD. The role of apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) genotype in modulating this relationship is also unknown. Nondemented (n=56) and early-stage AD subjects (n=61) over age 65 had MRI and CR fitness assessments. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) techniques were utilized to identify AD-related atrophy. We analyzed the relationship of CR fitness with white and gray matter within groups, assessed fitness-related brain volume change in areas most affected by AD-related atrophy, and then analyzed differential fitness-brain relationships between apoE4 carriers. Atrophy was present in the medial temporal, temporal, and parietal cortices in subjects with mild AD. There was a significant positive correlation of CR fitness with parietal and medial temporal volume in AD subjects. ND subjects did not have a significant relationship between brain volume and CR fitness in the global or SVC analyses. There was not a significant interaction for fitness × apoE4 genotype in either group. In early-stage AD, cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with regional brain volumes in the medial temporal and parietal cortices suggesting that maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness may modify AD-related brain atrophy