Unsuccessful treatment of chronic norovirus infection with enteral immunoglobulin in patients with common variable immunodeficiency, case report

Background: Norovirus gastroenteritis is commonly an acute infection that lasts 2–3 days, but in immunocompromised patients norovirus can cause a chronic gastroenteritis lasting for years. Norovirus replicates in the gastrointestinal tract, but the pathway of viral clearance is not yet known. Promising results of enterally administered immunoglobulin in the treatment of chronic norovirus gastroenteritis in immunocompromised patients have previously been published. Case presentation: We report two individuals with common variable immunodeficiency and chronic debilitating norovirus gastroenteritis. Both patients were treated with enterally administered immunoglobulin via a duodenal feeding tube as other treatment modalities have been unsuccessful. The patients did not experience any immediate or long-term benefit of enterally administered immunoglobulin. Conclusion: Despite previous case reports of successful treatment of chronic norovirus infection among immunocompromised patients with enterally administered immunoglobulin, these two patients experienced no benefit of the treatment. This demonstrates the need for further research in treatment of chronic norovirus infection in immunocompromised patients

3D Statistical Shape Models Using Direct Optimisation of Description Length

We describea n a26`('9b method for buildingoptima 3D sta22j9b'2 sha e models from sets oftraj'Hj sha es. Althoughsha e models showconsideraj- promisea a bami for segmentingan interpreting imainga ma jordra wba k of theae9`2j h is the need toestaH-69 a dense correspondenceadenc a trance9 set ofexa')( sha es. It is importa t to esta)`9b the correct correspondence, otherwise poor models ca result. In 2D, thisca be a hieved usingma ua `la9`'-H`9b but in 3D this becomesimpra2`-269 We show it is possible toesta6jH9 correspondences automatically, byca6)22 the correspondence problema one of finding the`optima) paima)9b`2'2)9 of ea hsha e in thetra'-22 set. We describea n explicit representares ofsurfa6 paa6(9b`j"`9a tha ensures the resulting correspondencesad legac ag show how this representaen9ca bemaH('9b2)j to minimise thed933J29-2 length of the tra'H22 set using the model. This results incompaH models with good generab2(-'H9 properties. Resultsas reported for two sets ofbiomedica sha es, showingsignifica t improvement in model propertiescompa9' to thoseobta9j) usinga uniform surfam paam92))559b2'6

Evaluation of 3D Correspondence Methods for Model Building

The correspondence problem is of high relevance in the construction and use of statistical models. Statistical models are used for a variety of medical application, e.g. segmentation, registration and shape analysis. In this paper, we present comparative studies in three anatomical structures of four di#erent correspondence establishing methods