A novel hepatitis C virus (HCV) subtype from Somalia and its classification into HCV clade 3.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) sequences from throughout the world have been grouped into six clades, based on recently proposed criteria. Here, the partial sequences and clade assignment are reported for three HCV isolates from chronic hepatitis C patients from Somalia, for whom conventional assays failed to identify the genotype. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences of the core, envelope 1 and part of the non- structural 5b regions suggests that all three isolates belong to a distinct HCV genetic group, tentatively classified as subtype 3h. This novel HCV subtype shows the highest sequence similarity with HCV isolates from Indonesia. Despite the fact that these patients were infected with HCV clade 3, none of them responded to standard interferon treatment

Corrosion Resistance Enhancement in Acidic solution for Austenitic Stainless Steel by Gas-Phase Hybrid Deposition Process

In acidic environments the corrosion rate of stainless steels is considered high, this is due to pitting occurrence in concentrated chloride environments. The Austenitic steels such as type 316 stainless steel generally not recommended for Hydrochloric acid storage in petroleum planets except when solutions are very dilute and at room temperature, otherwise pitting may occur. In this work, a multicomponent coating (Ti-B-N-C) was deposited on the austenitic stainless steels (AISI 316) that used in petroleum industry. The coating process has been achieved by mixed vapor deposition technique; this was done in attempt to improve the resistance to pitting corrosion for austenitic stainless steels surface. The structural characterization for the deposited Ti-Base coating was done by using XRD technique, and the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Electrochemical corrosion tests have been performed by using electrochemical test in 0.25M hydrochloric acid (HCl) as an aqueous solution at 22˚C to obtain the anodic polarization curves for the coated surfaces. Several interesting observations have been made During the test. As expected, the surface of the AISI 316 suffers from a sudden increase in the current density at the potential above 1500 mV due to the occurrence of pitting corrosion. In addition, the Ti-B-C-N coating surfaces show great future in reducing the current density of the steel surface in the anodic region, indicating improved pitting resistance for all Ti-based coating samples. No evidence for pitting corrosion was observed in the coated surfaces during electrochemical test even at potentials up to 2000 mV, instead, general corrosion was observed for the samples that was deposited at 750˚C since low potential values was observed for these samples

Microstructural Evolutions and Mechanical Properties of Drawn Medium Carbon Steel Wire

International audienceThis study focuses on the evolution in the microstructure, texture and mechanical properties of medium carbon steel wires obtained by wire drawing at Tréfissoud Company for the manufacturing of the spring mattress. Wire drawing induces elongation of grains in the direction of drawing with the development of the fibre texture parallel to the wire axis. Kinking and bending of cementite lamellae were observed during the drawing process. The work was carried out respectively on three states, wire rod and drawn states for two different amounts (ε %=43,6 and 60 %), using the optical and SEM microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction and X-ray diffraction analysis for examination of the microstructure and texture evolution, the hardness Vickers and tensile test to follow the curing of the studied wires

Diagnostic value of exome and whole genome sequencing in craniosynostosis

Background Craniosynostosis, the premature fusion of one or more cranial sutures, occurs in ~1 in 2250 births, either in isolation or as part of a syndrome. Mutations in at least 57 genes have been associated with craniosynostosis, but only a minority of these are included in routine laboratory genetic testing. Methods We used exome or whole genome sequencing to seek a genetic cause in a cohort of 40 subjects with craniosynostosis, selected by clinical or molecular geneticists as being high-priority cases, and in whom prior clinically driven genetic testing had been negative. Results We identified likely associated mutations in 15 patients (37.5%), involving 14 different genes. All genes were mutated in single families, except for IL11RA (two families). We classified the other positive diagnoses as follows: commonly mutated craniosynostosis genes with atypical presentation (EFNB1, TWIST1); other core craniosynostosis genes (CDC45, MSX2, ZIC1); genes for which mutations are only rarely associated with craniosynostosis (FBN1, HUWE1, KRAS, STAT3); and known disease genes for which a causal relationship with craniosynostosis is currently unknown (AHDC1, NTRK2). In two further families, likely novel disease genes are currently undergoing functional validation. In 5 of the 15 positive cases, the (previously unanticipated) molecular diagnosis had immediate, actionable consequences for either genetic or medical management (mutations in EFNB1, FBN1, KRAS, NTRK2, STAT3). Conclusions This substantial genetic heterogeneity, and the multiple actionable mutations identified, emphasises the benefits of exome/whole genome sequencing to identify causal mutations in craniosynostosis cases for which routine clinical testing has yielded negative results

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Validation of the ISTH/SSC bleeding assessment tool for inherited platelet disorders: a communication from the Platelet Physiology SSC

Careful assessment of the bleeding history is the first step in the evaluation of patients with mild/moderate bleeding disorders, and the use of a bleeding assessment tool (BAT) is strongly encouraged. Although a few studies have assessed the utility of the ISTH-BAT in patients with inherited platelet function disorders (IPFD) none of them was sufficiently large to draw conclusions and/or included appropriate control groups

Validation of the ISTH/SSC bleeding assessment tool for inherited platelet disorders : a communication from the Platelet Physiology SSC

Background: Careful assessment of bleeding history is the first step in the evaluation of patients with mild/moderate bleeding disorders, and the use of a bleeding assessment tool (BAT) is strongly encouraged. Although a few studies have assessed the utility of the ISTH-BAT in patients with inherited platelet function disorders (IPFD) none of them was sufficiently large to draw conclusions and/or included appropriate control groups. Objectives: The aim of the present study was to test the utility of the ISTH-BAT in a large cohort of patients with a well-defined diagnosis of inherited platelets disorder in comparison with two parallel cohorts, one of patients with type-1 von Willebrand disease (VWD-1) and one of healthy controls (HC). Patients/Methods: We enrolled 1098 subjects, 482 of whom had inherited platelet disorders (196 IPFD and 286 inherited platelet number disorders [IT]) from 17 countries. Results: IPFD patients had significantly higher bleeding score (BS; median 9) than VWD-1 patients (median 5), a higher number of hemorrhagic symptoms (4 versus 3), and higher percentage of patients with clinically relevant symptoms (score > 2). The ISTH-BAT showed excellent discrimination power between IPFD and HC (0.9 < area under the curve [AUC] < 1), moderate (0.7 < AUC < 0.9) between IPFD and VWD-1 and between IPFD and inherited thrombocytopenia (IT), while it was inaccurate (AUC  64 0.7) in discriminating IT from HC. Conclusions: The ISTH-BAT allows to efficiently discriminate IPFD from HC, while it has lower accuracy in distinguishing IPFD from VWD-1. Therefore, the ISTH-BAT appears useful for identifying subjects requiring laboratory evaluation for a suspected IPFD once VWD is preliminarily excluded

2019 ESC/EAS guidelines for the management of dyslipidaemias: Lipid modification to reduce cardiovascular risk

Cardiolog