592 research outputs found
Burden of hydrocoele assessed from medical and surgical records in a lymphatic filariasis endemic country, Samoa
Background: Samoa is a Pacific Island country that has long been known to have a high burden of lymphatic
filariasis. Little has been documented about the burden of disability due to the chronic complications of the
disease. We examined the rates of hydrocoele amongst the Samoan male population to better understand the
situation.
Methods: Information on numbers of suspected hydrocoele cases in men aged 18 years and older from 2006 to
2013 was sought using ICD-10 codes and/or keywords from three sources: the hospital patient information system
plus the surgical clinic and operating theater records in Tupua Tamasese Meaole and Malietoa Tanumafili II hospitals in
Samoa. Chart review of suspected hydrocoele cases was used to confirm the diagnosis of hydrocoele amongst suspected
cases. The following data items were extracted from patient records where available: date of diagnosis, age, village,
hydrocoele characteristics (duration, size, and volume), history and cause of injuries, whether lymphatic filariasis was a
differential diagnosis, whether ultrasound scan was used to verify diagnosis, and details of any surgery performed.
Population data were obtained from the Samoa Bureau of Statistics.
Results: There were 535 suspected cases identified from the 3 sources between 2006 and 2013, of which 328 were
diagnosed as hydrocoele; charts for 56 suspected cases (10.5%) could not be located. The mean age of men with
hydrocoele was 49.2 years. The proportion of men aged ≥ 18 years diagnosed with hydrocoele over the study period was
0.62% (328/52,944). North West Upolu had the highest proportion amongst the four regions of Samoa (p < 0.001). The
proportion of men presenting with hydrocoele increased with age (p < 0.001). 14.3% of patients had an injury that could
have contributed to the hydrocoele. Only 4.0% of all patient records had lymphatic filariasis recorded as a differential
diagnosis. 60.7% of all patients with hydrocoele had some form of surgery, with no difference between regions (p =
0.276). The majority of surgeries were hydrocoelectomies, where the tunica vaginalis is everted. The mean age of patients
that had surgery was 48.2 years. It was difficult to estimate hydrocoele size and duration due to non-standardized way of
reporting.
Conclusions: This study used multiple sources to document the number of hydrocoele cases that presented annually to
medical facilities in Samoa. This represents a minimum estimate of the burden since some cases may have not presented
for treatment. The numbers presenting have fluctuated over the years (2006 to 2013), and improvements in the reporting
system are needed. The health system needs to consider ways to address a large number of patients that still require
surgery, as well as conducting follow-up of those that did receive surgery. Additionally, clinicians should
consider lymphatic filariasis as a differential diagnosis for hydrocoeles
Interactive-predictive neural multimodal systems
[EN] Despite the advances achieved by neural models in sequence
to sequence learning, exploited in a variety of tasks, they still make errors.
In many use cases, these are corrected by a human expert in a posterior
revision process. The interactive-predictive framework aims to minimize
the human effort spent on this process by considering partial corrections
for iteratively refining the hypothesis. In this work, we generalize the
interactive-predictive approach, typically applied in to machine translation field, to tackle other multimodal problems namely, image and video
captioning. We study the application of this framework to multimodal
neural sequence to sequence models. We show that, following this framework, we approximately halve the effort spent for correcting the outputs
generated by the automatic systems. Moreover, we deploy our systems
in a publicly accessible demonstration, that allows to better understand
the behavior of the interactive-predictive framework.The research leading to these results has received funding from MINECO under grant
IDIFEDER/2018/025 Sistemas de fabricacion inteligentes para la industria 4.0,
action co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund 2014-2020 (FEDER),
and from the European Commission under grant H2020, reference 825111 (DeepHealth). We also acknowledge NVIDIA Corporation for the donation of GPUs used
in this work.Peris, Á.; Casacuberta Nolla, F. (2019). Interactive-predictive neural multimodal systems. Springer. 16-28. https://doi.org/978-3-030-31332-6_2S162
Psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic: Protocol and results of first three weeks from an international cross-section survey - focus on health professionals
Background
The psychological impact of COVID-19, resultant measures and future consequences to life will be unveiled in time.
Aim
To investigate the psychological impact of COVID-19, resultant restrictions, impact on behaviours and mental wellbeing globally. This early analysis, explores positive and adverse factors and behaviours with focus on healthcare professionals.
Methods
This is a cross-sectional survey, using a questionnaire based on published approaches to understand the psychological impact of COVID-19. The survey will be repeated at 6 months because of rapidly changing situation.
Results
We have presented results from first 3 weeks of the survey. Conclusions may change as more individuals take part over time. 7,917 participants completed the survey in the first 3 weeks; 7,271 are from the United Kingdom. 49.7% of the participants are healthcare professionals. There is high representation of female participants. Participants reporting suicidal thoughts is 32%. Healthcare professionals have reported mild depression and anxiety in higher proportions. Increasing age and female gender report higher compliance with government advice on COVID 19 whereas higher education, homeowners, key worker status, high alcohol, drug use and participants with pre-existing suicidal thoughts reported low compliance with government advice. Participants who reported suicidal thoughts pre-COVID are less likely to communicate with friends and family, or engage in coping strategies.
Conclusions
Evidence has shown an adverse psychological impact of previous pandemics on the population, especially wellbeing of healthcare professionals. Research should focus on identifying the need, preparing services and determining the factors that enhance and build resilience
Strict evolutionary conservation followed rapid gene loss on human and rhesus Y chromosomes
The human X and Y chromosomes evolved from an ordinary pair of autosomes during the past 200–300 million years[superscript 1, 2, 3]. The human MSY (male-specific region of Y chromosome) retains only three percent of the ancestral autosomes’ genes owing to genetic decay[superscript 4, 5]. This evolutionary decay was driven by a series of five ‘stratification’ events. Each event suppressed X–Y crossing over within a chromosome segment or ‘stratum’, incorporated that segment into the MSY and subjected its genes to the erosive forces that attend the absence of crossing over[superscript 2, 6]. The last of these events occurred 30 million years ago, 5 million years before the human and Old World monkey lineages diverged. Although speculation abounds regarding ongoing decay and looming extinction of the human Y chromosome[superscript 7, 8, 9, 10], remarkably little is known about how many MSY genes were lost in the human lineage in the 25 million years that have followed its separation from the Old World monkey lineage. To investigate this question, we sequenced the MSY of the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey, and compared it to the human MSY. We discovered that during the last 25 million years MSY gene loss in the human lineage was limited to the youngest stratum (stratum 5), which comprises three percent of the human MSY. In the older strata, which collectively comprise the bulk of the human MSY, gene loss evidently ceased more than 25 million years ago. Likewise, the rhesus MSY has not lost any older genes (from strata 1–4) during the past 25 million years, despite its major structural differences to the human MSY. The rhesus MSY is simpler, with few amplified gene families or palindromes that might enable intrachromosomal recombination and repair. We present an empirical reconstruction of human MSY evolution in which each stratum transitioned from rapid, exponential loss of ancestral genes to strict conservation through purifying selection
Activation of Ventral Tegmental Area 5-HT2C Receptors Reduces Incentive Motivation
FUNDING AND DISCLOSURE The research was funded by Wellcome Trust (WT098012) to LKH; and National Institute of Health (DK056731) and the Marilyn H. Vincent Foundation to MGM. The University of Michigan Transgenic Core facility is partially supported by the NIH-funded University of Michigan Center for Gastrointestinal Research (DK034933). The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Dr Celine Cansell, Ms Raffaella Chianese and the staff of the Medical Research Facility for technical assistance. We thank Dr Vladimir Orduña for the scientific advice and technical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Growth Factors Regulate Expression of Osteoblast‐Associated Genes
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141995/1/jper1345.pd
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