Emergence and Progression of Albuminuria in a Cohort of Egyptian Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: a 5-year Prospective Study

Introduction: We sought to report the 5-year incidence of proteinuria and risk factors for the progression of diabetic nephropathy in Egyptians with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Methods: Five-hundred and twelve Egyptians with type 2 diabetes were evaluated at baseline and after 5-years of follow-up by a timed urine sample to measure urinary albumin excretion. Baseline evaluation also included a number of potential risk factors of progression of diabetic nephropathy. Results: Patients mean age was 47.5±8.8 years and 47.6% of them were males. Their mean duration of diabetes was 8.9±6.6 years and 44.1% of them were on insulin. At baseline, 62.5% of patients had no proteinuria, 23% had microalbuminuria and 14.5% had overt proteinuria. Among patients that had no albuminuria at baseline, 173/320 still had no albuminuria after 5-years follow up (54.1%), 79/320 developed microalbuminuria (24.7%) and 68/320 developed macroalbuminuria (21.3%). Microalbuminuria progressed to macroalbuminuria in 44/118 patients (37.3%), and 45/512 patients developed end stage renal disease (8.8%). Regression from microalbuminuria to no albuminuria occurred in 49/118 patients (41.5%), regression from overt proteinuria to microalbuminuria occurred in 16/74 patients (21.6%) and regression from overt proteinuria to no albuminuria occurred in 2/74 patients (2.7%). In multivariate analysis, only higher baseline albumin excretion rate (OR 1.4, P < 0.002), higher blood cholesterol levels (OR 2.5, P < 0.02), and depression (2.3,

Neuroprotective role of vitamin D3 in colchicine-induced Alzheimer’s disease in rats

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive decline in memory, language and other cognitive functions. Recent studies provide convincing evidence on the role of vitamin D3 on the nervous system.Aim: To investigate the effect of the active form of vitamin D3 (1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol) as a neuroprotective agent in experimentally induced AD in rats.Methods: 40 adult male Wistar (albino) rats weighing 180 to 200 g were included in this study. Rats were divided into four groups (each of 10 rats): Group I: normal healthy rats receiving intracerebroventricular injection (icv) of artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) and serving as a control group. Group II: rats with induced AD by icv colchicine injection of 15 lg/rat bilaterally and receiving no treatment. Group III: rats pre-treated with active form of vitamin D3 42 IU/kg/day subcutaneously (s.c.) for one week followed by induction of AD then post-treated with vitamin D3 in the same dose for 3 weeks. Group IV: rats with induced AD then post-treated with vitamin D3 for 3 weeks. The following parameters were evaluated in rats of all studied groups1- Behavioral assessment: Morris water maze and open field tasks were performed at days   13, 14 and 21 post-icv injection for assessing cognitive, gross behavioral and motor activities of studied groups.2- Biochemical tests: Hippocampal tissue levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), amyloid beta (Ab) peptide, and antioxidant system; glutathione reductase (GR) and glutathione peroxidase (GPX).Results: The present study revealed a significant increase in time latency of water maze test and hippocampal tissue level of Ab peptide concomitant with significant reduction of hippocampal tissue levels of BDNF, GR and GPX, in untreated AD rats (group II) versus control ACSF-injected rats (group I) and vitamin D3-treated AD rats (groups III and IV). However, group III (AD rats pre- and post-treated with vitamin D3) showed a significant decrease in time latency and Ab peptide, and a significant elevation of BDNF, GR and GPX, versus group IV (AD rats post-treated with vitamin D3).Conclusion: Prophylactic use of active form of vitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) appears to possess a neuroprotective effect in AD involving various mechanisms. Hence, vitamin D3 or its analogues can be considered as promising agents for development of new prophylactic and therapeutic neuroprotectors

Numerical investigation of the effect of tread pattern on rotating wheel aerodynamics

The present work investigates the dynamic effect of wheel rotation on the aerodynamic characteristics of slick type (ST) wheel of Formula One racing cars using a computational approach. The ST wheel model was compared to experimental results as a validation case. The pressure coefficient over the ST wheel circumference at its middle plane (xy) has been considered as an experimental case from literature and the computed results showed a reasonable agreement. Furthermore, a quantitative evaluation of the numerically-determined wheel drag, local separation and stagnation angles has been also compared to those extracted experimentally from literature. The validation work served by assessing the suitability of using Moving Reference Frame (MRF) method to simulate the effect of wheel rotation, as well as defining the most reliable conditions of testing such as the optimal meshing criteria, the computational domain size, and the adopted turbulence model. According to wheel studies, all computational work was performed at a Reynolds number of 6.8×105 based on the wheel diameter. The wheels aerodynamic drag, lift, and moment coefficients were computed for each wheel model. Further parametric study on the tread design of the tread type (TT) wheel was performed by varying the tread depth, h. Besides, general schematic pictures of the flow behavior around the TT wheel are presented

Molecular pathogenicity of 1-nonadecene and l-lactic acid, unique metabolites in radicular cysts and periapical granulomas

Recently, 1-nonadecene and l-lactic acid were identified as unique metabolites in radicular cysts and periapical granuloma, respectively. However, the biological roles of these metabolites were unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the inflammatory and mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) effects of 1-nonadecene, and the inflammatory and collagen precipitation effects of l-lactic acid on both periodontal ligament fibroblasts (PdLFs) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). PdLFs and PBMCs were treated with 1-nonadecene and l-lactic acid. Cytokines’ expression was measured using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). E-cadherin, N-cadherin, and macrophage polarization markers were measured using flow cytometry. The collagen, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1, and released cytokines were measured using collagen assay, western blot, and Luminex assay, respectively. In PdLFs, 1-nonadecene enhances inflammation through the upregulation of some inflammatory cytokines including IL-1β, IL-6, IL-12A, monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) α. 1-Nonadecene also induced MET through the upregulation of E-cadherin and the downregulation of N-cadherin in PdLFs. 1-Nonadecene polarized macrophages to a pro-inflammatory phenotype and suppressed their cytokines’ release. l-lactic acid exerted a differential impact on the inflammation and proliferation markers. Intriguingly, l-lactic acid induced fibrosis-like effects by enhancing collagen synthesis, while inhibiting MMP-1 release in PdLFs. These results provide a deeper understanding of 1-nonadecene and l-lactic acid’s roles in modulating the microenvironment of the periapical area. Consequently, further clinical investigation can be employed for target therapy

Nonattendance in pediatric pulmonary clinics: an ambulatory survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nonattendance for scheduled appointments disturbs the effective management of pediatric pulmonary clinics. We hypothesized that the reasons for non-attendance and the necessary solutions might be different in pediatric pulmonary medicine than in other pediatric fields. We therefore investigated the factors associated with nonattendance this field in order to devise a corrective strategy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The effect of age, gender, ethnic origin, waiting time for an appointment and the timing of appointments during the day on nonattendance proportion were assessed. Chi-square tests were used to analyze statistically significant differences of categorical variables. Logistic regression models were used for multivariate analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 1190 pediatric pulmonology clinic visits in a 21 month period were included in the study. The overall proportion of nonattendance was 30.6%. Nonattendance was 23.8% when there was a short waiting time for an appointment (1–7 days) and 36.3% when there was a long waiting time (8 days and above) (p-value < 0.001). Nonattendance was 28.7% between 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 37.5% after 3 p.m. (p = 0.007). Jewish rural patients had 15.4% nonattendance, Jewish urban patients had 31.2% nonattendance and Bedouin patients had 32.9% nonattendance (p < 0.004). Age and gender were not significantly associated with nonattendance proportions. A multivariate logistic regression model demonstrated that the waiting time for an appointment, time of the day, and the patients' origin was significantly associated with nonattendance.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The factors associated with nonattendance in pediatric pulmonary clinics include the length of waiting time for an appointment, the hour of the appointment within the day and the origin of the patient.</p

Quranic Topic Modelling Using Paragraph Vectors

The Quran is known for its linguistic and spiritual value. It comprises knowledge and topics that govern different aspects of people’s life. Acquiring and encoding this knowledge is not a trivial task due to the overlapping of meanings over its documents and passages. Analysing a text like the Quran requires learning approaches that go beyond word level to achieve sentence level representation. Thus, in this work, we follow a deep learning approach: paragraph vector to learn an informative representation of Quranic Verses. We use a recent breakthrough in embeddings that maps the passages of the Quran to vector representation that preserves more semantic and syntactic information. These vectors can be used as inputs for machine learning models, and leveraged for the topic analysis. Moreover, we evaluated the derived clusters of related verses against a tagged corpus, to add more significance to our conclusions. Using the paragraph vectors model, we managed to generate a document embedding space that model and explain word distribution in the Holy Quran. The dimensions in the space represent the semantic structure in the data and ultimately help to identify main topics and concepts in the text

Metabolic and endocrinologic complications in beta-thalassemia major: a multicenter study in Tehran

BACKGROUND: The combination of transfusion and chelation therapy has dramatically extended the life expectancy of thalassemic patients. The main objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of prominent thalassemia complications. METHODS: Two hundred twenty patients entered the study. Physicians collected demographic and anthropometric data and the history of therapies as well as menstrual histories. Patients have been examined to determine their pubertal status. Serum levels of 25(OH) D, calcium, phosphate, iPTH were measured. Thyroid function was assessed by T3, T4 and TSH. Zinc and copper in serum were determined by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Bone mineral density (BMD) measurements at lumbar and femoral regions have been done using dual x-ray absorptiometry. The dietary calcium, zinc and copper intakes were estimated by food-frequency questionnaires. RESULTS: Short stature was seen in 39.3% of our patients. Hypogonadism was seen in 22.9% of boys and 12.2% of girls. Hypoparathyroidism and primary hypothyroidism was present in 7.6% and 7.7% of the patients. About 13 % of patients had more than one endocrine complication with mean serum ferritin of 1678 ± 955 micrograms/lit. Prevalence of lumbar osteoporosis and osteopenia were 50.7% and 39.4%. Femoral osteoporosis and osteopenia were present in 10.8% and 36.9% of the patients. Lumbar BMD abnormalities were associated with duration of chelation therapy. Low serum zinc and copper was observed in 79.6% and 68% of the study population respectively. Serum zinc showed significant association with lumbar but not femoral BMD. In 37.2% of patients serum levels of 25(OH) D below 23 nmol/l were detected. CONCLUSION: High prevalence of complications among our thalassemics signifies the importance of more detailed studies along with therapeutic interventions

Genetic architecture of spatial electrical biomarkers for cardiac arrhythmia and relationship with cardiovascular disease.

The 3-dimensional spatial and 2-dimensional frontal QRS-T angles are measures derived from the vectorcardiogram. They are independent risk predictors for arrhythmia, but the underlying biology is unknown. Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association studies we identify 61 (58 previously unreported) loci for the spatial QRS-T angle (N = 118,780) and 11 for the frontal QRS-T angle (N = 159,715). Seven out of the 61 spatial QRS-T angle loci have not been reported for other electrocardiographic measures. Enrichments are observed in pathways related to cardiac and vascular development, muscle contraction, and hypertrophy. Pairwise genome-wide association studies with classical ECG traits identify shared genetic influences with PR interval and QRS duration. Phenome-wide scanning indicate associations with atrial fibrillation, atrioventricular block and arterial embolism and genetically determined QRS-T angle measures are associated with fascicular and bundle branch block (and also atrioventricular block for the frontal QRS-T angle). We identify potential biology involved in the QRS-T angle and their genetic relationships with cardiovascular traits and diseases, may inform future research and risk prediction