Value of “large FOV” calcium score as a screening method for detection of extracardiac incidental findings

AbstractPurposeThe purpose of this study was to emphasize the value of calcium scoring (Ca score) using a large field of view (“large FOV”) as a screening method for detection of extracardiac incidental findings.Materials and methods64-Multislice CT angiography using a “large FOV” in the preliminary calcium score followed by the post-contrast routine “small FOV” examination was performed for 382 consecutive patients between January 2011 and December 2012.Results375 Patients (203 men and 172 women) with age range between 40 and 80years (mean, 60years), were studied, using a “large FOV” technique. Among whole incidental extracardiac findings, “significant” extracardiac abnormalities (emergent and intermediate findings) were detected in 24.8% of cases, among which 13.6% would have been missed if only using a “small FOV” technique.ConclusionResults showed that using Ca score with a “large FOV” is favorable for better, accurate and more frequent detection of extracardiac incidental findings. With usage of low dose technique, the difference in dose between “small FOV” and “large FOV” techniques is justified for detection of supplementary “significant” extra-cardiac findings including serious findings such as lung cancer or metastatic deposits

Perspective Chapter: The Toxic Silver (Hg)

In the late 1950s, residents of a Japanese fishing village known as “Minamata” began falling ill and dying at an alarming rate. The Japanese authorities stated that methyl-mercury-rich seafood and shellfish caused the sickness. Burning fossil fuels represent ≈52.7% of Hg emissions. The majorities of mercury’s compounds are volatile and thus travel hundreds of miles with wind before being deposited on the earth’s surface. High acidity and dissolved organic carbon increase Hg-mobility in soil to enter the food chain. Additionally, Hg is taken up by areal plant parts via gas exchange. Mercury has no identified role in plants while exhibiting high affinity to form complexes with soft ligands such as sulfur and this consequently inactivates amino acids and sulfur-containing antioxidants. Long-term human exposure to Hg leads to neurotoxicity in children and adults, immunological, cardiac, and motor reproductive and genetic disorders. Accordingly, remediating contaminated soils has become an obligation. Mercury, like other potentially toxic elements, is not biodegradable, and therefore, its remediation should encompass either removal of Hg from soils or even its immobilization. This chapter discusses Hg’s chemical behavior, sources, health dangers, and soil remediation methods to lower Hg levels

Documenting the Recovery of Vascular Services in European Centres Following the Initial COVID-19 Pandemic Peak: Results from a Multicentre Collaborative Study

Objective: To document the recovery of vascular services in Europe following the first COVID-19 pandemic peak. Methods: An online structured vascular service survey with repeated data entry between 23 March and 9 August 2020 was carried out. Unit level data were collected using repeated questionnaires addressing modifications to vascular services during the first peak (March – May 2020, “period 1”), and then again between May and June (“period 2”) and June and July 2020 (“period 3”). The duration of each period was similar. From 2 June, as reductions in cases began to be reported, centres were first asked if they were in a region still affected by rising cases, or if they had passed the peak of the first wave. These centres were asked additional questions about adaptations made to their standard pathways to permit elective surgery to resume. Results: The impact of the pandemic continued to be felt well after countries’ first peak was thought to have passed in 2020. Aneurysm screening had not returned to normal in 21.7% of centres. Carotid surgery was still offered on a case by case basis in 33.8% of centres, and only 52.9% of centres had returned to their normal aneurysm threshold for surgery. Half of centres (49.4%) believed their management of lower limb ischaemia continued to be negatively affected by the pandemic. Reduced operating theatre capacity continued in 45.5% of centres. Twenty per cent of responding centres documented a backlog of at least 20 aortic repairs. At least one negative swab and 14 days of isolation were the most common strategies used for permitting safe elective surgery to recommence. Conclusion: Centres reported a broad return of services approaching pre-pandemic “normal” by July 2020. Many introduced protocols to manage peri-operative COVID-19 risk. Backlogs in cases were reported for all major vascular surgeries

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

Positive remodeling index by MSCT coronary angiography: A prognostic factor for early detection of plaque rupture and vulnerability

Purpose: To emphasis the role of MSCT utilizing the remodeling index in assessment of positive coronary remodeling which was associated with plaque rupture and vulnerability. Methods and material: Studied group included 35 patients with positive coronary remodeling. One lesion per patient was assessed, either a solitary lesion or the most significant one. All patients were subjected to history taking and radiological evaluation using a contrast-enhanced 64 MSCT then post processed. Assessment of the plaque causing positive remodeling regarding the site, number (single, kissing, or multiple), relative composition and predominant type in H.U. was performed. Specific measurements at the reference and remodeling segment were taken. Calculation of remodeling index was done. Two comparative groups were made between subjects with remodeling index (RI) < 1.5 and RI ⩾ 1.5. Results: A strong correlation was noted between lipid plaque area, plaque cross sectional area and multiplicity of plaques with remodeling index (p value < 0.001). There was no correlation between the RI with either the patient coronary risk factors or symptomatology. Conclusion: Previous studies had shown that most acute coronary syndromes were initiated by sudden changes of mildly stenotic lesions, commonly found in positively remodeled vessels. Promising comparative results between MSCT and IVUS allowed consideration of MDCT as a useful tool in the noninvasive detection of potentially threatening coronary lesions. In our study, RI ⩾ 1.5 showed a strong correlation between the lipid plaque area, multiplicity of the plaques, and cross sectional area which were prognostic factors for plaque rupture and vulnerability, and thus, early detection of coronary artery disease. Modulation and prevention of positive remodeling by statin could promote to start medical treatment especially in cases where RI exceeds 1.5 and their follow up non-invasively by MDCT to detect reversal of remodeling and response of treatment

Synthesis of new surface-active ammonium-type complexes based on palmitic acid for removing thin petroleum films from water surface

Complexes based on palmitic acid and nitrogen-containing compounds (monoethanolamine and triethylenetetramine) were synthesized. The synthesized complexes were taken to react with different moles of propylene oxide (1, 2 and 3) to form propoxylated compounds (surfactants). Some of physico-chemical indices of the prepared compounds such as solubility, acid and amine numbers as well as electrical conductivity have been determined. Surface-active properties (interfacial tension) of the obtained complexes were investigated by the stalagmometric method. Surface properties studied included critical micelle concentration (CMC), maximum surface excess (Γmax), and minimum surface area (Amin). Free energies of micellization (ΔGmic°) and adsorption (ΔGads°) were calculated. Petroleum-collecting and dispersing properties of the synthesized and propoxylated complexes in diluted (5 wt.% aq. solution) and undiluted form in waters of varying salinity have been studied. FTIR spectra, C13 and H1NMR spectra confirm the compound structure

Experimental and Molecular Docking Studies of Cyclic Diphenyl Phosphonates as DNA Gyrase Inhibitors for Fluoroquinolone-Resistant Pathogens

DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV are proven to be validated targets in the design of novel antibacterial drugs. In this study, we report the antibacterial evaluation and molecular docking studies of previously synthesized two series of cyclic diphenylphosphonates (1a–e and 2a–e) as DNA gyrase inhibitors. The synthesized compounds were screened for their activity (antibacterial and DNA gyrase inhibition) against ciprofloxacin-resistant E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical isolates having mutations (deletion and substitution) in QRDR region of DNA gyrase. The target compound (2a) that exhibited the most potent activity against ciprofloxacin Gram-negative clinical isolates was selected to screen its inhibitory activity against DNA gyrase displayed IC50 of 12.03 µM. In addition, a docking study was performed with inhibitor (2a), to illustrate its binding mode in the active site of DNA gyrase and the results were compatible with the observed inhibitory potency. Furthermore, the docking study revealed that the binding of inhibitor (2a) to DNA gyrase is mediated and modulated by divalent Mg2+ at good binding energy (–9.08 Kcal/mol). Moreover, structure-activity relationships (SARs) demonstrated that the combination of hydrazinyl moiety in conjunction with the cyclic diphenylphosphonate based scaffold resulted in an optimized molecule that inhibited the bacterial DNA gyrase by its detectable effect in vitro on gyrase-catalyzed DNA supercoiling activity

Frequency of central nervous system tumors in delta region, Egypt

Introduction and Aim of Work: Central nervous system (CNS) tumors represent a major public health problem, and their epidemiological data in Egypt have been rather incomplete except for some regional reports. There are no available frequency-based data on CNS tumors in our locality. The objective of this study was to estimate the frequency of CNS tumors in east delta region, Egypt. Materials and Methods: The data were collected during the 8-year period from January 1999 to December 2007 from Pathology Department, Mansoura University, and other referred pathology labs. Examination of HandE stained sections from retrieved paraffin blocks were done in all cases for histopathologic categorization of C.N.S. tumors. Immunohistochemical studies were applied to confirm final histopathologic diagnosis in problematic cases. Results: Intracranial tumors represented 86.7% of cases in comparison to only 13.3% for spinal tumors. Gliomas were the CNS tumors of the highest frequency (35.2%), followed by meningioma (25.6%), pituitary adenoma (11.6%) and nerve sheath tumors (6.6%). 10.25% of tumors were of children <15 years. Conclusion: This study provides the largest series of the relative frequency of CNS tumors in Delta region in Egypt till now and may help to give insight into the epidemiology of CNS tumors in our locality

Molluscicidal and Larvicidal Potency of <i>N</i>-Heterocylic Analogs against <i>Biomophalaria alexandrina</i> Snails and <i>Schistosoma mansoni</i> Larval Stages

This work describes the synthesis of quinoline-based N--heterocyclic arenes and their biological evaluation as molluscicides against adult Biomophalaria alexandrina snails as well as larvicides against Schistosoma mansoni larvae (miracidia and cercariae). Molecular docking studies were demonstrated to investigate their affinity for cysteine protease protein as an interesting target for antiparasitics. Compound AEAN showed the best docking results followed by APAN in comparison to the co-crystallized ligand D1R reflected by their binding affinities and RMSD values. The egg production, hatchability of B. alexandrina snails and ultrastructural topography of S. mansoni cercariae using SEM were assessed. Biological evaluations (hatchability and egg-laying capacity) revealed that the quinoline hydrochloride salt CAAQ was the most effective compound against adult B. alexandrina snails, whereas the indolo-quinoline derivative APAN had the most efficiency against miracidia, and the acridinyl derivative AEAA was the most effective against cercariae and caused 100% mortality. CAAQ and AEAA were found to modulate the biological responses of B. alexandrina snails with/without S. mansoni infection and larval stages that will affect S. mansoni infection. AEAA caused deleterious morphological effects on cercariae. CAAQ caused inhibition in the number of eggs/snail/week and reduced reproductive rate to 43.8% in all the experimental groups. CAAQ and AEAA can be recommended as an effective molluscicide of plant origin for the control program of schistosomiasis