Respiratory muscle strength is decreased after maximal incremental exercise in trained runners and cyclists

The respiratory muscle fatigue seems to be able to limit exercise performance and may influence the determination of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) or maximum aerobic work rate during maximal incremental test. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate whether maximal incremental exercise decreases respiratory muscle strength. We hypothesized that respiratory muscle strength (maximal pressure) will decrease after maximal incremental exercise to exhaustion. 36 runners and 23 cyclists completed a maximal incremental test on a treadmill or a cycle ergometer with continuous monitoring of expired gases. Maximal inspiratory (MIP) and expiratory (MEP) pressure measurements were taken at rest and post- exercise. At rest, the MIP and MEP were 140 +/- 25 and 172 +/- 27 in runners vs. 115 +/- 26 and 146 +/- 33 in cyclists (p 0.05), respectively. Our results suggest that respiratory muscle strength is decreased following maximal incremental exercise in trained runners and cyclists

Structural and Calorimetric Studies of Zinc, Magnesium and Manganese Based Phosphate and Phosphate-Silicate Glasses

Glasses of the (50-x/2)Na2O-xMO-(50-x/2)P2O5 (M = Zn, Mg or Mn) (0 ≤ x ≤ 33 mol%), (50-x)Na2O-xMO-50P2O5 (M = Zn, Mn) (0 ≤ x ≤ 33 mol%), and (0.9-x)NaPO3-xSiO2-0.1ZnO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1 mol) were prepared by the melt quenching technique. Samples were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction, Archimede’s method, ellipsometry, Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR), Raman, 31P solid state magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS-NMR), UV-visible spectroscopy and calorimetry. For zinc, manganese and magnesium phosphate glasses, the increase in density with the addition of MO oxide suggests the compactness of the vitreous network. For zinc phosphate silicate glasses, the variations of density and refractive index were attributed to the structural changes when SiO2 oxide is progressively introduced. The increase in the glass transition temperature (Tg) reflects an increase in the cross-link strength of the structure as MO and SiO2 oxides are gradually incorporated. For all glass composition, spectroscopic investigations revealed the depolymerization of metaphosphate chains (Q2) allowing the formation of phosphate dimers (Q1). Calorimetric dissolution shows that the dissolution is endothermic for lower MO content and become exothermic when x rises. For (50-x/2)Na2O-xZnO-(50-x/2)P2O5 (0 ≤ x ≤ 33 mol%) glasses, the formation enthalpy increases with the incorporation of ZnO oxide

Primary hydatid cyst of the gallbladder: an unusual localization diagnosed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Hydatid disease is endemic in Tunisia and has been considered as one of the most common surgical pathology. Several localizations have been described, but hydatidosis of the liver is the most frequent clinical entity. Primary hydatid cyst of the gallbladder is very rare. We report in this observation a new case of primary hydatid cyst of the gallbladder diagnosed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).Pan African Medical Journal 2013; 14:1

Endoscopic meatotomy in the treatment of ureterocele: results in adult patients

To evaluate the efficacy of endoscopic meatotomy in the treatment of ureterocele in adults. A retrospective study of adult patients with ureterocele, treated between January 1987 and December 2014. In 47 patients, 55 intravesical ureteroceles were diagnosed and classified as 18 right, 21 left and eight bilateral (38%, 44% and 17% respectively). According to the Bruézière classification, 41 (75%) ureteroceles were type A and 14 (25%) others were type C. These ureteroceles were complicated by calculus formation in 22 cases, moderately dilated excretory pathways in 16 cases and both complications in a total of 9 cases. Four patients had a complicated ureterocele with pyelonephritis, one of which was emphysematous. The endoscopic treatment was performed in cases of complicated and/or symptomatic ureteroceles. Fifty one cases were treated by a "smiling mouth" meatotomy consisting in a transverse horizontal incision, with the treatment of any associated complication. The mean operative time was 35 minutes (10-90). The operative follow-up was uneventful in 42 patients and complications occurred in 5 patients (2 urinary retentions, 2 infectious complications and one hematuria). The mean duration of postoperative stay was 1-2 days. The mean follow-up was 15 months. Four patients developed vesicoureteral reflux and no stenosis was noted. The endoscopic incision of the ureteroceles seems today, after reviewing the results, to be a good treatment of adult ureterocele. It is a simple, minimally invasive and has a low morbidity rate

Co-expression and impact of prostate specific membrane antigen and prostate specific antigen in prostatic pathologies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The present study was undertaken to relate the co-expression of prostate-associated antigens, PSMA and PSA, with the degree of vascularization in normal and pathologic (hyperplasia and cancer) prostate tissues to elucidate their possible role in tumor progression.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study was carried out in 6 normal, 44 benign prostatic hyperplastic and 39 cancerous human prostates. Immunohistochemical analysis were performed using the monoclonal antibody CD34 to determine the angiogenic activity, and the monoclonal antibodies 3E6 and ER-PR8 to assess PSMA and PSA expression, respectively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In our study we found that in normal prostate tissue, PSMA and PSA were equally expressed (3.7 ± 0.18 and 3.07 ± 0.11). A significant difference in their expression was see in hyperplastic and neoplastic prostates tissues (16.14 ± 0.17 and 30.72 ± 0.85, respectively) for PSMA and (34.39 ± 0.53 and 17.85 ± 1.21, respectively) for PSA. Study of prostate tumor profiles showed that the profile (PSA+, PSMA-) expression levels decreased between normal prostate, benign prostatic tissue and primary prostate cancer. In the other hand, the profile (PSA-, PSMA+) expression levels increased from normal to prostate tumor tissues. PSMA overexpression was associated with high intratumoral angiogenesis activity. By contrast, high PSA expression was associated with low angiogenesis activity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data suggest that these markers are regulated differentially and the difference in their expression showed a correlation with malignant transformation. With regard to the duality PSMA-PSA, this implies the significance of their investigation together in normal and pathologic prostate tissues.</p

Effect of dissolution rate and subsequent ion release on cytocompatibility properties of borophosphate glasses

Present work explores the relationship between the composition, dissolution rate, ion release and cytocompatibility of a series of borophosphate glasses. While, the base glass was selected to be 40mol%P2O5-16mol%CaO-24mol%MgO-20mol%Na2O, three B2O3 modified glass compositions were formulated by replacing Na2O with 1, 5 and 10 mol% B2O3. Ion release study was conducted using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). The thermal scans of the glasses as determined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) revealed an increment in the thermal properties with increasing B2O3 content in the glasses. On the other hand, the dissolution rate of the glasses decreased with increasing B2O3 content. To identify the effect of boron ion release on the cytocompatibility properties of the glasses, MG63 cells were cultured on the surface of the glass discs. The in vitro cell culture study suggested that glasses with 5 mol% B2O3 (P40B5) showed better cell proliferation and metabolic activity as compares to the glasses with 10 mol% (P40B10) or with no B2O3 (P40B0). The confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) images of live/dead stained MG63 cells attached to the surface of the glasses also revealed that the number of dead cells attached to P40B5 glasses were significantly lower than both P40B0 and P40B10 glasses

Prevalence and associated risk factors of Shigella flexneri isolated from drinking water and retail raw foods in Peshawar, Pakistan

This study was designed to investigate the prevalence and associated risk factors of Shigella flexneri isolated from drinking water and retail raw food samples in Peshawar, Pakistan. A total of 1,020 different samples were collected from various areas of Peshawar between January 2016 and May 2017, followed by identification of S. flexneri through biochemical, serological, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Potential risk factors associated with the development and spreading of S. flexneri infection were also investigated. Overall, 45 (4.41%) samples were positive for Shigella species. Among these samples, the predominant species was S. flexneri (n = 44) followed by S. boydii (n = 1). Interestingly, S. sonnei and S. dysenteriae isolates were not found in any sample. The isolation rate of S. flexneri in drinking water samples, market raw milk, and fruits/vegetables from Peshawar were 6.47%, 3.5%, and 2.9%, respectively. The phylogenetic reconstruction showed genetic diversity among three clades, as clades I and II have isolates of S. flexneri that were circulating within the drinking water, milk, fruits/vegetables, while clade III isolates were recovered from milk samples. Most of S. flexneri were detected in June to September. Potential risk factors of S. flexneri were water sources contaminated by toilet wastes (p = 0.04), surface water drainage (p = 0.0002), hospital wastes (p = 0.01), unhygienic handling (p < 0.05), and transportation of raw food (p = 0.04). In conclusion, S. flexneri isolates of closely related lineage originating from non-clinical samples might be associated with an increased human risk to shigellosis in Pakistan, as significant numbers of S. flexneri were observed in the drinking water and retail raw food samples. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: This study demonstrated the presence of S. flexneri in drinking water and retail raw food samples which seem to possess a serious threat to public health. Potential sources of food and water contamination should properly be monitored by public health authorities to reduce cases of shigellosis

Sentiment analysis for helpful reviews prediction

Nowadays, every purchase we plan can be alleviated by the advice of those that tried in the past the given product. As more and more reviews are available, it would be practical to filter the relevant reviews not only to speed up the decision process but also to improve it. Gathering only the helpful reviews would reduce information processing time and save effort. To develop this functionality we need reliable prediction algorithms to classify and predict new reviews as helpful or not, even if the review has not been voted yet. In this paper, we propose a new approach which predicts reviews helpfulness based on sentiment analysis. Our approach focused on sentiment features such as the degree of positivity and the degree of negativity, in addition to the simplistic counts computed directly from reviews. It also extracts emotions dimension by means of emotion lexicon. We proposed a solution to internally construct an emotion lexicon in order to overcome challenges of invented terms, domain dependency, and spelling mistakes. We applied the proposed approach to Facebook pages of six medical products. We obtain a prediction accuracy of 97.95% through SVM algorithm. We found that sentiment degree and sadness emotion are the most decisive sentiment features to predict review helpfulness. The word count and frequencies are important as they reflect the richness and the seriousness of the review, but sentiment and emotions are more decisive as they engage and influence users.Published versio