Fatal Neutropenic Enterocolitis during Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin Combination Therapy for Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection

It is known that neutropenia caused by combination pegylated interferon plus ribavirin therapy for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is well tolerated and carries a negligible risk of infection. Neutropenic enterocolitis is encountered most frequently in patients with hemato-oncologic diseases who are undergoing intensive chemotherapy. However, little information exists regarding this life-threatening event in the setting of HCV therapy. We present here an unusual case of fatal neutropenic enterocolitis in a cirrhotic patient receiving combination therapy for HCV infection. This is the first report of a death from neutropenic enterocolitis associated with treatment for chronic HCV infection. The present case suggests that caution should be exercised when continuing HCV therapy in neutropenic patients with advanced fibrosis, and the decision to maintain such therapy should be balanced against the potential for serious adverse events

Application of Helical Tomotherapy for Two Cases of Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma

The role of radiotherapy in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been limited to date, because the liver has a low tolerance to radiation. However, reconstructing tumors and surrounding organs via a three-dimensional conformal planning system can avoid excess radiotherapy exposure to the rest of the liver and adjacent organs. Recently, the concept of "adaptive radiotherapy," such as with helical tomotherapy, has been introduced for treating HCC. Helical tomotherapy obtains an image from the computed tomography component, which allows targeted regions to be visualized prior to, during, and immediately after each treatment and delivers intensity-modulated radiation therapy. We report two patients with advanced HCC who underwent tomotherapy treatment. One was a patient afflicted with advanced HCC and a portal vein tumor thrombus, which was treated with tomotherapy combined with transarterial chemolipiodolization. The other was a patient afflicted with multiple pulmonary metastases treated with tomotherapy followed by systemic chemotherapy

Serum IP-10 Levels Correlate with the Severity of Liver Histopathology in Patients Infected with Genotype-1 HCV

Background/Aims: Interferon-gamma-inducible protein 10 (IP-10) plays important roles in the pathogenesis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. We investigated the association between serum IP-10 levels and liver pathology in patients with chronic HCV infection. Methods: The serum IP-10 concentration was assessed in 85 patients with chronic HCV infection using a solid phase sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and a liver biopsy specimen was obtained. The pathology was scored using the Knodell histologic activity index (HAI). Results: Of the 85 patients, 58 had genotype 1 HCV infection, 21 had genotype non-1, and 6 were undetermined. The serum IP-10 levels did not differ between patients infected with genotype 1 and genotype non-1 (p=0.472). In patients with genotype 1 infection, the total HAI score and the stage of fibrosis were highly correlated with the serum IP-10 level (r=0.555, r=0.578, p<0.001). Furthermore, the serum IP-10 concentrations of patients with severe fibrosis (stages 3, 4) were higher than those of patients with mild fibrosis (stages 0 to 2; 214.4 vs. 72.3 pg/mL, p=0.002) among patients with genotype 1 infection. However, in patients without genotype 1 infection, the histopathology was not associated with the serum IP-10 level. A multivariate analysis showed that serum IP-10 was an independent predictor of fibrosis (stages 3, 4) in patients with genotype 1 infection (odds ratio, 1.034; 95% confidence interval, 1.006 to 1.064; p=0.018). Conclusions: Serum IP-10 concentration was significantly correlated with the severity of liver histology in genotype 1 HCV infection. (Gut Liver 2011;5:506-512)X1116sciescopuskciothe

Condensed Matter Theory of Dipolar Quantum Gases

Recent experimental breakthroughs in trapping, cooling and controlling ultracold gases of polar molecules, magnetic and Rydberg atoms have paved the way toward the investigation of highly tunable quantum systems, where anisotropic, long-range dipolar interactions play a prominent role at the many-body level. In this article we review recent theoretical studies concerning the physics of such systems. Starting from a general discussion on interaction design techniques and microscopic Hamiltonians, we provide a summary of recent work focused on many-body properties of dipolar systems, including: weakly interacting Bose gases, weakly interacting Fermi gases, multilayer systems, strongly interacting dipolar gases and dipolar gases in 1D and quasi-1D geometries. Within each of these topics, purely dipolar effects and connections with experimental realizations are emphasized.Comment: Review article; submitted 09/06/2011. 158 pages, 52 figures. This document is the unedited author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Chemical Reviews, copyright American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work, a link will be provided soo

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data