Triple valve infective endocarditis - a late diagnosis

Behcet\u27s disease is a systemic vasculitis of unknown aetiology with cardiac involvement as well as damage to other organs. Whether the sterile valvular inflammation which occurs in this autoimmune disease predisposes to bacterial adhesion and infective endocarditis is not yet established. We present the case of a patient with Behcet disease in which transthoracic echocardiography showed mobile masses on the aortic, tricuspid, and mitral valves, leading to multivalvular infective endocarditis diagnosis, possibly in the context of valvular inflammation. The case presented in this article confirms observation of other studies, namely that ultrasonography plays an important role in the diagnosis and evaluation of rheumatic diseases and permits optimal management in daily practice

Kinematics & Chemistry of Halo Substructures: The Vicinity of the Virgo Over-Density

We present observations obtained with the AAT's 2dF wide field spectrograph AAOmega of K-type stars located within a region of the sky which contains the Virgo Over-Density and the leading arm of the Sagittarius Stream. On the basis of the resulting velocity histogram we isolate halo substructures in these overlapping regions including Sagittarius and previously discovered Virgo groups. Through comparisons with N-body models of the Galaxy-Sagittarius interaction, we find a tri-axial dark matter halo is favoured and we exclude a prolate shape. This result is contradictory with other observations along the Sagittarius leading arm, which typically favour prolate models. We have also uncovered K-giant members of Sagittarius that are notably more metal poor ([Fe/H] = -1.7 +/- 0.3 dex) than previous studies. This suggests a significantly wider metallicity distribution exists in the Sagittarius Stream than formerly considered. We also present data on five carbon stars which were discovered in our sample.Comment: accepted to A