DNA fragmentation damage as a predictive marker for diabetic nephropathy in Type II diabetes mellitus

Background: Increased production of free radicals and oxidative stress in type II diabetic patients could be one of the probable causes for development of complications. The authors hypothesise that such a mechanism also contributes to the development of diabetic nephropathy in those patients.Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of DNA fragmentation damage with diabetic nephropathy in type II diabetes mellitus, so as to use it as a future novel predictive marker.Patients and methods: The study population included 100 patients with diabetic nephropathy, 100 diabetic patients without nephropathy and 100 healthy volunteers as controls. Lipid profile, fasting and post-prandial blood glucose, micro-albuminuria (micro-alb) and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) were assessed in patients and controls. The technique of capillary electrophoresis was used to detect DNA damage.Results: The frequency of DNA damage in peripheral blood mononuclear cells was 71% in diabetic nephropathy compared with 45% in non-nephropathy patients (p < 0.001). None of healthy controls showed such a finding. Oxidative DNA fragmentation in the diabetic nephropathy group was 3.06 times that in the non-nephropathy group. Neither poor glycaemic control nor dyslipidaemia contributed to DNA damage in diabetic patients. Multivariate analysis showed that positive oxidative DNA damage test (OR1.58, p = 0.02) and the duration of ongoing DM (OR 1.48, p = 0.004) were the only independent factors contributing to the occurrence of diabetic nephropathy.Conclusion: Type II diabetic patients have more liability to oxidative DNA damage in general with a significantly higher frequency in diabetic nephropathy. DNA fragmentation analysis can be used as a predictive diagnostic biomarker for diabetic nephropathy.Keywords: complications, diabetes, free radicals, oxidative stres

Apresentação Dermatoscópica e Microscópica Confocal de Melanoma Raro do Mamilo

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Relevance-Based Compression of Cataract Surgery Videos

In the last decade, the need for storing videos from cataract surgery has increased significantly. Hospitals continue to improve their imaging and recording devices (e.g., microscopes and cameras used in microscopic surgery, such as ophthalmology) to enhance their post-surgical processing efficiency. The video recordings enable a lot of user-cases after the actual surgery, for example, teaching, documentation, and forensics. However, videos recorded from operations are typically stored in the internal archive without any domain-specific compression, leading to a massive storage space consumption. In this work, we propose a relevance-based compression scheme for videos from cataract surgery, which is based on content specifics of particular cataract surgery phases. We evaluate our compression scheme with three state-of-the-art video codecs, namely H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and AV1, and ask medical experts to evaluate the visual quality of encoded videos. Our results show significant savings, in particular up to 95.94% when using H.264/AVC, up to 98.71% when using H.265/HEVC, and up to 98.82% when using AV1.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 3 table

Reflectance Confocal Microscopy for the Diagnosis of Galli-Galli Disease

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A Case Report of Gastrointestinal Basidiobolomycosis Treated With Voriconazole: A Rare Emerging Entity

Introduction: Basidiobolomycosis is an unusual fungal disease that rarely involves the visceral organs such as gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal basidiobolomycosis (GIB) has been increasingly reported in the literature, and it is an emerging disease from arid regions worldwide, in particular, the south-western Saudi Arabia. We report a case of GIB in a 36-year-old Saudi Arabian male patient showing resistance to itraconazole and best treated with voriconazole. Computed tomography showed diffusely thickened small bowel with edematous change. Conclusions: As GIB presents diagnostic challenges due to lack of specific features, this case emphasizes the importance of considering GIB in the differential diagnosis in patients presenting with fever, abdominal pain with fast-growing abdominal mass