Nephropathy and Neuropathy in Diabetic Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection

Introduction: Several reports described an association between type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Chronic HCV infection is prevalent in Egypt. The present work aimed to evaluate the prevalence of proteinuria and neuropathy among diabetic patients with and without chronic HCV infection Methods: A total of 70 diabetic patients were recruited from patients that attended the outpatient clinic of Mansoura Specialized Medical University Hospital. They were evaluated for diabetic retinopathy, peripheral neuropathy, autonomic neuropathy, high blood pressure, urinary albumin excretion (UAE), serum creatinine, lipid profile and assay of HCV-RNA. Results: The prevalence of HCV infection among this group of diabetic patients was 35.7% compared to 10% in a matched control group (P< 0.05). Diabetic patients with chronic HCV infection (n=45) and diabetic patients without HCV infection (n=25) had no significant differences in diabetes type, diabetes duration, prevalence of hypertension, level of glycosylated hemoglobin or prevalence of diabetic retinopathy. The prevalence of macroalbuminuria, peripheral neuropathy and autonomic neuropahty was higher among diabetic patients with chronic HCV infection (P < 0.05). Also, diabetic patients with chronic HCV infection had higher mean arterial pressure, higher serum creatinine, higher triglyceride and cholesterol levels, and higher UAE (P < 0.05). Conclusion: A high prevalence of HCV infection is observed among this group of Egyptian diabetic patients, and it was associated with higher rates of nephropathy and peripheral neuropathy compared to diabetic patients without HCV infection. Key words: Diabetes mellitus; Egypt; HCV infection; Nephropathy; Neuropahty; Retinopath

Microwave-assisted synthesis and antitumor evaluation of a new series of thiazolylcoumarin derivatives

A new series of thiazolylcoumarin derivatives was synthesized. The designed strategy embraced a molecular hybridization approach which involves the combination of the thiazole and coumarin pharmacophores together. The new hybrid compounds were tested for in vitro antitumor efficacy over cervical (Hela) and kidney fibroblast (COS-7) cancer cells. Compounds 5f, 5h, 5m and 5r displayed promising efficacy toward Hela cell line. In addition, 5h and 5r were found to be the most active candidates toward COS-7 cell line. The four active analogs, 5f, 5h, 5m and 5r were screened for in vivo antitumor activity over EAC cells in mice, as well as in vitro cytotoxicity toward W138 normal cells. Results illustrated that 5r has the highest in vivo activity, and that the four analogs are less cytotoxic than 5-FU toward W138 normal cells. In this study, 3D pharmacophore analysis was performed to investigate the matching pharmacophoric features of the synthesized compounds with trichostatin A. In silico studies showed that the investigated compounds meet the optimal needs for good oral absorption with no expected toxicity hazards

Prolongation of corrected QT interval in diabetic patients with ketoacidosis

Background: Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is the most common acute hyperglycemic complication of diabetes. According to a recent report DKA affects approximately 8 per 1000 diabetics annually. It is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, with a worldwide mortality rate of 2-10%.Objective: The aim of the work was to assessment of QTc interval prolongation among patients with DKA.Patients and Methods: This prospective observational cohort study included 100 patients who were diagnosed with DKA. The mean age of patients was 37.29±11.63 years, and 53% of them were males. All patients were subjected to detailed history taking, full clinical examination, laboratory investigations and 12-lead ECG.Results: Frequency of Prolonged QTmaxc amongst studied patients was 59%. Mean QTmaxc declined significantly after treatment to be 414.6±44.1ms compared to 482.45±63.56ms before treatment with p&lt;0.0001 and Frequency of prolonged QTmaxc was significantly decreased with treatment from 59% to 20%. Anion gap was significantly higher for Prolonged QTmaxc patients compared to normal QTmaxc patients p&lt;0.0001. While ABG (PH, HCO3) were significantly lower for Prolonged QTmaxc patients compared to normal QTmaxc patients p&lt;0.0001. Logistic regression revealed that anion gap was significant independent risk factor for QTmaxc prolongation while.Conclusion: patients with DKA have a potential risk of QTmaxc interval prolongation due to acidosis regardless electrolytes abnormalities, and associated with a relative risk of 1.732-fold for mortality. Carful measuring of anion gap at time of admission can be used in diagnosis and prediction of occurrence of prolonged QTmaxc with high sensitivity and specificity

Scheduling and Communication Schemes for Decentralized Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning paradigm in which a large number of clients coordinate with a central server to learn a model without sharing their own training data. One central server is not enough, due to problems of connectivity with clients. In this paper, a decentralized federated learning (DFL) model with the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been introduced, as a more scalable approach to improve the learning performance in a network of agents with arbitrary topology. Three scheduling policies for DFL have been proposed for communications between the clients and the parallel servers, and the convergence, accuracy, and loss have been tested in a totally decentralized mplementation of SGD. The experimental results show that the proposed scheduling polices have an impact both on the speed of convergence and in the final global model.Comment: 32nd International Conference on Computer Theory and Applications (ICCTA), Alexandria, Egypt, 202

Synergizing effect of poly quaternary ammonium salts and metal oxides nanoparticles on wool and wool/polyester fabrics

213-220A new finishing technique using quaternary ammonium groups (QAG) via polymerization of methacryloyloxyethyl ammonium chloride (PMAETAC), in presence of TiO2 /ZnO / TiO2+ZnO nanoparticles in wool, wool/polyester fabrics has been studied, using K2S2O8 as initiator for the graft copolymerization reaction. The antimicrobial activities of the finished fabrics have been assessed against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as well as Candida albicans. The findings show that, the finished fabrics with PMAETAC and their hydride combination with metal oxide NPs have outstanding activity against E. coli & S. aureus as well as excellent UV protection as compared to that finished with PMAETAC alone. The finished fabrics are also characterized by Fourier transformation infrared. The topography of the fabrics surface is examined by SEM and EDX. After five washing cycles, the acquired properties are found slightly affected, indicating an excellent wash durability

Optimization of mosquitocidal toxins production by Lysinibacillus sphaericus under solid state fermentation using statistical experimental design

Taguchi’s experimental design of surface response methodology was applied to optimize the culture medium conditions for Lysinibacillus sphaericus (Ls) mosquitocidal toxins production under solid state fermentation (SSF). The predicted results of this design revealed that the optimum culture medium conditions for the maximum mosquitocidal activity against second instar Culex pipiens larvae were: 3.08 ± 0.05% substrate concentration, 33 ± 1.5% moisture content, 7.8 ± 0.1 initial pH, 1.35 ± 0.15% (5.7 × 107 CFU) inoculum size and 5.9 ± 0.2 days incubation period. Sporulation titer of Lysinibacillus sphaericus (Ls 14N1) and mortality percentage of second instar Culex pipiens larvae of the fermented culture under these conditions were 2.8 × 1010 CFU/g fermented culture and 97.5 ± 1%, respectively. The results of practical validation of the design were incomparable with the mathematical results. Sporulation titer was 2.7 × 10 10 CFU/g fermented culture; LC50 was 2.8 × 10-5 final fermented culturedilution and toxin protein concentration was 2.24 mg/g fermented culture

Skeletal Muscle Pump Drives Control of Cardiovascular and Postural Systems

The causal interaction between cardio-postural-musculoskeletal systems is critical in maintaining postural stability under orthostatic challenge. The absence or reduction of such interactions could lead to fainting and falls often experienced by elderly individuals. The causal relationship between systolic blood pressure (SBP), calf electromyography (EMG), and resultant center of pressure (COPr) can quantify the behavior of cardio-postural control loop. Convergent cross mapping (CCM) is a non-linear approach to establish causality, thus, expected to decipher nonlinear causal cardio-postural-musculoskeletal interactions. Data were acquired simultaneously from young participants (25&thinsp;±&thinsp;2 years, n&thinsp;=&thinsp;18) during a 10-minute sit-to-stand test. In the young population, skeletal muscle pump was found to drive blood pressure control (EMG&thinsp;→&thinsp;SBP) as well as control the postural sway (EMG&thinsp;→&thinsp;COPr) through the significantly higher causal drive in the direction towards SBP and COPr. Furthermore, the effect of aging on muscle pump activation associated with blood pressure regulation was explored. Simultaneous EMG and SBP were acquired from elderly group (69&thinsp;±&thinsp;4 years, n&thinsp;=&thinsp;14). A significant (p&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.002) decline in EMG&thinsp;→&thinsp;SBP causality was observed in the elderly group, compared to the young group. The results highlight the potential of causality to detect alteration in blood pressure regulation with age, thus, a potential clinical utility towards detection of fall proneness

Intelligent image-based colourimetric tests using machine learning framework for lateral flow assays

This paper aims to deliberately examine the scope of an intelligent colourimetric test that fulfils ASSURED criteria (Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and robust, Equipment-free, and Deliverable) and demonstrate the claim as well. This paper presents an investigation into an intelligent image-based system to perform automatic paper-based colourimetric tests in real-time to provide a proof-of-concept for a dry-chemical based or microfluidic, stable and semi-quantitative assay using a larger dataset with diverse conditions. The universal pH indicator papers were utilised as a case study. Unlike the works done in the literature, this work performs multiclass colourimetric tests using histogram based image processing and machine learning algorithm without any user intervention. The proposed image processing framework is based on colour channel separation, global thresholding, morphological operation and object detection. We have also deployed a server based convolutional neural network framework for image classification using inductive transfer learning on a mobile platform. The results obtained by both traditional machine learning and pre-trained model-based deep learning were critically analysed with the set evaluation criteria (ASSURED criteria). The features were optimised using univariate analysis and exploratory data analysis to improve the performance. The image processing algorithm showed >98% accuracy while the classification accuracy by Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LS- SVM) was 100%. On the other hand, the deep learning technique provided >86% accuracy, which could be further improved with a large amount of data. The k-fold cross validated LS- SVM based final system, examined on different datasets, confirmed the robustness and reliability of the presented approach, which was further validated using statistical analysis. The understaffed and resource limited healthcare system can benefit from such an easy-to-use technology to support remote aid workers, assist in elderly care and promote personalised healthcare by eliminating the subjectivity of interpretation