Mineral Changes in the Blood of Ovariectomized Mice after Treatment with β-Sitosterol

Peer Reviewe

Characterisation of machinable structural polymers in restorative dentistry

Objectives To characterise the mechanical properties of the machinable polymers Pekkton® (Cendres-Meteaux, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland), Lava Ultimate® (3MESPE, Seefeld, Germany), Vita Enamic® (Ivoclar Vivadent, Schaan, Liechtenstein) and the ceramic IPS e.Max Press® (Ivoclar Vivadent, Schaan, Liechtenstein). To determine the structural integrity of full coverage crowns fabricated from these materials. Methods The following tests were conducted: Biaxial flexural strength (BFS) using the piston on 3 balls jig (n = 10); Vickers Hardness (VH) 10 indentations per sample with 10 kg load & 20 s dwell time (n = 5); Hygroscopic Expansion Change (HEC) in artificial saliva over 68 days (n = 5). Structural Strength (SS) of teeth analogues (n = 20) restored with monolithic crowns from the four materials. Mean values and standard deviations for BFS, VH, HEC and SS tests were calculated and compared using one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey’s test at a level of 5% significance. Results BFS: IPS e.Max Press® (317 MPa ± 37 MPa), Pekkton® (227 MPa ± 18 MPa), Lava Ultimate® (145 MPa ± 18 MPa) and Vita Enamic® (137 MPa ± 7 MPa) with a significance between groups of p < 0.0001. VH: IPS e.Max Press® (5064 MPa ± 131 MPa), Vita Enamic® (1976 MPa ± 12 MPa), Lava Ultimate® (924 MPa ± 27 MPa) and Pekkton® (445MPa ± 21 MPa) with a significance between groups of p < 0.0001. HEC (%vol change): Pekkton® (0.14% ± 0.14%), Vita Enamic® (0.38% ± 0.16%) and Lava Ultimate® (1.06% ± 0.17%). SS for full-coverage crowns: Pekkton® (2037 N ± 49 N no fracture), IPS e.Max Press® (1497 N ± 165 N), Lava Ultimate® (1476 N ± 142 N) and Vita Enamic® (1127 N ± 108 N). Significance The properties investigated suggest that full coverage monolithic PEKK crowns possess adequate mechanical and physical properties for use in the posterior region of the mouth. These results must be considered alongside other data including clinical studies

Remote clinical consultations in restorative dentistry

Specialist consultations are routine in medical and oral healthcare provision. These take place as an 'in-person' event in the secondary care centres. The primary outcome of the specialist consultation is to provide the dentist and the patient with a specialist assessment, diagnosis, prognosis and a proposed care plan. This in-person procedure remains the gold-standard as it is a considered safe and effective. It presents a number of shortcomings: (1) The referring clinician is not actively involved in the decision-making process. (2) The patient must travel to the secondary care centre for the consultation, creating inequalities of care provision. (3) The patient travel has a carbon footprint. (4) The setting of the referral centre can be unfamiliar and intimidating to the patient. (5) The outbreak of COVID-19 highlighted the need for alternative system to address this need. This clinical study assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of undertaking remote clinical consultations in restorative dentistry between a patient and dentist co-located in a clinical primary care dental practice and a specialist consultant in a remote secondary care centre. Method: A remote clinical consultation in restorative dentistry was conducted that enabled full engagement between the remote consultant and the patient/General Dental Practitioner (GDP) in the dental surgery. A comprehensive bespoke high-speed secure internet connected hardware and software platform was used. Each participant completed a semi-structured interview and a validated questionnaire covering four domains: Patient safety, communication between different parties, formulation of a treatment plan, and effectiveness of the technology. Results: Effective and safe clinical consultations were carried out in all the cases, regardless of gender, age and presenting complaint. Neither the process nor the outcomes were inferior to an in-person consultation. Conclusion: This pilot in-practice clinical effectiveness study identified that Remote Clinical Consultations (RCCs), as conducted in this study, are effective for the delivery of specialist consultations in restorative dentistry. They are not inferior to an in-person consultation. Secondary outcomes: Three-way discussion was very positive; high levels of acceptability from the patients and the referring GDPs; an alternative to patient travel, reducing travel inconvenience, cost and the environmental burden from the associated carbon dioxide emissions

Association of polymorphisms G(–174)C in IL-6 gene and G(–1082)A in IL-10 gene with traditional cardiovascular risk factors in patients with coronary artery disease

282-292Interleukin-6 (IL-6) polymorphism has been associated with the genetic susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD) and also with the lipid profile in different populations. The present work aimed at studying the association, if any between the IL-6 (174) G/C and IL-10 (1082) G/A genes with hypertension or hyperlipidimia in Egyptian patients with CAD and the association of the IL-6 -174 G/C polymorphism with serum IL-6 levels. 108 Egyptian patients with CAD and 143 unrelated healthy subjects were included in the study. The different genotypes of IL-6 and IL-10 were detected by polymerase chain reaction. Serum levels of lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] and IL-6 were estimated in the patients, as well as in the healthy subjects. Increased frequency of G allele, GG and GC genotypes in IL-6, as well as decreased frequency of C allele and CC genotype were found in CAD patients, compared to healthy subjects [P = < 0.0001, OR = 3.95, 95% CI (2.16–7.22) for GG and GC vs CC genotype], [P = < 0.0001, OR = 3.44, 95% CI (2.26–5.23)<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US" lang="EN-US"> for G allele]. There was an increased frequency of G allele vs A allele in IL-10 genotype in CAD patients, compared to healthy subjects [P = 0.005, OR = 1.866, 95% CI (1.2–2.9]. Higher levels of both Lp(a) and IL-6 were observed in CAD patients, compared to control subjects (P = 0.0012, P = 0.0346, respectively). Increased frequency of IL-6 -174 G-allele was implicated in a greater cardiovascular risk and the presence of G allele or homozygosity for G allele of IL-10 G/A (1082) was associated with an increased prevalence of CAD.<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US" lang="EN-US"> The GC genotype and G allele in IL-6 had significant correlation with hyperlipidimic CAD patients; however, G allele in IL-6 and IL-10 showed significant association with hypertension. Thus, G allele in IL-6 and IL-10 was considered as an independent risk factor in hypertensive CAD patients. </span

Diversity Combining Type I-Hybrid ARQ protocol over m-ary Asymmetric Varshamov channels

Errors in multilevel flash memories and multilevel optical systems are asymmetric in nature because of the underlying device physics. These errors can be modeled using the m-ary asymmetric channel. In this work, a general m(  ≥ 2)-ary Asymmetric Varshamov (AV) channel for these systems is introduced. Also, a Divesting Combining Type-I Hybrid ARQ protocol using t-Asymmetric Error Correcting/All Asymmetric Error Detecting (t-AEC/AAED) codes is presented and its throughput performance is studied

Laboratory evaluation of production efficiency for removable partial denture frameworks using two different techniques

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an alternative workflow for fabricating metal prosthodontic frameworks. Production efficiency of this workflow was compared to traditional casting (CAST) in a prospective pilot evaluation in a hospital prosthodontic laboratory setting. Time taken to complete each of the identified stages in the production of fifty removable partial denture frameworks made using either SLS (n=25) or CAST (n=25) workflows was measured. Mean time for production was calculated for each workflow and the difference was tested for statistical significance. Results indicate that an SLS workflow may be more time efficient and further cost-effectiveness research is indicated

Enhanced Deep Learning Model for Classification of Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging is a valuable tool for assessing the condition of the back part of the eye. The condition has a great effect on the specificity of diagnosis, the monitoring of many physiological and pathological procedures, and the response and evaluation of therapeutic effectiveness in various fields of clinical practices, including primary eye diseases and systemic diseases such as diabetes. Therefore, precise diagnosis, classification, and automated image analysis models are crucial. In this paper, we propose an enhanced optical coherence tomography (EOCT) model to classify retinal OCT based on modified ResNet (50) and random forest algorithms, which are used in the proposed study’s training strategy to enhance performance. The Adam optimizer is applied during the training process to increase the efficiency of the ResNet (50) model compared with the common pre-trained models, such as spatial separable convolutions and visual geometry group (VGG) (16). The experimentation results show that the sensitivity, specificity, precision, negative predictive value, false discovery rate, false negative rate accuracy, and Matthew’s correlation coefficient are 0.9836, 0.9615, 0.9740, 0.9756, 0.0385, 0.0260, 0.0164, 0.9747, 0.9788, and 0.9474, respectively