The gender roles attitudes of medicals students: A cross-sectional study

Objective: Gender roles; refers to the roles traditionally associated with women and men. In studies conducted to determine the attitudes of university students towards gender roles in our country, it has been shown in different studies that male students have a more traditional view of gender roles than female students. In this study, it was aimed to determine the attitudes of university students studying gender roles and to investigate the effect of medical education on these attitudes. Method:This study is cross-sectional and conducted with the first and sixth year students who are studying medicine at Eskisehir Osmangazi University (ESOGÜ) Faculty of Medicine. Sociodemographic form and Gender Roles Attitude Scale (TCRSS) were applied to participants. Results: There was a significant difference between the first and sixth grades in terms of total TCRSS score and subscale scores (p> 0.05). There was no difference between the first and sixth grades (p> 0.05) in terms of averages of the scale scores for males (p> 0.05) when the scores of the groups were compared with the scores of the TCRSS and subscales after the participants had separated by sex. In the females, 6th-grade students had significantly higher traditional gender subscale scores (p = 0.033). Discussion: This study is, to our knowledge, the first study in the literature investigating attitudes towards gender roles in medical students in our country. In terms of content, it is recommended that medical education be organized to provide a transformative contribution to the attitudes of students towards gender roles

Performance of apparent diffusion coefficient values and ratios for the prediction of prostate cancer aggressiveness across different MRI acquisition settings

PURPOSE:In this study, we assessed the performance of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) metrics and their ratios across different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition settings, with or without an endorectal coil (ERC), for the evaluation of prostate cancer (PCa) aggressiveness using whole-mount specimens as a reference.METHODS:We retrospectively reviewed the data of prostate carcinoma patients with a Gleason score (GS) of 3+4 or higher who underwent prostate MRI using a 3T unit at our institution. They were divided into two groups based on the use of ERC for MRI acquisition, and patients who underwent prostate MRI with an ERC constituted the ERC (n = 55) data set, while the remaining patients accounted for the non-ERC data set (n = 41). DWI was performed with b-values of 50, 500, 1000, and 1,400 s/mm2, and ADC maps were automatically calculated. Additionally, computed DWI (cDWI) was performed with a b-value of 2000 s/mm2. Six ADC and two cDWI parameters were evaluated. In the ERC data set, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted for each metric to determine the best cutoff threshold values for differentiating GS 3+4 PCa from that with a higher GS. The performance of these cutoff values was assessed in non-ERC dataset. The diagnostic accuracies and area under the curves (AUCs) of the metrics were compared using Fisher’s exact test and De Long’s method, respectively.RESULTS:Among all metrics, the ADCmean-ratio yielded the highest AUC, 0.84, for differing GS 3+4 PCa from that with a higher GS. The best threshold cutoff values of ADCmean-ratio (£0.51) for discriminating GS 3+4 PCa from that with a higher GS classified 48 patients out of 55 with an accuracy of 87.27%. However, there was no significant difference between each metric in terms of accuracy and AUC (p = 0.163 and 0.214). Similarly, in the non-ERC data set, the ADCmean-ratio provided the highest diagnostic accuracy (82.92%) by classifying 34 patients out of 41. However, Fisher’s exact test yielded no significant difference between DWI and ADC metrics in terms of diagnostic accuracy in non-ERC data (p = 0.561).CONCLUSION:The mean ADC ratio of the tumor to the normal prostate showed the highest accuracy and AUC in differentiating GS 3+4 PCa and PCa with a higher GS across different MRI acquisition settings; however, the performance of different ADC and DWI metrics did not differ significantly

Yakınları ve ailesi Çetin Emeç'i anlattı

Taha Toros Arşivi, Dosya No: 44-Çetin-Aydın-Ragıp Eme

Natural Variation in Fc Glycosylation of HIV-Specific Antibodies Impacts Antiviral Activity

While the induction of a neutralizing antibody response against HIV remains a daunting goal, data from both natural infection and vaccine-induced immune responses suggest that it may be possible to induce antibodies with enhanced Fc effector activity and improved antiviral control via vaccination. However, the specific features of naturally induced HIV-specific antibodies that allow for the potent recruitment of antiviral activity and the means by which these functions are regulated are poorly defined. Because antibody effector functions are critically dependent on antibody Fc domain glycosylation, we aimed to define the natural glycoforms associated with robust Fc-mediated antiviral activity. We demonstrate that spontaneous control of HIV and improved antiviral activity are associated with a dramatic shift in the global antibody-glycosylation profile toward agalactosylated glycoforms. HIV-specific antibodies exhibited an even greater frequency of agalactosylated, afucosylated, and asialylated glycans. These glycoforms were associated with enhanced Fc-mediated reduction of viral replication and enhanced Fc receptor binding and were consistent with transcriptional profiling of glycosyltransferases in peripheral B cells. These data suggest that B cell programs tune antibody glycosylation actively in an antigen-specific manner, potentially contributing to antiviral control during HIV infection

Can bath ankylosing spondylitis disease activity index be affected by accompanying fibromyalgia or depression?

Objectives: This study aims to investigate whether Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) is affected from pathologies such as fibromyalgia (FM) and depression which may coexist in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS).Patients and methods: A total of 170 patients (57 males, 123 females; mean age 42.9 +/- 13.0 years) aged between 18 and 75 years with FM (n=52), depression (n=60) and AS (n=58) were included in the study. All patients were asked to complete BASDAI and Beck Depression Inventory. Percentages of patients with BASDAI scores of >4 (cut-off value for disease activity) and >5 (cut-off value for reimbursement of biological agents) were calculated and compared between the groups. Individual BASDAI item scores, total BASDAI, and Beck Depression Inventory scores were compared between the groups.Results: When individual BASDAI items scores were analyzed separately, scores of all items were statistically significantly higher in FM group compared to AS group. While question 1 (fatigue) and 3 (peripheral joint pain and swelling) scores were statistically significantly higher in the depression group compared to AS group, question 5 and 6 scores (items associated with morning stiffness) were significantly lower in the depression group compared to AS group. Percentage of patients with BASDAI scores of >4 and >5 in the FM group was significantly higher compared to the other two groups. Significant correlation was noted between BASDAI and Beck Depression Inventory scores in AS and FM groups.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that while assessing disease activity in patients with AS particularly by a patient-reported outcome measure such as BASDAI, other conditions such as FM and depression which may affect the scores should be taken into consideration

DEVELOPMENT OF ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK BASED DESIGN TOOL FOR AIRCRAFT ENGINE BOLTED FLANGE CONNECTION SUBJECT TO COMBINED AXIAL AND MOMENT LOAD

Bolted flange connections are one of the most commonly used joint types in aircraft structures. Typically, bolted flange connections are used in aircraft engines. The main duty of a bolted flange connection in an aircraft engine is to serve as the load transfer interface from one part of the engine to the other part of the engine. In aircraft structures, weight is a very critical parameter which has to be minimized while having the required margin of safety for the structural integrity. Therefore, optimum design of the bolted flange connection is crucial to minimize the weight. In the preliminary design stage of the bolted flange connection, many repetitive analyses have to be made in order to decide on the optimum design parameters of the bolted flange connection. Two main methods used for analyzing bolted flange connections are the hand calculations based on simplified approaches and finite element analysis (FEA). While hand calculations lack achieving optimum weight as they tend to give over safe results, finite element analysis is computationally expensive because of the non-linear feature of the problem due to contact definitions between the mating parts