The relationship between Chlamydophila pneumoniae IgG titer and coronary atherosclerosis

Background: The role of Chlamydophila pneumoniae (CP) in the progression of atherosclerosis is controversial. Also no sufficient angiographic study is available about the impact of CP infection on severity and intensity of coronary atherosclerosis. We investigated the relation between CP IgG antibody titers and severity and intensity of coronary atherosclerosis Methods: The study population consisted of 516 consecutive patients who underwent a coronary angiography. The group included 353 patients who had coronary artery disease; a control group included 163 subjects with angiographically proven normal coronary arteries. Chlamydophila pneumoniae IgG antibody titers were measured by an enzyme immunoassay method in all patients. Gensini scores and extent scores were used to evaluate the angiographic extent and severity of atherosclerosis. Results: The mean value of IgG antibody titer was 44.3 &#177; 28.8 IU/mL in the patients and 39.8 &#177; 27.4 IU/mL in the control group (p = 0.14). There was no statistically significant correlation between the Gensini scores, extent scores and CP IgG titers (Gensini score: r = +0.103, p = 0.07, extent score: r = +0.110, p = 0.31). When we grouped the patients as high (> 50 IU/mL) and low (< 50 IU/mL) IgG antibody titers, the number of diseased coronary arteries was higher in patients with high IgG antibody titers (respectively: 2.6 &#177; 1.1 vs. 2.2 &#177; 0.8, p = 0.01). While the Gensini score was significantly higher in patients with high IgG antibody titers (7.5 &#177; 4.0 vs. 6.17 &#177; 4.0, p = 0.01), the extent score did not change with IgG titers (29.8 &#177; 15.9 vs. 25.8 &#177; 15.4, p = 0.08). Conclusions: In our study, we investigated the relation between CP infection and coronary atherosclerosis and found that CP IgG antibody titers are associated with the severity of coronary stenosis at higher antibody levels. However, there is no association between CP antibody titers and clinical presentation of coronary artery disease. We suggest that CP has limited effect on coronary atherosclerosis. (Cardiol J 2008; 15: 245-251

Rapidly Progressive Cardiac Manifestation of Behçet's Disease Involving Conduction System and Aortic Valve

Cardiac conduction system impairment is a rare clinical manifestation of Behçet's disease. We report a patient who showed 1st degree atrioventricular block at first presentation, and showed aggravated finding of 3rd degree atrioventricular block on five months later. His cardiac manifestation finally developed to acute severe aortic regurgitation on six months later from his first cardiac manifestation. We observed this rapid progression during 6 months and successfully improved symptom and disease severity of the patient with treatment targeting Behçet's disease

Üniversite öğrencilerinin algıladığı yüksek hızlı internet kullanımı ve önemi analizi : ODTÜ öğrencilerimm

This study aims to find differences in the perceived usage and importance of the Internet within characteristics of students. METU undergraduate students having a proper Internet connection were defined as population, and asked to answer the online questionnaire about perceived usage and importance of the Internet. For 653 eligible answers, Factorial ANOVA and independent samples t-test were used to compare mean scores of dependent variables across three independent variables: gender, accommodation type and faculty. Results indicate that although genders spent equal times on the Internet, their perceived usage and importance of the Internet differs. Females’ perceived usage and importance of the Internet for academic works and instant messaging are more than males, whereas males are using Internet for seeking current information like news, sending content to interactive web services and playing online games. This study also states that there is no evidence of a statistically significant difference for amount of the Internet usage between 3 accommodation types, METU Dormitories with high speed Internet connection, house with family or relatives, house with friends or alone. However, it is observed that students staying at METU Dormitories stated more instant messaging usage than that of staying at house with friends or alone. Between faculties, there is evidence that students from Faculty of Education are using Internet for academic course work more than the other faculties. Finally, students who are living in campus are more satisfied with the access speed to university local area network and Turkish National Research Network.M.S. - Master of Scienc

Melez sosyal tavsiye sistemleri için olasılıksal saklı anlam analizi tabanlı bir çatı.

Today, there are user annotated internet sites, user interaction logs, online user communities which are valuable sources of information concerning the personalized recommendation problem. In the literature, hybrid social recommender systems have been proposed to reduce the sparsity of the usage data by integrating the user related information sources together. In this thesis, a method based on probabilistic latent semantic analysis is used as a framework for a hybrid social recommendation system. Different data hybridization approaches on probabilistic latent semantic analysis are experimented. Based on this flexible probabilistic model, network regularization and model blending approaches are applied on probabilistic latent semantic analysis model as a solution for social trust network usage throughout the collaborative filtering process. The proposed model has outperformed the baseline methods in our experiments. As a result of the research, it is shown that the proposed methods successfully model the rating and social trust data together in a theoretically principled way.M.S. - Master of Scienc

Expression of annexin 2 and caveolin 1 markers and its relationship withclinicopathological parameters and ki-67 proliferation index in invasive ductalbreast carcinoma

Amaç: Meme kanserlerinin artan sıklığı, kansere bağlı ölüm oranlarının yüksek olması, cerrahi komplikasyonlar ve tedaviye bağlı toksisite gelişimi hastaları risk gruplarına ayırarak optimal tedaviyi belirleme çabası doğurmuştur. Bu nedenle kanser tedavisinde hedefe yönelik ajanların kullanımı gündeme gel ile Annexin 2 (Anx 2) ve Caveolin 1 (Cav 1)' in invaziv duktal meme karsinomlarda prognostik ve prediktif önemi araştırılmıştır. Gereç ve yöntem: Çalışmamıza 2010-2020 yılları arasında invaziv duktal karsinom tanısı almış 81 adet meme kanseri olgusu dahil edilmiştir. Bu olgularda immunhistokimyasal olarak Ki-67, Cav 1 ve Anx 2 antikorlarının boyanması değerlendirilmiştir. Cav 1 ve Anx 2' nin Ki-67 proliferasyon indeksi ve klinikopatolojik parametreler ile ilişkisi istatistiksel olarak incelenmiştir. Bulgular: Yüksek Ki-67 proliferasyon indeksinin invaziv duktal meme karsinomlarında yüksek mitoz skoru, yüksek tümör grade' i ve HER2 pozitivitesi ile ilişkili olduğu, ER ve PR ekspresyonu ile ters korelasyon gösterdiği saptanmıştır. Cav 1 ekspresyonunun yüksek grade, yüksek mitoz skor, lenf nodu pozitifliği, HER2 pozitivitesi ve düşük ER ekspresyonu ile ilişkili olduğu, yanı sıra yapılan çok değişkenli analizler ile bu parametreler içerisinde Cav 1 ekspresyonunu etkileyen en önemli parametrenin HER2 skoru olduğu saptanmıştır. Metastatik olguların tamamında yüksek Anx 2 ekspresyonu izlenmiş olup, metastaz varlığı ile Anx 2 ekspresyonu arasında istatistiksel açıdan anlamlı ilişki bulunmuştur. Sonuç: Çalışmamızda, invaziv duktal meme kanserlerinde stromal Cav 1 ekspresyonunun kötü prognozu işaret edebileceği ve HER2 tedavisi kararını belirlemede prediktif rolü olabileceği yanı sıra Anx 2 ekspresyonunun tümörün metastaz yeteneğini gösterebileceği sonucuna varılmıştır.Aim: Increasing frequency of breast cancers, high cancer-related mortality rates, complications in surgical procedure and treatment-related toxicity have created an effort to determine the optimal treatment by designating the risk groups. As a consequence, the use of targeted cancer therapies in treatment has come to the fore. The prognostic and predictive significance of Annexin 2 (Anx 2) and Caveolin 1 (Cav 1) in invasive ductal breast carcinomas has been investigated with this study. Material and Methods: 81 cases of breast cancer diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma between 2010 and 2020 were included in our study. In these cases, immunohistochemical staining of Ki-67, Cav 1 and Anx 2 antibodies was evaluated. The relationship of Cav 1 and Anx 2 with Ki-67 proliferation index and clinicopathological parameters were analyzed statistically. Results: High Ki-67 proliferation index was found to be associated with high mitotic score, high grade and HER2 positivity in invasive ductal breast carcinomas, and inversely correlated with ER and PR expression. It was determined that Cav 1 expression was associated with high grade, high mitotic score, lymph node positivity, HER2 positivity and low ER expression in invasive ductal breast carcinomas, furthermore, with the multivariate analysis performed, it was determined that the most important parameter affecting Cav 1 expression among these parameters was the HER2 score. High Anx 2 expression was observed in all metastatic cases, and a statistically significant relationship was found between metastases and Anx 2 expression. Conclusion: In our study, it was concluded that stromal Cav 1 expression in invasive ductal breast cancers may indicate poor prognosis and may have a predictive role in determining the decision of HER2 therapy, as well as Anx 2 expression may indicate the metastatic ability of tumor

Analyzing Protein Dynamics Using Dimensionality Reduction

This thesis investigates dimensionality reduction for analyzing the dynamics ofprotein simulations, particularly disordered proteins which do not fold into a xedshape but are thought to perform their functions through their movements. Ratherthan analyze the movement of the proteins in 3D space, we use dimensionalityreduction to project the molecular structure of the proteins into a target space inwhich each structure is represented as a point. All that is needed to do this arethe pairwise distances between the protein structures. We can then visualize theprojected structures in three dimensions to get a general idea of the dynamics ofthe protein. We can also measure how well the projection preserves the pairwisedistances between structures for a particular target dimension to get an idea ofthe dimension of the dynamics of the protein in the original space

İnovasyonun işletmenin rekabet gücüne katkısı ve başarının sermaye piyasaları üzerine etkisi (boya sanayinde “Nano Teknoloji” üzerine örnek bir uygulama)

ÖZET Firmaların rekabette daha başarılı olabilmeleri için inovasyon kavramına daha fazla önem vermesi gerekmektedir. Nano teknolojiye dayalı inovatif bir ürün sadece kendi sektörüne değil, diğer sektörlere de etkili olabilmektedir. Hazırlamış olduğum tezde Teknoloji kavramı ve İnovasyon kavramı ayrıntılı olarak ele alınıp incelenmiştir. Ar-ge’ye ağırlık verip, nano teknoloji konusunda yeni bir ürün üretip ürünlerine uygulayan, Dyo boyaları üzerine araştırma yapılmıştır. İnovasyonun sermaye piyasaları üzerine etkileri ampirik çalışma ile ortaya konulmuştur.ABSTRACTCompanies should consider the concept of innovation more important in order to be more successful in competition. An innovative product based on nano technology can affect not only its own industry but also many more industries. In my thesis the concept of “technology” and “innovation” have been studied in detail. A research on DYO Dying which has been lying heavy on R&D, developed a new product of nano technology and applied it on its own products successfully has been made. The influence of innovation on share markets has been put forth by an empiric study

Obstrüktif Uyku Apne Sendromunda Sol Ventrikül Kitlesi ve Diyastolik Fonksiyonlar

Amaç; Bu çalışmanın amacı; Obstrüktif uyku apne sendromu (OUAS) olan hastalarda, 2-boyutlu ve pulse dalga doppler (PDD) ekokardiyografi teknikleri kullanılarak SV fonksiyonlarının değerlendirilmesidir. Yöntem; Çalışmaya polisomnografi ile OUAS tanısı konulan ve henüz tedavi uygulanmamış 40 hasta ve 28 sağlıklı birey kontrol grubu olarak alındı. Hastalara M-mod, 2- boyutlu ve PDD ekokardiyografi incelemeleri yapıldı. Bulgular; Gruplar arasında M-mode ölçümleri ile elde edilen SV sistolik ve diyastolik çapları, ejeksiyon fraksiyonları açısından fark saptanmadı. OUAS’ li grupta SV kitle ve kitle indeksi ve SV diyastolik duvar kalınlıkları, kontrol grubuna göre anlamlı olarak daha fazla tespit edildi. Transmitral diyastolik doluş parametrelerinin PDD ekokardiyografi ile yapılan incelemesinde; OUAS grupta erken diyastolik doluma ait E dalga hızında, E/A oranlarında anlamlı azalma izlendi. E dalga deselerasyon zamanı ve izovolümetrik gevşeme zamanının OUAS’ lı grupta anlamlı olarak daha uzun saptandı. Apne-hipopne indeksi ile SV diyastolik parametreler arasında ilişki saptanmadı. Sonuç; OUAS, altta yatan herhangi bir kalp hastalığı olmasa da SV kitlesini etkileyen ve hastalığın şiddetinden bağımsız olarak SV diyastolik fonksiyonlarını bozan bir durumdur. Bu nedenle OSAS hastaları kardiyak açıdan da mutlaka değerlendirilmelidir