Small bowel obstruction secondary to intussusception due to double Meckel's diverticulum in an adult: a case report

Meckel's diverticulum (MD) is a normal variant in 2% of the population, it contains all the layers of the small intestine and is considered a true diverticulum. One of the most frequent complications in adults is obstruction secondary to intussusception of MD towards the ileum. We present the case of a 52-year-old man with severe abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting, which did not respond to conservative management. Imaging studies compatible with small bowel obstruction, identifying the transition zone at the ileum level. An exploratory laparotomy was performed ruling an intussusception due to a diverticulum, an intestinal resection was performed. The histopathological study revealed a double MD. In adults with symptomatic MD, this represents a challenge in early diagnosis and immediate surgical treatment. Intestinal intussusception in adults secondary to MD is rare and should be considered in the differential diagnosis of those with abdominal pain and small bowel obstruction

1,2-Diphenyl-2-(m-tolylamino)ethanone

The title compound, C21H19NO, belongs to the family of -aminoketones. The structure contains three benzene rings, two of which [the phenyl ring in the 1-position (B) and the methylaniline ring (A)] are nearly coplanar [dihedral angle = 5.4 (1)°], whereas the phenyl ring in the 2-position (C) is nearly normal to them [dihedral angles = 81.8 (1) and 87.0 (1)° for A/C and B/C, respectively]. The conformation of the N-H bond is syn to the C=O bond, favouring the formation of a centrosymmetric dimer of molecules in the crystal structure. The molecular packing is consolidated by this N-HO hydrogen-bonding network.Financial support by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional y Desarrollo (AECID), FEDER funding, the Spanish MICINN (MAT2006–01997 and Factoría de Cristalización Consolider Ingenio 2010) and the Gobierno del Principado de Asturias (PCTI) is acknowledged.Peer Reviewe

Ultrathin carbon nanotube with single, double, and triple bonds

A metastable carbon nanotube with single, double, and triple bonds has been predicted from abinitio simulation. It results from the relaxation of an ideal carbon nanotube with chirality (2,1), without any potential barrier between the ideal nanotube and the new structure. Ten-membered carbon rings are formed by breaking carbon bonds between adjacent hexagons; eight-membered rings, already present in the ideal structure, become the smallest rings. This structure is stable in molecular dynamics simulations at temperatures up to 1000K. Raman, infrared, and optical absorption spectra are simulated to allow its identification in the laboratory. The structure can be described as a double helical chain with alternating single, double, and triple bonds, where the chains are bridged by single bondsThis work was supported by Grants No. SB2010-0119 (MEC), No. CTQ2010-19232 (MICIN), and No. A1/035856/11 (AECID

Detection of small murine lung tumours by FDG-PET

[Abstract] AMI International Conference 2003, September 21 - 27, Madrid, Spain: "High Resolution Molecular Imaging: from Basic Science to Clinical Applications"The functional information provided by 2-deoxy-2- [18F]fluoro-D-Glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) is commonly used to detect primary tumours and metastases in clinical studies. The aim of this work is to assess the possibilities of FDG-PET studies to detect small lung tumour lesions in mice, using a dedicated small animal PET scannerPublicad

Thioredoxin 1 modulates apoptosis induced by bioactive compounds in prostate cancer cells

Accumulating evidence suggests that natural bioactive compounds, alone or in combination with traditional chemotherapeutic agents, could be used as potential therapies to fight cancer. In this study, we employed four natural bioactive compounds (curcumin, resveratrol, melatonin, and silibinin) and studied their role in redox control and ability to promote apoptosis in androgen sensitive and insensitive prostate cancer cells. Here is shown that curcumin and resveratrol promote ROS production and induce apoptosis in LNCaP and PC-3. An increase in reactive species is a trigger event in curcumin-induced apoptosis and a consequence of resveratrol effects on other pathways within these cells. Moreover, here we demonstrated that these four compounds affect differently one of the main intracellular redox regulator, the thioredoxin system. Exposure to curcumin and resveratrol promoted TRX1 oxidation and altered its subcellular location. Furthermore, resveratrol diminished TRX1 levels in PC-3 cells and increased the expression of its inhibitor TXNIP. Conversly, melatonin and silibinin only worked as cytostatic agents, reducing ROS levels and showing preventive effects against TRX oxidation. All together, this work explores the effect of compounds currently tested as chemo-preventive agents in prostate cancer therapy, on the TRX1 redox state and function. Our work shows the importance that the TRX system might have within the differences found in their mechanisms of action. These bioactive compounds trigger different responses and affect ROS production and redox systems in prostate cancer cells, suggesting the key role that redox-related pathways might play in processes like differentiation or survival in prostate cancer. Keywords: Thioredoxin, Thioredoxin reductase, TXNIP, Prostate cancer, Redox signaling, Apoptosi

Adult cocaine-induced brain metabolic activation is altered in a sex-dependent manner by chronic periadolescent cannabinoid exposure in rats

[Poster] 4th European Molecular Imaging Meeting, Barcelona, Spain, May 27 - 30, 2009Cannabinoid exposure during the periadolescent period has been shown to augment the rates of cocaine self-administration in female but not male Wistar rats. However, how this cannabinoid history alters cocaine-induced brain activation remains unknownPublicad

A new algorithm for ring artifact reduction in cone-beam computed tomography: preliminary results

[Abstract] 22nd International Congress and Exhibition, Barcelona, Spain, June 25-28, 2008In this work we present a new method for ring artifact compensation, suitable for cone beam data. Starting from the idea of Sijbers et al., we have developed an improved procedure that operates on the projection data before the reconstruction and does not require interpolations, thus avoiding image degradation and reducing the computational burden. Results on phantoms and rodent studies are presentedPublicad

Sinogram bow-tie filtering in FBP PET reconstruction

Low-pass filtering of sinograms in the radial direction is the most common practice to limit noise amplification in filtered back projection FBP reconstruction of positron emission tomography studies. Other filtering strategies have been proposed to prevent the loss in resolution due to low-pass radial filters, although results have been diverse. Using the well-known properties of the Fourier transform of a sinogram, the authors defined a binary mask that matches the expected shape of the support region in the Fourier domain of the sinogram “bow tie”. This mask was smoothed by a convolution with a ten-point Gaussian kernel which not only avoids ringing but also introduces a pre-emphasis at low frequencies. A new filtering scheme for FBP is proposed, comprising this smoothed bow-tie filter combined with a standard radial filter and an axial filter. The authors compared the performance of the bow-tie filtering scheme with that of other previously reported methods: Standard radial filtering, angular filtering, and stackgram-domain filtering. All the quantitative data in the comparisons refer to a baseline reconstruction using a ramp filter only. When using the smallest size of the Gaussian kernel in the stackgram domain, the authors achieved a noise reduction of 33% at the cost of degrading radial and tangential resolutions 14.5% and 16%, respectively, for cubic interpolation . To reduce the noise by 30%, the angular filter produced a larger degradation of contrast 3% and tangential resolution 46% at 10 mm from the center of the field of view and showed noticeable artifacts in the form of circular blurring dependent on the distance to the center of the field of view. For a similar noise reduction 33%, the proposed bow-tie filtering scheme yielded optimum results in resolution (gain in radial resolution of 10%) and contrast (1% increase) when compared with any of the other filters alone. Experiments with rodent images showed noticeable image quality enhancement when using the proposed bow-tie filtering schemeThis work was partially funded by projects CD-TEAM CENIT program, Ministerio de Industria, CIBERsam CB07/09/0031 Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, TEC2004-07052-C02 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, and GR/SAL/024104 Comunidad de MadridPublicad