HEART RATE VARIABILITY PARAMETERS IN PATIENTS WITH ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION IN DEPENDENCE ON THE TYPE OF DAILY BLOOD PRESSURE PROFILE

Violation of functioning of the autonomic nervous system is an important factor in the formation and progression of arterial hypertension (AH). Abnormal nocturnal blood pressure (BP) reduction is regarded as an independent prognostic factor for cardiovascular complications in patients with AH. One of the possible factors that determine the violation of BP circadian rhythm can be imbalance of different parts of autonomic nervous system. The aim of our study was to study heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with AH, dependently of BP profile. 72 patients with AH were examined. Average age was 57 ± 11 years. All patients underwent ambulatory BP (ABPM) and ECG monitoring. To define the daily profile the nocturnal BP dip was quantified and for HRV evaluation the frequency analysis method was used. HRV changes in patients with AH present with reduced total power and with a violation in the ratio of the powers of very low, low and high frequencies, enhanced sympathycotension and influence of humoral factors. Violations of systolic BP (SBP) daily profile was mainly characterized by an increase in the power of low frequency waves, which indicates an intensification of sympathetic and decreased parasympathetic influences. Violations of diastolic BP (DBP) daily profile were mainly characterized by a relative increase in the power of very low frequency waves. The obtained results showed that in the management of patients with AH it is important not only to control the circadian SBP and DBP profiles, but the evaluation of HRV also

Sensitization and desensitization of burn patients as potential candidates for vascularized composite allotransplantation

Sensitization describes the acquired ability of the immune system to react to foreign human leukocyte antigens (HLA) by producing antibodies and developing memory cells. In the field of transplantation, recipient preformed HLA antibodies due to previous sensitization have been identified - beneath ABO incompatibility - as a major factor for acute graft rejection. Several reasons for sensitization have largely been studied, such as previous blood transfusions, pregnancies or former transplants. Recent studies indicate that the use of assist devices (e.g. ECMO) or cadaveric skin allotransplantation providing temporary coverage in burn patients may lead to additional sensitization. As vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) has become a rapidly advancing therapeutic option for reconstruction of complex tissue defects in burns, it seems even more important to become familiar with immunological principles and to be cautiously aware of both sources of sensitization and therapeutic concepts in burns avoiding sensitization. This may also include emergency VCAs in burn patients as potential strategy for early definitive reconstruction avoiding procedures triggering HLA antibody formation. We hereby provide an overview on current evidence in the field of pre- and peritrans-plant sensitization, followed by posttransplant strategies of desensitization and their potential impact on future treatments of burn patients. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

A Few-Shot Approach to Dysarthric Speech Intelligibility Level Classification Using Transformers

Dysarthria is a speech disorder that hinders communication due to difficulties in articulating words. Detection of dysarthria is important for several reasons as it can be used to develop a treatment plan and help improve a person's quality of life and ability to communicate effectively. Much of the literature focused on improving ASR systems for dysarthric speech. The objective of the current work is to develop models that can accurately classify the presence of dysarthria and also give information about the intelligibility level using limited data by employing a few-shot approach using a transformer model. This work also aims to tackle the data leakage that is present in previous studies. Our whisper-large-v2 transformer model trained on a subset of the UASpeech dataset containing medium intelligibility level patients achieved an accuracy of 85%, precision of 0.92, recall of 0.8 F1-score of 0.85, and specificity of 0.91. Experimental results also demonstrate that the model trained using the 'words' dataset performed better compared to the model trained on the 'letters' and 'digits' dataset. Moreover, the multiclass model achieved an accuracy of 67%.Comment: Paper has been presented at ICCCNT 2023 and the final version will be published in IEEE Digital Library Xplor

Identification of stress-responsive genes in an indica rice (Oryza sativa L.) using ESTs generated from drought-stressed seedlings

The impacts of drought on plant growth and development limit cereal crop production worldwide. Rice (Oryza sativa) productivity and production is severely affected due to recurrent droughts in almost all agroecological zones. With the advent of molecular and genomic technologies, emphasis is now placed on understanding the mechanisms of genetic control of the drought-stress response. In order to identify genes associated with water-stress response in rice, ESTs generated from a normalized cDNA library, constructed from drought-stressed leaf tissue of an indica cultivar, Nagina 22 were used. Analysis of 7794 cDNA sequences led to the identification of 5815 rice ESTs. Of these, 334 exhibited no significant sequence homology with any rice ESTs or full-length cDNAs in public databases, indicating that these transcripts are enriched during drought stress. Analysis of these 5815 ESTs led to the identification of 1677 unique sequences. To characterize this drought transcriptome further and to identify candidate genes associated with the drought-stress response, the rice data were compared with those for abiotic stress-induced sequences obtained from expression profiling studies in Arabidopsis, barley, maize, and rice. This comparative analysis identified 589 putative stress-responsive genes (SRGs) that are shared by these diverse plant species. Further, the identified leaf SRGs were compared to expression profiles for a drought-stressed rice panicle library to identify common sequences. Significantly, 125 genes were found to be expressed under drought stress in both tissues. The functional classification of these 125 genes showed that a majority of them are associated with cellular metabolism, signal transduction, and transcriptional regulation

Enhancing Knee Osteoarthritis severity level classification using diffusion augmented images

This research paper explores the classification of knee osteoarthritis (OA) severity levels using advanced computer vision models and augmentation techniques. The study investigates the effectiveness of data preprocessing, including Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE), and data augmentation using diffusion models. Three experiments were conducted: training models on the original dataset, training models on the preprocessed dataset, and training models on the augmented dataset. The results show that data preprocessing and augmentation significantly improve the accuracy of the models. The EfficientNetB3 model achieved the highest accuracy of 84\% on the augmented dataset. Additionally, attention visualization techniques, such as Grad-CAM, are utilized to provide detailed attention maps, enhancing the understanding and trustworthiness of the models. These findings highlight the potential of combining advanced models with augmented data and attention visualization for accurate knee OA severity classification.Comment: Paper has been accepted to be presented at ICACECS 2023 and the final version will be published by Atlantis Highlights in Computer Science (AHCS) , Atlantis Press(part of Springer Nature

Functional genomics of drought stress response in rice: transcript mapping of annotated unigenes of an indica rice (Oryza sativa L. cv. Nagina 22)

Rice being one of the widely cultivated cereals across diverse agroecological systems, is prone to high yield losses due to recurring droughts. In India, drought is a major constraint of rice production and accounts for as much as 15% of yield losses during some years. Conventional plant breeding techniques though cumbersome and time-consuming, have been immensely helpful in releasing drought-tolerant varieties. However, this is not adequate to cope up with the future demand for rice, as drought seems to spread to more regions and seasons across the country. Understanding the genes that govern rice plant architecture and response to drought stress is urgently needed to enhance breeding rice with improved drought tolerance. In order to identify genes associated with drought stress response and their temporal and spatial regulation, we took the genomic approach. By generating a large set of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from cDNA libraries of drought-stressed seedlings and transcript profiling, we identified 589 genes presumed to be involved in drought stress. These 5814 ESTs are assembled into 2094 contigs and localized onto chromosome arms. We present here the physical map of the 2094 unigene set along with 589 annotated putative stress responsive genes of rice. Further, using ESTs, a few of drought quantitative trait loci (QTLs) have been dissected and putative candidate genes identified. This will be useful to rice researchers as ready reference source for breeding through developing candidate gene markers, molecular dissection of QTLs associated with drought stress and map-based cloning

Referral Pattern to Neurosurgeons in a tertiary care teaching Hospital

Background: Due to lack of pre-hospital care, direct admission of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients to dedicated neurosurgical department remains difficult in many parts of world. Objective: The present pilot study was conducted to understand the referral pattern of patients to the neurosurgery department and to develop an algorithm to stratify the spectrum of cases as per the severity of condition and possibility of direct neurosurgical care. Materials and Methods: Details of referral patterns, demographic and clinical profile, management and outcome of consecutive TBI cases admitted in the Department of Neurosurgery were collected with pre-designed proforma. Results: Of total 55 cases, 40 (73%) were males; 26 (47%) between 36-55 years age; 26 (47%) referred directly to the center; 24 (44%) self-referred; 34 (62%) referred from Emergency department; mostly (32, 58%) admitted after 12PM; 22 (40%) admitted for 16-30 days. In the analysis of investigations, 37(67%) cases had CT, 15 (27%) had MRI, 4 (7%) had X-ray, 1 (2%) undergone all three investigations, while 8 (15%) didn’t have any; mostly (42, 76%) cases were referred for the management of TBI and 38 (69%) required operative interventions. Conclusion: Our findings strongly suggest that referral of TBI cases need improvement in this part of country where hindrances delay TBI cases to reach dedicated neurological intensive care leading to delay of committed care and optimization of strategy for reduction of case fatality

Combination antiretroviral drugs in PLGA nanoparticle for HIV-1

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Combination antiretroviral (AR) therapy continues to be the mainstay for HIV treatment. However, antiretroviral drug nonadherence can lead to the development of resistance and treatment failure. We have designed nanoparticles (NP) that contain three AR drugs and characterized the size, shape, and surface charge. Additionally, we investigated the <it>in vitro </it>release of the AR drugs from the NP using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Poly-(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs) containing ritonavir (RTV), lopinavir (LPV), and efavirenz (EFV) were fabricated using multiple emulsion-solvent evaporation procedure. The nanoparticles were characterized by electron microscopy and zeta potential for size, shape, and charge. The intracellular concentration of AR drugs was determined over 28 days from NPs incubated with PBMCs. Macrophages were imaged by fluorescent microscopy and flow cytometry after incubation with fluorescent NPs. Finally, macrophage cytotoxicity was determined by MTT assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Nanoparticle size averaged 262 ± 83.9 nm and zeta potential -11.4 ± 2.4. AR loading averaged 4% (w/v). Antiretroviral drug levels were determined in PBMCs after 100 μg of NP in 75 μL PBS was added to media. Intracellular peak AR levels from NPs (day 4) were RTV 2.5 ± 1.1; LPV 4.1 ± 2.0; and EFV 10.6 ± 2.7 μg and continued until day 28 (all AR ≥ 0.9 μg). Free drugs (25 μg of each drug in 25 μL ethanol) added to PBMCs served as control were eliminated by 2 days. Fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry demonstrated phagocytosis of NP into monocytes-derived macrophages (MDMs). Cellular MTT assay performed on MDMs demonstrated that NPs are not significantly cytotoxic.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results demonstrated AR NPs could be fabricated containing three antiretroviral drugs (RTV, LPV, EFV). Sustained release of AR from PLGA NP show high drug levels in PBMCs until day 28 without cytotoxicity.</p