WHERE IS THE WORLD IN CAPACITY OF HEALTH RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT?

Objective: In this study, it is aimed to reveal the current status of countries with regular data in terms of health Research and Development (R&D) indicators

A novel feature extraction method using chemosensory EEG for Parkinson's disease classification

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable nervous system disease that affects millions of people all around the world. The loss of smell is one of the first symptoms that come into prominence in the early diagnosis of PD. The main motivation of this study is to provide a more accurate diagnosis in the early period of the disease using chemosensory electroencephalography (EEG) signals, which are difficult to study and also less studied. For this purpose, we proposed a hybrid feature extraction method called EEMD_VAR that combines Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) and Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR). In contrast to conventional feature extraction methods, the proposed method is to prevent arbitrary selection of features and to determine the number of features. The pre-processed EEG signals were decomposed using EEMD and the obtained intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) used as independent variables in VAR. The coefficients of the VAR model were employed as features in frequently used supervised classification algorithms. The performance metrics of the EEMD_VAR were compared to the performance metrics of the autoregressive (AR) model and Hjorth parameters. The maximum classification accuracy of the proposed method was 100% using artificial neural networks (ANN) in C2 electrode, while the AR method and Hjorth parameters only obtained a maximum of 72%. The other metrics also corroborate the proposed method's ability to perform well in the classification. In addition, the higher results from right side electrodes may lead to the conclusion that the right side of the brain is more sensitive to odor stimuli.</p

Esophageal Lymphoepithelioma-Like Carcinoma with Unique Daisy-Like Appearance

Due to differences in prognosis and management, it is important to subclassify esophageal carcinoma. Esophageal lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma (LELC) is extremely rare, with only a few cases reported to date. Review of the literature revealed case reports describing lesions with similar histology. We present a 69-year-old man with a giant pedunculated-polypoid lesion of the esophagus shrinking the lumen. Endoscopic excision of the tumor was performed and final histopathological diagnosis was confirmed to be LELC. In contrast to a previous case with a more aggressive course and a recurrent lesion, our patient died of his disease within 8 months of diagnosis. Here we discuss the endoscopic and radiologic findings of the case and a review of the literature

Two-hour post-dose cyclosporin A levels in adolescent renal transplant recipients in the late post-transplant period

Although the success of renal transplantation is closely linked to the immunosuppression provided by cyclosporin A (CsA), the best way to monitor the blood levels of CsA is still not clear. Trough CsA levels (C-0) are commonly used, but the 2-h post-dose CsA levels (C-2) are reported to correlate better with area under the curve. The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation of C-2 levels with allograft function in adolescent renal transplant recipients in the late post-transplant period (6 months after transplantation) compared with C-0 levels. The data of 17 adolescent renal transplant recipients (12 males, 5 females) were evaluated retrospectively. The mean age at the time of transplantation was 15.212+/-2.918 years and the mean follow-up period was 53.172+/-34.090 months. C-0 levels correlated with oral CsA and diltiazem doses, while C-2 levels exhibited no correlation. When C-2 levels were classified as 0-400, 401-800, and 801-1200 ng/ml, no statistically significant difference was found between these groups with respect to glomerular filtration rate (P=0.830). Although 82% of the patients had C-2 beneath the therapeutic level (<800 ng/ml), none had an acute rejection episode. In conclusion, optimum C-2 levels could be different from levels in the adult population. Furthermore, the correlation of C-2 levels with CsA dose seems to be weaker than in the adult population. Thus, further studies are needed to determine a more reliable predictor for CsA dose monitoring and target blood CsA levels in adolescent patients

Effect of obesity and overweight on cyclosporine blood levels and renal functions in renal adolescent recipients

Introduction. The impact of obesity, a frequent problem after renal transplantation, which has been associated with poor graft and patient survival, was evaluated on renal function and cyclosporine (CsA) blood levels