Determinants of exocrine pancreatic function as measured by fecal elastase-1 concentrations (FEC) in patients with diabetes mellitus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>Recently it has been shown that there is not only endocrine insufficiency in diabetic patients, but a frequent co-morbidity of both, the endocrine and exocrine pancreas. The present study was performed to further analyse the determinants of exocrine pancreatic function in patients with diabetes mellitus.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The records of 1992 patients with diabetes mellitus who had been treated in our hospital during a 2-year period were re-evaluated. Defined parameters were documented in standardized data sheets. Records were further checked for the results of imaging procedures of the pancreas. In 307 patients FEC had been performed and documented. Only these patients were included in further evaluation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>FEC was inversely correlated with diabetes duration and HbA1c-levels but not with age. C-peptide levels correlated positively with FEC. BMI and FEC were also significantly correlated. There was no correlation between diabetes therapy and exocrine pancreatic function as there was no correlation with any concomitant medication. The presence of diabetes-associated antibodies was not related to FEC. According to the documented data 38 were classified as type-1 diabetes (12.4%), 167 as type-2 (54.4%), and 88 patients met the diagnostic criteria of type-3 (28.7%). Fourteen patients could not be classified because of lacking information (4.6%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Exocrine insufficiency might be explained as a complication of diabetes mellitus. However, it is more likely that type-3 diabetes is much more frequent than previously believed. Consequently the evaluation of exocrine function and morphology should be included into the clinical workup of any diabetic patient at least at the time of manifestation.</p

Occupy: in theory and practice

This paper situates the discourse of the Occupy movement within the context of radical political philosophy. Our analysis takes place on two levels. First, we conduct an empirical analysis of the ‘official’ publications of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Occupy London (OL). Operationalising core concepts from the framing perspective within social movement theory, we provide a descriptive-comparative analysis of the ‘collective action frames’ of OWS and OL. Second, we consider the extent to which radical political philosophy speaks to the discourse of Occupy. Our empirical analysis reveals that both movements share diagnostic frames, but there were notable differences in terms of prognostic framing. The philosophical discussion suggests that there are alignments between anarchist, post-anarchist and post-Marxist ideologies at the level of both identity and strategy. Indeed, the absence of totalising anti-capitalist or anti-statist positions in Occupy suggests that – particularly with Occupy London – alignments are perhaps not so distant from typically social democratic demands

The Impact of the Laterality on Radiographic Outcomes of the Bernese Periacetabular Osteotomy

The purpose of this study was to compare the pre and postoperative radiographic findings and analyze the complication rate with respect to the laterality in periacetabular osteotomy in right-handed surgeons. Satisfaction rate and radiographic findings were prospectively collected between 2017 and 2019 and retrospectively reviewed. For analysis, all measurements of the CT scans were performed by a musculoskeletal fellowship-trained radiologist. Complications were classified into two categories: perioperative or postoperative. All surgeries were performed by three right-hand dominant hip surgeons. A total of 41 dysplastic hips (25 right and 16 left hips) in 33 patients were included. Postoperatively, a significantly lower acetabular index angle on the left side was observed at -2.6 +/- 4.3 as compared to the right side at 1.6 +/- 6.5 (p < 0.05). The change in Center edge (CE) angle was significantly lower for the left side 13.7 +/- 5.5 degrees than on the right side, measured at 18.4 +/- 7.3 (p < 0.001); however, the overall CE angle was comparable at 38.5 +/- 8.9 degrees without any significant difference between the operated hips (left side at 37.8 +/- 6.1 degrees versus right side at 39.0 +/- 10.3; p = 0.340). No significant differences in other radiographic measurements or surgical time were observed. For complications, the right side was more commonly affected, which may also explain a higher satisfaction rate in patients who were operated on the left hip with 92.3%. The change in lateral CE angle was significantly lower for the left side and the right hip seems to be predisposed to complications, which correlate with a lower satisfaction rate in right-handed surgeons

The Impact of 18 Ancestral and Horizontally-Acquired Regulatory Proteins upon the Transcriptome and sRNA Landscape of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium

Article Authors Metrics Comments Media Coverage Abstract Author Summary Introduction Results and Discussion Materials and Methods Supporting Information Acknowledgments Author Contributions References Reader Comments (0) Media Coverage (0) Figures Abstract We know a great deal about the genes used by the model pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium to cause disease, but less about global gene regulation. New tools for studying transcripts at the single nucleotide level now offer an unparalleled opportunity to understand the bacterial transcriptome, and expression of the small RNAs (sRNA) and coding genes responsible for the establishment of infection. Here, we define the transcriptomes of 18 mutants lacking virulence-related global regulatory systems that modulate the expression of the SPI1 and SPI2 Type 3 secretion systems of S. Typhimurium strain 4/74. Using infection-relevant growth conditions, we identified a total of 1257 coding genes that are controlled by one or more regulatory system, including a sub-class of genes that reflect a new level of cross-talk between SPI1 and SPI2. We directly compared the roles played by the major transcriptional regulators in the expression of sRNAs, and discovered that the RpoS (σ38) sigma factor modulates the expression of 23% of sRNAs, many more than other regulatory systems. The impact of the RNA chaperone Hfq upon the steady state levels of 280 sRNA transcripts is described, and we found 13 sRNAs that are co-regulated with SPI1 and SPI2 virulence genes. We report the first example of an sRNA, STnc1480, that is subject to silencing by H-NS and subsequent counter-silencing by PhoP and SlyA. The data for these 18 regulatory systems is now available to the bacterial research community in a user-friendly online resource, SalComRegulon

Enabling UAVs night-time navigation through mutual information-based matching of event-generated images

Advanced Air Mobility is expected to revolutionize the future of general transportation. However, to make it a reality, significant challenges arise requiring technologies to ensure the expected attributes in these scenarios: resilience, robustness, large operational range, high accuracy, low SWaP equipment, and real-time processing. Although existing visual-based navigation solutions for aerial applications provide outstanding results under nominal conditions, their performance is highly constrained by the lighting conditions, making them infeasible for real operations. With the main focus of addressing this limitation, and expanding the current operational range to include extreme low-illuminated environments, this paper presents a solution which leverages one of the most powerful properties of event cameras: their high dynamic range. Thus, data provided by an event camera (also called dynamic vision sensor) is used to estimate the relative displacement of a flying vehicle during night-time conditions. To that end, two different threads running in parallel have been developed: a reference map generator, operating at low frequency, focused on reconstructing a 2-D map of the environment, and a localization thread, which matches, at high frequency, real-time event-generated images against the reference map by applying Mutual Information to estimate the aircraft’s relative displacement