Use of Thermoscan in the District Hospital setting

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Clinical improvement and radiological progression in a girl with early onset scoliosis (EOS) treated conservatively – a case report

BACKGROUND: Chêneau-Brace treatment of a certain standard reduces the rate of surgery, prevents progression and in a certain patient population leads to marked improvement of Cobb angle and cosmetic appearance. During the last two years a patient refusing surgery with a double major curvature of initially 60° showed a clear cosmetic improvement and a clear radiological progression at the same time. The findings of this patient have been reviewed in order to find out how cosmetic appearance and Cobb angle can develop differently. METHODS: The patient entered conservative treatment at the age of 13 years, premenarchial with Tanner II and a Cobb angle of 60° thoracic and 59° lumbar. The angle of trunk rotation (ATR; Scoliometer) was 13° thoracic and 13° lumbar. We have documented the findings of this patient (Surface topography, ATR, Cobb angles and angles of vertebral rotation (according to Raimondi) during the treatment period (27 Month) until 2 years after the onset of menarche. RESULTS: After a treatment time of 27 Month the Cobb angle increased to 74° thoracic and 65° lumbar. The angles of vertebral rotation according to Raimondi increased slightly from 26° thoracic and 28° lumbar to 30° thoracic and 28° lumbar. The ATR improved to 12° thoracic and 5° lumbar while Lateral deviation improved from 22,4 mm to 4,6 mm and average surface rotation improved from 10,6° to 6°. In the X-rays a reduction of decompensation was visible. The patient felt comfortable with the cosmetic result. CONCLUSION: Conservative treatment may improve cosmetic appearance while the curve progresses radiologically. This could be explained by assuming that (1) the Rigo Chêneau brace is able to improve cosmetic appearance by changing the shape of the thorax when the curve itself is too stiff to be corrected by a brace, that (2) reduction of decompensation leads to significant cosmetical improvements or (3) that the patient gained weight and therefore the deformation is masked. However, the weight the patient gained cannot explain the cosmetical improvement in this case. Conservative treatment with a certain standard of quality seems a viable alternative for patients with Cobb angles of > 60° when surgical treatment is refused. Specialists in scoliosis management should be aware of the fact that curve progression can occur even if the clinical measurements show an improvement

Bacterial microevolution and the Pangenome

The comparison of multiple genome sequences sampled from a bacterial population reveals considerable diversity in both the core and the accessory parts of the pangenome. This diversity can be analysed in terms of microevolutionary events that took place since the genomes shared a common ancestor, especially deletion, duplication, and recombination. We review the basic modelling ingredients used implicitly or explicitly when performing such a pangenome analysis. In particular, we describe a basic neutral phylogenetic framework of bacterial pangenome microevolution, which is not incompatible with evaluating the role of natural selection. We survey the different ways in which pangenome data is summarised in order to be included in microevolutionary models, as well as the main methodological approaches that have been proposed to reconstruct pangenome microevolutionary history

Intra-cardiac and peripheral levels of biochemical markers of fibrosis in patients undergoing catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation

Aims: Measurement of circulating biomarkers of fibrosis may have a role in selecting patients and treatment strategy for catheter ablation. Pro-collagen type III N-terminal pro-peptide (PIIINP), C-telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP), fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF-23), and galectin 3 (gal-3) have all been suggested as possible biomarkers for this indication, but studies assessing whether peripheral levels reflect intra-cardiac levels are scarce. Methods and results: We studied 93 patients undergoing ablation for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) (n = 63) or non-paroxysmal AF (n = 30). Femoral venous, left and right atrial, and coronary sinus blood were analysed using ELISA to determine biomarker levels. Levels were compared with control patients (n = 36) and baseline characteristics, including left atrial voltage mapping data. C-telopeptide of type I collagen levels were higher in AF than in non-AF patients (P = 0.007). Peripheral ICTP levels were higher than all intra-cardiac levels (P < 0.001). Peripheral gal-3 levels were higher than left atrial levels (P = 0.001). Peripheral levels of FGF-23 and PIIINP were not significantly different from intra-cardiac levels. CS levels of ICTP were higher than right and left atrial levels (P < 0.001). gal-3 was higher in women vs. men (P ≤ 0.001) and with higher body mass index (P ≤ 0.001). ICTP levels increased with reducing ejection fraction (P ≤ 0.012). Conclusions: Atrial fibrillation patients have higher levels of circulating ICTP than matched non-AF controls. In AF ablation patients, intra-cardiac sampling of FGF-23 or PIIINP gives no further information over peripheral sampling. For gal-3 and ICTP, intra-cardiac sampling may be necessary to assess their association with intra-cardiac processes. None of the biomarkers is related to fibrosis assessed by left atrial voltage

Behavioural signs of pain in cats: an expert consensus

To identify where a consensus can be reached between veterinary experts in feline medicine on the core signs sufficient for pain (sufficient to indicate pain when they occur, but not necessarily present in all painful conditions) and necessary for pain (necessary in the presence of pain, but not always indicative of pain). Methods A modified Delphi technique was used, consisting of four rounds of questions and evaluation using nineteen participants during the period December 2014 and May 2015. Agreement was considered to be established when 80% of the experts concurred with the same opinion. Results Twenty-five signs were considered sufficient to indicate pain, but no single sign was considered necessary for it. Discussion Further studies are needed to evaluate the validity of these 25 behavioural signs if a specific pain assessment tool is to be developed that is capable of assessing pain in cats based on observational methods alone. The signs reported here may nonetheless help both vets and owners form an initial evaluation of the pain status of cats in their care

Different linkages in the long and short regions of the genomes of duck enteritis virus Clone-03 and VAC Strains

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Duck enteritis virus (DEV) is an unassigned member in the family <it>Herpesviridae</it>. To demonstrate further the evolutionary position of DEV in the family <it>Herpesviridae</it>, we have described a 42,897-bp fragment. We demonstrated novel genomic organization at one end of the long (L) region and in the entire short (S) region in the Clone-03 strain of DEV.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A 42,897-bp fragment located downstream of the <it>LOFR11 </it>gene was amplified from the Clone-03 strain of DEV by using 'targeted gene walking PCR'. Twenty-two open reading frames (ORFs) were predicted and determined in the following order: 5'<it>-LORF11-RLORF1</it>-<it>ORF1</it>-<it>ICP4</it>-<it>S1-S2-US1-US10-SORF3-US2-MDV091.5-like-US3-US4-US5-US6-US7-US8-ORFx-US1-S2-S1-ICP4 </it>-3'. This was different from that of the published VAC strain, both in the linkage of the L region and S region, and in the length of the US10 and US7 proteins. The <it>MDV091.5-like </it>gene, <it>ORFx </it>gene, <it>S1 </it>gene and <it>S2 </it>gene were first observed in the DEV genome. The lengths of DEV US10 and US7 were determined to be 311 and 371 amino acids, respectively, in the Clone-03 strain of DEV, and these were different from those of other strains. The comparison of genomic organization in the fragment studied herein with those of other herpesviruses showed that DEV possesses some unique characteristics, such as the duplicated US1 at each end of the US region, and the US5, which showed no homology with those of other herpesviruses. In addition, the results of phylogenetic analysis of ORFs in the represented fragment indicated that DEV is closest to its counterparts VZV (<it>Varicellovirus</it>) and other avian herpesviruses.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The molecular characteristics of the 42,897-bp fragment of Clone-03 have been found to be different from those of the VAC strain. The phylogenetic analysis of genes in this region showed that DEV should be a separate member of the subfamily <it>Alphaherpesvirinae</it>.</p

Mix of methods is needed to identify adverse events in general practice: A prospective observational study

Contains fulltext : 69425.pdf ( ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: The validity and usefulness of incident reporting and other methods for identifying adverse events remains unclear. This study aimed to compare five methods in general practice. METHODS: In a prospective observational study, with five general practitioners, five methods were applied and compared. The five methods were physician reported adverse events, pharmacist reported adverse events, patients' experiences of adverse events, assessment of a random sample of medical records, and assessment of all deceased patients. RESULTS: A total of 68 events were identified using these methods. The patient survey accounted for the highest number of events and the pharmacist reports for the lowest number. No overlap between the methods was detected. The patient survey accounted for the highest number of events and the pharmacist reports for the lowest number. CONCLUSION: A mix of methods is needed to identify adverse events in general practice

In silico approach to screen compounds active against parasitic nematodes of major socio-economic importance

Infections due to parasitic nematodes are common causes of morbidity and fatality around the world especially in developing nations. At present however, there are only three major classes of drugs for treating human nematode infections. Additionally the scientific knowledge on the mechanism of action and the reason for the resistance to these drugs is poorly understood. Commercial incentives to design drugs that are endemic to developing countries are limited therefore, virtual screening in academic settings can play a vital role is discovering novel drugs useful against neglected diseases. In this study we propose to build robust machine learning model to classify and screen compounds active against parasitic nematodes.A set of compounds active against parasitic nematodes were collated from various literature sources including PubChem while the inactive set was derived from DrugBank database. The support vector machine (SVM) algorithm was used for model development, and stratified ten-fold cross validation was used to evaluate the performance of each classifier. The best results were obtained using the radial basis function kernel. The SVM method achieved an accuracy of 81.79% on an independent test set. Using the model developed above, we were able to indentify novel compounds with potential anthelmintic activity.In this study, we successfully present the SVM approach for predicting compounds active against parasitic nematodes which suggests the effectiveness of computational approaches for antiparasitic drug discovery. Although, the accuracy obtained is lower than the previously reported in a similar study but we believe that our model is more robust because we intentionally employed stringent criteria to select inactive dataset thus making it difficult for the model to classify compounds. The method presents an alternative approach to the existing traditional methods and may be useful for predicting hitherto novel anthelmintic compounds.12 page(s