Death due to sickle cell anaemia, an autopsy diagnosis: a study at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the generic term for the group of inherited haemoglobinopathies caused by the occurrence of Haemoglobin S (HbS) in the homozygous or heterozygous form in combination of Hbs with another abnormal haemoglobin such as HbSC or beta-thalassaemias (HbS-thal). Sickle cell syndromes are remarkable for their clinical heterogeneity, including their presentations as sudden and unexpected deaths due to a sickle cell crisis. Less numbers of deaths are reported due to this cause because of ignorance of autopsy surgeon in considering this disease as a cause of death despite of its high prevalence. While doing autopsy in cases of deaths with no apparent cause and physical over activity medical officer must keep in mind the possibility of death due to vaso-occlusive crisis in sickle cell disease.  Methods: The study covers a period of one year (January 2013 - December 2013) and it is a study of cases of autopsy carried out in a tertiary care hospital of South Gujarat.Results: A total of 607 cases examined, out of which sickled red blood cells were detected in 17 cases. The respective records were reviewed. Out of 17 cases, 13 cases were male and 4 cases were females. The youngest person was 15 years female and oldest was 70 years male.  Conclusion: Sickle cell crisis is one of the causes of sudden unexplained deaths. The present study highlights the role of autopsy in such cases. Community awareness and marriage counseling programs are also helpful in preventing sickle cell disease.

Simulation of the Raman spectroscopy of multi-layered carbon nanomaterials

Multi-layered carbon nanomaterials can have an important role in modern nanotechnology. Raman spectroscopy is a widely used analytical technique that is used to characterise the structure of these materials. In this work, an approach based upon an empirical potential for the simulation of the Raman spectroscopy of carbon nanomaterials [Carbon, 113 (2017) 299] is extended through the addition of a term to describe the Van der Waals interaction between layers of sp2 hybridised carbons. The resulting model accurately describes the properties of the shearing modes of few layer graphene and is used to characterise the low frequency modes of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and carbon nanofibres

Study of cervical pap smears in a tertiary care hospital of south Gujarat, India

Background: In India cervical cancer is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Cancer of cervix is preventable, and can be diagnosed at the pre-malignant/pre-invasive stage with adequate and repetitive cytological screening by Papanicolaou (Pap) smears.  Methods: The prospective study includes total 1425 patients who were presented with various gynecological problems. Samples were taken and prepared smear were stained with PAP stain. Reporting was carried out by two independent cytopathologist as per Bethesda system.Results: Total 1425 patients were screened; there were 1034 (72.56%) abnormal Pap smears, with 354 (24.84%) normal cases and 37 (2.59%) unsatisfactory or inadequate samples. Total 27 (1.89%) cases showed epithelial cell abnormalities. ASCUS was the most commonly found (40.74%) epithelial cell abnormality out of 27 cases.Conclusions: Incidence of invasive cervical malignancy can be prevented if Pap screening program is effectively implemented in target population

Changes in WBC and platelet count in patients with malaria: a hospital based comparative study

Introduction: Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases of tropics. It presents with varied clinicopathological manifestations. Most of the complication in malaria occurs due to various hematological abnormalities. Present study was aimed to find out abnormalities in WBC and platelet counts in patients with malaria. Methods: A total 135 patients either hospitalized or treated on an outpatient basis were included in the study after positive identification for malarial parasites on Giemsa stained PSMP smears. WBC and platelet count was carried out on 3 part hematology analyzer (Sysmax KX 21). WBC count less than 4000/cumm was considered as leucopenia and platelet count less than 150000/cumm was considered as thrombocytopenia. Results: The present study includes 135 patients with malaria from which 72.59% of subjects were male and 27.41% of subjects were female. P. falciparum was present in 68.89% of cases, P. vivax in 28.15% of cases. Majority of patients had normal leucocyte count (97.03%). Neutrophilia with lymphopenia was observed in both species of malaria in our study. Thrombocytopenia was observed in89.62% of cases in malaria. Thrombocytopenia in P. falciparum was found in 92.48% of cases and in P. vivax it was 81.57% of cases. Conclusion: Present study did not show any significant change in WBC count. Present study showed neutrophilia with relative lymphopenia in both group of malaria. Incidence of thrombocytopenia was observed in both species of malaria without any statistical significance.

Enantio- and Diastereoselective 1,2-Additions to α-Ketoesters with Diborylmethane and Substituted 1,1-Diborylalkanes

The catalytic enantioselective synthesis of boronate-substituted tertiary alcohols through additions of diborylmethane and substituted 1,1-diborylalkanes to α-ketoesters is reported. The reactions are catalyzed by readily available chiral phosphine/copper(I) complexes and produce β-hydroxyboronates containing up to two contiguous stereogenic centers in up to 99:1 e.r. and greater than 20:1 d.r. The utility of the organoboron products is demonstrated through several chemoselective functionalizations. Evidence indicates the reactions occur via an enantioenriched α-boryl-copper-alkyl intermediate

Development of an in vitro microfluidic model to study the role of microenvironmental cells in oral cancer metastasis.

Metastasis occurs when cancer cells leave the primary tumour and travel to a secondary site to form a new lesion. The tumour microenvironment (TME) is recognised to greatly influence this process, with for instance the vascular system enabling the dissemination of the cells into other tissues. However, understanding the exact role of these microenvironmental cells during metastasis has proven challenging. Indeed, in vitro models often appear too simplistic, and the study of the interactions between different cell types in a 3D space is limited. On the other hand, even though in vivo models incorporate the TME, observing cells in real-time to understand their exact role is difficult. Horizontal compartmentalised microfluidic models are a promising new platform for metastasis studies. These devices, composed of adjacent microchannels, can incorporate multiple cell types within a 3D space. Furthermore, the transparency and thickness of these models also enables high quality real-time imaging to be performed. This paper demonstrates how these devices can be successfully used for oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) metastasis studies, focusing on the role of the vascular system in this process. Conditions for co-culture of OSCC cells and endothelial cells have been determined and staining protocols optimised. Furthermore, several imaging analysis techniques for these models are described, enabling precise segmentation of the different cell types on the images as well as accurate assessment of their phenotype. These methods can be applied to any study aiming to understand the role of microenvironmental cell types in cancer metastatic dissemination, and overcome several challenges encountered with current in vitro and in vivo models. Hence, this new in vitro model capable of recapitulating important aspects of the cellular complexity of human metastatic dissemination can ultimately contribute to replacing animal studies in this field

Differentiation of primate primordial germ cell-like cells following transplantation into the adult gonadal niche.

A major challenge in stem cell differentiation is the availability of bioassays to prove cell types generated in vitro are equivalent to cells in vivo. In the mouse, differentiation of primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs) from pluripotent cells was validated by transplantation, leading to the generation of spermatogenesis and to the birth of offspring. Here we report the use of xenotransplantation (monkey to mouse) and homologous transplantation (monkey to monkey) to validate our in vitro protocol for differentiating male rhesus (r) macaque PGCLCs (rPGCLCs) from induced pluripotent stem cells (riPSCs). Specifically, transplantation of aggregates containing rPGCLCs into mouse and nonhuman primate testicles overcomes a major bottleneck in rPGCLC differentiation. These findings suggest that immature rPGCLCs once transplanted into an adult gonadal niche commit to differentiate towards late rPGCs that initiate epigenetic reprogramming but do not complete the conversion into ENO2-positive spermatogonia

Diagnostic accuracy of fine needle aspiration cytology in soft tissue tumors: our institutional experience

Background: Diagnosis of Soft tissue tumors by FNAC (Fine needle aspiration cytology) is one of the diagnostic modality of choice in pathological evaluation of soft tissue neoplasms especially to differentiate from the non-neoplastic soft tissue lesions. It is challenging and controversial. Very few centers rely on simple FNAC for diagnosis which is largely due to a lack of experience, familiarity, confidence and tricky cytological features.Methods:We have studied 140 cases of soft-tissue tumors by simple FNAC procedure done by cytopathologist from 01/01/2012 to 31/12/2012. After considering thorough history, clinical, radiology and other findings all cases were reported by the experienced faculty in cytopathology section of our institute.Results:Out of total 140 cases of soft tissue tumors 131 (93.58%) were benign and 9 (6.42%) were malignant. In benign category maximum numbers were lipoma 105 cases (80.15%) followed by benign neural tumors 5 cases (3.82%), ganglion 4 cases (3.05%), benign fibrohistiocytic lesions 2 cases (1.53%) and others. Conclusions: Current study demonstrates that FNAC is valuable as a primary tool in diagnosing soft tissue tumors specifically benign lesions like lipomatous tumors, high grade malignant sarcoma and recurrent lesions. Findings are well supported by histopathological correlation

TNF-α-induced E3 ligase, TRIM15 inhibits TNF-α-regulated NF-κB pathway by promoting turnover of K63 linked ubiquitination of TAK1

Ubiquitin E3-ligases are recruited at different steps of TNF-α-induced NF-κB activation; however, their role in temporal regulation of the pathway remains elusive. The study systematically identified TRIMs as potential feedback regulators of the TNF-α-induced NF-κB pathway. We further observed that TRIM15 is “late” response TNF-α-induced gene and inhibits the TNF-α-induced NF-κB pathway in several human cell lines. TRIM15 promotes turnover of K63-linked ubiquitin chains in a PRY/SPRY domain-dependent manner. TRIM15 interacts with TAK1 and inhibits its K63-linked ubiquitination, thus NF-κB activity. Further, TRIM15 interacts with TRIM8 and inhibits cytosolic translocation to antagonize TRIM8 modualted NF-κB. TRIM8 and TRIM15 also show functionally inverse correlation in psoriasis condition. In conclusion, TRIM15 is TNF-α-induced late response gene and inhibits TNF-α induced NF-κB pathway hence a feedback modulator to keep the proinflammatory NF-κB pathway under control