Nephrotoxicity of amphotericin B in the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome patients

Objectives: To describe the incidence of renal dysfunction, hypokalaemia and hypomagnesaemia in AIDS patients with cryptococcal meningitis and on amphotericin B treatment. Secondary objective was to determine all-cause mortality in the same group.Design: Prospective, observational study.Setting: Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Nairobi, Kenya.Subjects: Seventy consecutive patients with AIDS and cryptococcal meningitis on amphotericin B.Results: About 58.6% of the patients had at least 100% rise in the creatinine level. Thirty eight point six per cent of patients experienced a rise in serum creatinine of at least 50%. Ninty three per cent of the patients developed hypokalaemia and 80% had hypomagnesaemia at trough magnesium level. Only 54.3% of patients completed the intended 14-day treatment. Thirty point five per cent of patients died within the two week follow-up period.Conclussion: The incidences of amphotericin B associated nephrotoxicity, hypokalemia and hypomagnesaemia were high in this studied populatio

Histological changes in the heart of rats fed diet containing Mondia Whitei

This study investigates the effects of Mondia Whitei on the heart of rats. Sixteen adult Wistar rats (151.67 ± 2.89 grams) were involved. They were divided into four groups: a control (A) and three test groups (B, C and D). For 3 weeks, group A (control) received normal feed (growers mash), while test groups B, C, and D, received graded doses of Mondia Whitei (4.5; 9.0; and 13.5g respectively) in feed daily. Histological investigations revealed that Mondia  Whitei induced severe fibrillolytic changes with pale staining hypertrophic myofibres, extensive myocardial necrosis, inflamatory cell infiltration, and oedema, in a dosage-duration-dependent manner. These results suggest therefore, that Mondia Whitei has cardio-toxicity potentials and as such, there is a need to regulate the inclusion of Mondia Whitei in consumable products.Keywords: Mondia whitei, cardiac infarction, cardio-toxicity, myocardial necrosis

Learning the Designer's Preferences to Drive Evolution

This paper presents the Designer Preference Model, a data-driven solution that pursues to learn from user generated data in a Quality-Diversity Mixed-Initiative Co-Creativity (QD MI-CC) tool, with the aims of modelling the user's design style to better assess the tool's procedurally generated content with respect to that user's preferences. Through this approach, we aim for increasing the user's agency over the generated content in a way that neither stalls the user-tool reciprocal stimuli loop nor fatigues the user with periodical suggestion handpicking. We describe the details of this novel solution, as well as its implementation in the MI-CC tool the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer. We present and discuss our findings out of the initial tests carried out, spotting the open challenges for this combined line of research that integrates MI-CC with Procedural Content Generation through Machine Learning.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted and to appear in proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, EvoApplications 202

Incidence of cephalosporin resistance among clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Ibadan, South-Western Nigeria

Background: The emergence of beta-lactam resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major global challenge, particularly, the rise in the resistance to 3rd and 4th generation cephalosporins.Aim: This study was carried out to determine the resistance pattern of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to different generations of cephalosporins.Methods: A total number of one hundred clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were collected from June to November 2014 at University Teaching Hospital Ibadan, Oyo State. These were tested for their sensitivity to antibiotics by means of disc diffusion method using prepared antibiotics disc containing different μ of antibiotics; Cefotaxine (30μ), Cefaclor (30μ), Cefamandole (30μ), Cefixime (5μ), Cefepime (30μ), Cefpodoxime (30μ) and Ceftazidime (30μ).Results: Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed absolute resistance to all antibiotics used except Ceftazidime, and Cefepime which are third and fourth generation of cephalosporin respectively. Ceftazidime had minimal resistant of 21% and higher susceptibility rate of 76%, Cefepime had the highest susceptibility rate of 90% and minimal resistance of 6%. Cefotaxime and Cefpodoxime had minimal intermediate of 1%, Ceftazidime of 3% and Cefepime of 4%.Conclusion: The result from this study provided more evidence that among third generation of cephalosporins used, some are more active than the other while fourth generation is still the most effective of all other generations. Knowledge on the distribution of cephalosporin-resistant organisms is of ultimate importance as a guide in empirical therapy, taking note of preventive strategies as well as control measures against the spread of resistant microorganisms.Keywords: Cephalosporins, resistance, susceptibility, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, antibiotics, organis

Enhanced Axial Resolution of Wide-Field Two-Photon Excitation Microscopy by Line Scanning Using a Digital Micromirror Device

Temporal focusing multiphoton microscopy is a technique for performing highly parallelized multiphoton microscopy while still maintaining depth discrimination. While the conventional wide-field configuration for temporal focusing suffers from sub-optimal axial resolution, line scanning temporal focusing, implemented here using a digital micromirror device (DMD), can provide substantial improvement. The DMD-based line scanning temporal focusing technique dynamically trades off the degree of parallelization, and hence imaging speed, for axial resolution, allowing performance parameters to be adapted to the experimental requirements. We demonstrate this new instrument in calibration specimens and in biological specimens, including a mouse kidney slice.We acknowledge support from the National Institute of Health 5-P41-EB015871-28, 2R01EY017656-06, R21-NS091982-01, 1-U01-NS090438-01, 1U01CA202177-01, and 1R01HL121386-01A1, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Science and Technology, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hamamatsu Corp., and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. C.J.R. further acknowledges support from the Wellcome Trust 093831/Z/10/Z

Weight changes induced by ingestion of Alomo bitters (A combination of herbal constituents): Experimental study on wistar rats

This study investigates Weight changes induced by ingestion of Alomo bitters (A combination of herbal constituents): Experimental study on  Wistar rats. The sixteen Wistar rats (151.67 ± 2.89 grams) involved in thestudy were divided into four groups; a control (Group A) and three test groups (B, C and D). For 3 weeks, group A (control) received normal feed (growers mash) with distilled water only, while groups B-D (test) received normal feed with water mixed with graded quantities of Alomo Bitters: B (7.5ml/kg), C (15ml/kg) and D (22.5ml/kg). Comparatively, the results showed that body weight gain was highest in the test groups (B-D) in a dosage duration fashion and lowest in the control group (22.40 ± 11.21g). Also, a non-significant variation in organ-weight was observed for the testis. The observed changes on body weight and weights of the liver, kidney and testis were dosage and duration dependent. Thus, alomo bitters may be important in weight and appetite management considering its effect on body weight. However, further investigations are required in this regard.Keywords: Mondia whitei, Herbs, Weight, Obesity, Appetite, Public Health issues

Avoidable birth injury complicated with limb gangrene: a reflection of an in-efficient health system

Gangrene of the lower extremities in neonates is a rare event except in traumatic cases. When risk factors for trauma to the limb of the newborn exist, it is important to prevent such injuries and when they are inevitable, appropriate management of injuries should further prevent complications such as limb gangrene. This report describes a newborn whose birth was poorly managed and thereafter sustained traumatic unilateral lower limb gangrene from the management of femoral fracture at a traditional bone setting. This report aims to highlightthe deficiencies in the Nigerian health system which permitted this unfortunate scenario.Keywords: Birth injury, Lower limb gangrene, neonatal femoral fracture, unorthodox bone setting practice

Targeting aberrant epigenetic networks mediated by PRMT1 and KDM4C in acute myeloid leukemia

SummaryTranscriptional deregulation plays a major role in acute myeloid leukemia, and therefore identification of epigenetic modifying enzymes essential for the maintenance of oncogenic transcription programs holds the key to better understanding of the biology and designing effective therapeutic strategies for the disease. Here we provide experimental evidence for the functional involvement and therapeutic potential of targeting PRMT1, an H4R3 methyltransferase, in various MLL and non-MLL leukemias. PRMT1 is necessary but not sufficient for leukemic transformation, which requires co-recruitment of KDM4C, an H3K9 demethylase, by chimeric transcription factors to mediate epigenetic reprogramming. Pharmacological inhibition of KDM4C/PRMT1 suppresses transcription and transformation ability of MLL fusions and MOZ-TIF2, revealing a tractable aberrant epigenetic circuitry mediated by KDM4C and PRMT1 in acute leukemia

Abrasive water jet drilling of advanced sustainable bio-fibre-reinforced polymer/hybrid composites : a comprehensive analysis of machining-induced damage responses

This paper aims at investigating the effects of variable traverse speeds on machining-induced damage of fibre-reinforced composites, using the abrasive water jet (AWJ) drilling. Three different types of epoxy-based composites laminates fabricated by vacuum bagging technique containing unidirectional (UD) flax, hybrid carbon-flax and carbon fibre-reinforced composite were used. The drilling parameters used were traverse speeds of 20, 40, 60 and 80 mm/min, constant water jet pressure of 300 MPa and a hole diameter of 10 mm. The results obtained depict that the traverse speed had a significant effect with respect to both surface roughness and delamination drilling-induced damage responses. Evidently, an increase in water jet traverse speed caused an increase in both damage responses of the three samples. Significantly, the CFRP composite sample recorded the lowest surface roughness damage response, followed by C-FFRP, while FFRP exhibited the highest. However, samples of FFRP and hybrid C-FFRP recorded lowest and highest delamination damage responses, respectively. The discrepancy in both damage responses, as further validated with micrographs of colour video microscopy (CVM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray micro-computed tomography (X-ray μCT), is attributed to the different mechanical properties of the reinforced fibres, fibre orientation/ply stacking and hybridisation of the samples.Peer reviewe

Visual recognition of gestures in a meeting to detect when documents being talked about are missing

Meetings frequently involve discussion of documents and can be significantly affected if a document is absent. An agent system capable of spontaneously retrieving a document at the point it is needed would have to judge whether a meeting is talking about a particular document and whether that document is already present. We report the exploratory application of agent techniques for making these two judgements. To obtain examples from which an agent system can learn, we first conducted a study of participants making these judgements with video recordings of meetings. We then show that interactions between hands and paper documents in meetings can be used to recognise when a document being talked about is not to hand. The work demonstrates the potential for multimodal agent systems using these techniques to learn to perform specific, discourse-level tasks during meetings