Schönlein-Henoch purpura during pregnancy with successful outcome for mother and newborn

<p>Abstrac</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Schönlein-Henoch purpura is a systemic vasculitis that affects vessels of a small caliber and rarely reported in the literature.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report on a 35-year-old woman who developed palpable purpura with necrotizing cutaneous lesions on the lower limbs at 27 weeks of gestation. She also complained of epigastric pain and arthralgias. Histologic examination of a skin biopsy showed leukocytoclastic vasculitis with intravascular fibrin thrombi. The direct immunofluorescence analysis evidenced vascular deposits of IgA and C3 in the upper and mid-dermis. These findings were consistent with Schönlein-Henoch purpura. There was no evidence of renal involvement or placental dysfunction. The patient was treated with low-dose oral corticosteroids and a healthy infant was delivered by cesarean section. Examination of the placenta and the navel string disclosed no signs of vasculitis or infarction.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Schönlein-Henoch purpura is rarely reported in pregnancy. Treatment with orally administred corticosteroids may lead to a beneficial outcome for mother and newborn.</p

Search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown

We present the first modeled search for gravitational waves using the complete binary black-hole gravitational waveform from inspiral through the merger and ringdown for binaries with negligible component spin. We searched approximately 2 years of LIGO data, taken between November 2005 and September 2007, for systems with component masses of 1–99M⊙ and total masses of 25–100M⊙. We did not detect any plausible gravitational-wave signals but we do place upper limits on the merger rate of binary black holes as a function of the component masses in this range. We constrain the rate of mergers for 19M⊙≤m1, m2≤28M⊙ binary black-hole systems with negligible spin to be no more than 2.0  Mpc−3 Myr−1 at 90% confidence