An unusual cause of difficult weaning in a patient with newly diagnosed small cell lung cancer

AbstractWe describe a patient with acute respiratory insufficiency and difficult ventilator weaning in the ICU ward, leading to diagnosis of small cell lung cancer with superior vena cava superior syndrome. Bilateral vocal cord paralysis caused his respiratory distress and weaning difficulties. Thyroidectomy and neurological problems (such as Parkinson disease and Guillain Barré syndrome) are more common causes of bilateral vocal cord paralysis. Lung cancer patients are also at risk due to mediastinal invasion. The left recurrent laryngeal nerve is more prone to paralysis because of the typical anatomy. In contrary, bilateral vocal cord paralysis is rare and doesn't result in speech problems but rather breathing difficulties. Tracheostomy is the classic therapy, but laser cordectomy and Botulinum toxin injection in the laryngeal muscles are alternatives

PAIRSE: A Privacy-Preserving Service-Oriented Data Integration System

International audiencePrivacy is among the key challenges to data integration in many sectors, including healthcare, e-government, etc. The PAIRSE project aims at providing a flexible, looselycoupled and privacy-preserving data integration system in P2P environments. The project exploits recent Web standards and technologies such as Web services and ontologies to export data from autonomous data providers as reusable services, and proposes the use of service composition as a viable solution to answer data integration needs on the fly. The project proposed new composition algorithms and service/composition execution models that preserve privacy of data manipulated by services and compositions. The proposed integration system was demonstrated at EDBT 2013 and VLDB 2011

Tuning of the size and the lattice parameter of ion-beam synthesized Pb nanoparticles embedded in Si

The size and lattice constant evolution of Pb nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by high fluence implantation in crystalline Si have been studied with a variety of experimental techniques. Results obtained from small-angle x-ray scattering showed that the Pb NPs grow with increasing implantation fluence and annealing duration. The theory of NP growth kinetics can be applied to qualitatively explain the size evolution of the Pb NPs during the implantation and annealing processes. Moreover, the lattice constant of the Pb NPs was evaluated by conventional x-ray diffraction. The lattice dilatation was observed to decrease with increasing size of the Pb NPs. Such lattice constant tuning can be attributed to the pseudomorphism caused by the lattice mismatch between the Pb NPs and the Si matrix

Tuning of the size and the lattice parameter of ion-beam synthesized Pb nanoparticles embedded in Si

The size and lattice constant evolution of Pb nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by high fluence implantation in crystalline Si have been studied with a variety of experimental techniques. Results obtained from small-angle x-ray scattering showed that the Pb NPs grow with increasing implantation fluence and annealing duration. The theory of NP growth kinetics can be applied to qualitatively explain the size evolution of the Pb NPs during the implantation and annealing processes. Moreover, the lattice constant of the Pb NPs was evaluated by conventional x-ray diffraction. The lattice dilatation was observed to decrease with increasing size of the Pb NPs. Such lattice constant tuning can be attributed to the pseudomorphism caused by the lattice mismatch between the Pb NPs and the Si matrix

Reliability of panel-based mutational signatures for immune-checkpoint-inhibition efficacy prediction in non-small cell lung cancer

OBJECTIVES: Mutational signatures (MS) are gaining traction for deriving therapeutic insights for immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI). We asked if MS attributions from comprehensive targeted sequencing assays are reliable enough for predicting ICI efficacy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).METHODS: Somatic mutations of m = 126 patients were assayed using panel-based sequencing of 523 cancer-related genes. In silico simulations of MS attributions for various panels were performed on a separate dataset of m = 101 whole genome sequenced patients. Non-synonymous mutations were deconvoluted using COSMIC v3.3 signatures and used to test a previously published machine learning classifier.RESULTS: The ICI efficacy predictor performed poorly with an accuracy of 0.51 -0.09 +0.09, average precision of 0.52 -0.11 +0.11, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.50 -0.09 +0.10. Theoretical arguments, experimental data, and in silico simulations pointed to false negative rates (FNR) related to panel size. A secondary effect was observed, where deconvolution of small ensembles of point mutations lead to reconstruction errors and misattributions. CONCLUSION: MS attributions from current targeted panel sequencing are not reliable enough to predict ICI efficacy. We suggest that, for downstream classification tasks in NSCLC, signature attributions be based on whole exome or genome sequencing instead.</p

Distribution of human beta-defensin polymorphisms in various control and cystic fibrosis populations.

Abstract Human beta defensins contribute to the first line of defense against infection of the lung. Polymorphisms in these genes are therefore potential modifiers of the severity of lung disease in cystic fibrosis. Polymorphisms were sought in the human beta-defensin genes DEFB1, DEFB4, DEFB103A, and DEFB104 in healthy individuals and cystic fibrosis (CF) patients living in various European countries. DEFB1, DEFB4, and DEFB104 were very polymorphic, but DEFB103A was not. Within Europe, differences between control populations were found for some of the frequent polymorphisms in DEFB1, with significant differences between South-Italian and Czech populations. Moreover, frequent polymorphisms located in DEFB4 and DEFB104 were not in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium in all populations studied, while those in DEFB1 were in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium. Sequencing of a monochromosomal chromosome 8 mouse-human hybrid cell line revealed signals for multiple alleles for some loci in DEFB4 and DEFB104, but not for DEFB1. This indicated that more than one DEFB4 and DEFB104 gene was present on this chromosome 8, in agreement with recent findings that DEFB4 and DEFB104 are part of a repeat region. Individual DEFB4 and DEFB104 PCR amplification products of various samples were cloned and sequenced. The results showed that one DNA sample could contain more than two haplotypes, indicating that the various repeats on one chromosome were not identical. Given the higher complexity found in the genomic organization of the DEFB4 and DEFB104 genes, association studies with CF lung disease severity were performed only for frequent polymorphisms located in DEFB1. No association with the age of first infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa or with the FEV1 percentage at the age of 11-13 years could be found

Thermoelectric spin voltage in graphene

In recent years, new spin-dependent thermal effects have been discovered in ferromagnets, stimulating a growing interest in spin caloritronics, a field that exploits the interaction between spin and heat currents. Amongst the most intriguing phenomena is the spin Seebeck effect, in which a thermal gradient gives rise to spin currents that are detected through the inverse spin Hall effect. Non-magnetic materials such as graphene are also relevant for spin caloritronics, thanks to efficient spin transport, energy-dependent carrier mobility and unique density of states. Here, we propose and demonstrate that a carrier thermal gradient in a graphene lateral spin valve can lead to a large increase of the spin voltage near to the graphene charge neutrality point. Such an increase results from a thermoelectric spin voltage, which is analogous to the voltage in a thermocouple and that can be enhanced by the presence of hot carriers generated by an applied current. These results could prove crucial to drive graphene spintronic devices and, in particular, to sustain pure spin signals with thermal gradients and to tune the remote spin accumulation by varying the spin-injection bias