The effect of Fucus vesiculosus, an edible brown seaweed, upon menstrual cycle length and hormonal status in three pre-menopausal women: a case report

BACKGROUND: Rates of estrogen-dependent cancers are among the highest in Western countries and lower in the East. These variations may be attributable to differences in dietary exposures such as higher seaweed consumption among Asian populations. The edible brown kelp, Fucus vesiculosus (bladderwrack), as well as other brown kelp species, lower plasma cholesterol levels. Since cholesterol is a precursor to sex hormone biosynthesis, kelp consumption may alter circulating sex hormone levels and menstrual cycling patterns. In particular, dietary kelp may be beneficial to women with or at high risk for estrogen-dependent diseases. To test this, bladderwrack was administered to three pre-menopausal women with abnormal menstrual cycling patterns and/or menstrual-related disease histories. CASE PRESENTATION: Intake of bladderwrack was associated with significant increases in menstrual cycle lengths, ranging from an increase of 5.5 to 14 days. In addition, hormone measurements ascertained for one woman revealed significant anti-estrogenic and progestagenic effects following kelp administration. Mean baseline 17β-estradiol levels were reduced from 626 ± 91 to 164 ± 30 pg/ml (P = 0.04) following 700 mg/d, which decreased further to 92.5.0 ± 3.5pg/ml (P = 0.03) with the1.4 g/d dose. Mean baseline progesterone levels rose from 0.58 ± 0.14 to 8.4 ± 2.6 ng/ml with the 700 mg/d dose (P = 0.1), which increased further to 16.8 ± 0.7 ng/ml with the 1.4 g/d dose (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: These pilot data suggest that dietary bladderwrack may prolong the length of the menstrual cycle and exert anti-estrogenic effects in pre-menopausal women. Further, these studies also suggest that seaweed may be another important dietary component apart from soy that is responsible for the reduced risk of estrogen-related cancers observed in Japanese populations. However, these studies will need to be performed in well-controlled clinical trials to confirm these preliminary findings

Finger joint synovitis detection in ultrasound images

Ultrasonography has proved its usefulness in the evaluation of joint inflammations caused by rheumatoid arthritis. The illness severity is scored by human examiners based on their experience, but some discrepancies in the final diagnosis and treatment frequently occur. Therefore, the main aim of this work is the elaboration of an automatic method of the localization of finger joint inflammation level in ultrasound images. In this paper we propose a novel, fully automated framework for synovitis region segmentation. In our approach we compare several bones and joint localization methods based on the seeded region growing technique, which is combined with different speckle noise filtering algorithms. This technique extracts a region from the image using some predefined criteria of similarity between initially selected point and the pixels in its neighborhood. The seed point is localized automatically as the darkest patch within a small region between two detected finger bones close to the joint. The region affected by synovitis is found using the adopted criterion of homogeneity based on a patch to patch similarity measure. The obtained results exhibit a satisfying accuracy in comparison with the annotations prepared by an expert and the results delivered by semi-automatic methods that require manual bones delineation

Energy and selected nutrients contents in pre-school children diet of Warsowia district.

Celem pracy była ocena zawartości energii i wybranych składników w racjach pokarmowych przedszkoli województwa mazowieckiego. W badaniu uczestniczyło 5 przedszkoli z Żyrardowa, Dziekanowa, Warszawy, Łomianek i Nowej Iwicznej. Ocenie poddano 5 dekadowych jadłospisów z okresu wiosennego. We wszystkich analizowanych w niniejszej pracy jadłospisach prawidłowa ilość energii i badanych składników była przekroczona. Większość całodziennych racji przedszkolnych zawierała zbyt dużą ilość energii z tłuszczu i białka, zaś z węglowodanów zbyt małą. Zaplanowane żywienie przedszkolne było nieprawidłowo zbilansowane pod względem energii i składników.The aim of this study was the evaluation of energy and selected nutrients content in 10 days menus (spring period) from 5 kindergartens situated in mazowiecki district. The kindergartens were located in Żyrardów, Dziekanów, Warsaw, Łomianki and Nowa Iwiczna. It was shown that amount of energy and macronutrients was unproper. Most of the food rations contained too much energy, from fat and protein, and too little from carbohydrates. Planned pre-school nutrition was not balanced properly in the meaning of energy and nutrients amount