The impact of insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and high sensitivity C-reactivity protein on carotid intima-media thickness in metabolic syndrome

Background: Carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is a strong predictor of cardiovascular events and associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS). The CIMT has been widely used as one of the parameters of atherosclerosis. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and high sensitivity C-reactive protein on carotid intima-media thickness in metabolic syndrome patients of Western Maharashtra as very sparse data is available.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study of 400 adults (200 cases and 200 control), 18-50 years of age, both the sexes randomly selected from diabetes and obesity OPD at tertiary care hospital. Diagnosis of metabolic syndrome was done according to modified NCEP adult treatment panel III criteria. CIMT was measured by B mode ultrasound (Philips HT-11, Color Doppler), hs-CRP by ELISA method (Cal biotech). Insulin resistance by HOMA-IR (Homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance). The predictors of CIMT with various variables were studied by multiple linear regression analysis.Results: We found significant increase in CIMT (0.7895±0.110, p<0.001) in MetS and a positive correlation of CIMT with age, waist to hip ratio, triglyceride levels and systolic blood pressure (p<0.001).Conclusions: Increased carotid intima-media thickness in metabolic syndrome may increase the risk of having a stroke and cardiovascular mortality. It was considered an early deterioration in the arterial intima and is a preclinical stage of atherosclerosis. Early diagnosis and prevention may help to reduce the risk of stroke and cardiovascular mortality.

Prediction of Heart Disease Using Machine Learning Algorithms

The successful experiment of data mining in highly visible fields like marketing, e-business, and retail has led to its application in other sectors and industries. Healthcare is being discovered among these areas. There is an opulence of data available within the healthcare systems. However, there is a scarcity of useful analysis tool to find hidden relationships in data. This research intends to provide a detailed description of Naïve Bayes and decision tree classifier that are applied in our research particularly in the prediction of Heart Disease. Some experiment has been conducted to compare the execution of predictive data mining technique on the same dataset, and the consequence reveals that Decision Tree outperforms over Bayesian classification

Enhancement of reactivity and increased usage of low lime class -F-fly ash-possible avenues

The low lime class-F fly ash available in the country shows high degree of variability in the quality, higher content of crystallites , lower glassy phase which accounts for lower of usage in cement and concrete . The time reactivity test used for assessing the pozzolanicity of fly ash did not always correlate with its observed reactivity in Blended cements . An alternative rapid alkali reactivity rest developed at the authors ' laboratory is illustrated in the paper. The paper also discusses the possibility of increasing the reactivity of fly ash and effect of the reactive fly ash on characteristics of PPC and concrete. The paper further discusses other avenues of fly ash utilisation, which could be categorised as low, medium and high value applications. One of such applications developed at the authors ' laboratory that merits special interest, is the Hydrogel process of clinkerisation , which has a potential for utilisation of 20-30% fly ash as a raw material in cement manufacture

The Parametric Ordinal-Recursive Complexity of Post Embedding Problems

Post Embedding Problems are a family of decision problems based on the interaction of a rational relation with the subword embedding ordering, and are used in the literature to prove non multiply-recursive complexity lower bounds. We refine the construction of Chambart and Schnoebelen (LICS 2008) and prove parametric lower bounds depending on the size of the alphabet.Comment: 16 + vii page

Renormalization: a quasi-shuffle approach

In recent years, the usual BPHZ algorithm for renormalization in perturbative quantum field theory has been interpreted, after dimensional regularization, as a Birkhoff decomposition of characters on the Hopf algebra of Feynman graphs, with values in a Rota-Baxter algebra of amplitudes. We associate in this paper to any such algebra a universal semi-group (different in nature from the Connes-Marcolli "cosmical Galois group"). Its action on the physical amplitudes associated to Feynman graphs produces the expected operations: Bogoliubov's preparation map, extraction of divergences, renormalization. In this process a key role is played by commutative and noncommutative quasi-shuffle bialgebras whose universal properties are instrumental in encoding the renormalization process

Computing the kk-binomial complexity of the Thue--Morse word

Two words are $k$-binomially equivalent whenever they share the same subwords, i.e., subsequences, of length at most $k$ with the same multiplicities. This is a refinement of both abelian equivalence and the Simon congruence. The $k$-binomial complexity of an infinite word $\mathbf{x}$ maps the integer $n$ to the number of classes in the quotient, by this $k$-binomial equivalence relation, of the set of factors of length $n$ occurring in $\mathbf{x}$. This complexity measure has not been investigated very much. In this paper, we characterize the $k$-binomial complexity of the Thue--Morse word. The result is striking, compared to more familiar complexity functions. Although the Thue--Morse word is aperiodic, its $k$-binomial complexity eventually takes only two values. In this paper, we first obtain general results about the number of occurrences of subwords appearing in iterates of the form $\Psi^\ell(w)$ for an arbitrary morphism $\Psi$. We also thoroughly describe the factors of the Thue--Morse word by introducing a relevant new equivalence relation

The 'K' selected oligophilic bacteria: a key to uncultured diversity?

Molecular techniques have made it increasingly clear that a large proportion of bacterial diversity in natural habitats is uncultured and therefore unexplored. We suggest and give evidence in support of a hypothesis that a large proportion, if not all, of the uncultured diversity from a variety of aquatic and terrestrial habitats are oligophilic (oligotrophic) bacteria. Oligophilic bacteria grow only on dilute nutrient media and form small or microscopic colonies. A technique to cultivate and isolate the moderately oligophilic bacteria was developed and 90 cultures isolated, The twelve bacterial cultures characterized showed high growth yield coefficients and carbon conversion efficiencies at low substrate concentrations and progressively decreased with increasing substrate concentrations. Most of the growth yields were substantially higher than those reported in the literature and lie near the theoretical maximum. Slow growth rates and high yields indicate that they are 'K' selected species. 16S rDNA partial sequence analysis of the isolates indicates that it is a novel as well as diverse group

Capturing the systemic immune signature of a norovirus infection: an n-of-1 case study within a clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: The infection of a participant with norovirus during the adaptive study of interleukin-2 dose on regulatory T cells in type 1 diabetes (DILT1D) allowed a detailed insight into the cellular and cytokine immune responses to this prevalent gastrointestinal pathogen. METHODS: Serial blood, serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples were collected pre-, and post-development of the infection. To differentiate between the immune response to norovirus and to control for the administration of a single dose of aldesleukin (recombinant interleukin-2, rIL-2) alone, samples from five non-infected participants administered similar doses were analysed in parallel. RESULTS: Norovirus infection was self-limited and resolved within 24 hours, with the subsequent development of anti-norovirus antibodies. Serum pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine levels, including IL-10, peaked during the symptomatic period of infection, coincident with increased frequencies of monocytes and neutrophils. At the same time, the frequency of regulatory CD4 + T cell (Treg), effector T cell (Teff) CD4 + and CD8 + subsets were dynamically reduced, rebounding to baseline levels or above at the next sampling point 24 hours later.  NK cells and NKT cells transiently increased CD69 expression and classical monocytes expressed increased levels of CD40, HLA-DR and SIGLEC-1, biomarkers of an interferon response. We also observed activation and mobilisation of Teffs, where increased frequencies of CD69 + and Ki-67 + effector memory Teffs were followed by the emergence of memory CD8 + Teff expressing the mucosal tissue homing markers CD103 and β7 integrin. Treg responses were coincident with the innate cell, Teff and cytokine response. Key Treg molecules FOXP3, CTLA-4, and CD25 were upregulated following infection, alongside an increase in frequency of Tregs with the capacity to home to tissues. CONCLUSIONS: The results illustrate the innate, adaptive and counter-regulatory immune responses to norovirus infection. Low-dose IL-2 administration induces many of the Treg responses observed during infection

Immunophenotypic studies of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) is a common plasma cell dyscrasia, comprising the most indolent form of monoclonal gammopathy. However, approximately 25% of MGUS cases ultimately progress to plasma cell myeloma (PCM) or related diseases. It is difficult to predict which subset of patients will transform. In this study, we examined the immunophenotypic differences of plasma cells in MGUS and PCM.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Bone marrow specimens from 32 MGUS patients and 32 PCM patients were analyzed by 4-color flow cytometry, using cluster analysis of ungated data, for the expression of several markers, including CD10, CD19, CD20, CD38, CD45, CD56 and surface and intracellular immunoglobulin light chains.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All MGUS patients had two subpopulations of plasma cells, one with a "normal" phenotype [CD19(+), CD56(-), CD38(bright +)] and one with an aberrant phenotype [either CD19(-)/CD56(+) or CD19(-)/CD56(-)]. The normal subpopulation ranged from 4.4 to 86% (mean 27%) of total plasma cells. Only 20 of 32 PCM cases showed an identifiable normal subpopulation at significantly lower frequency [range 0–32%, mean 3.3%, p << 0.001]. The plasma cells in PCM were significantly less likely to express CD19 [1/32 (3.1%) vs. 13/29 (45%), p << 0.001] and more likely to express surface immunoglobulin [21/32 (66%) vs. 3/28 (11%), p << 0.001], compared to MGUS. Those expressing CD19 did so at a significantly lower level than in MGUS, with no overlap in mean fluorescence intensities [174 ± 25 vs. 430 ± 34, p << 0.001]. There were no significant differences in CD56 expression [23/32 (72%) vs. 18/29 (62%), p = 0.29], CD45 expression [15/32 (47%) vs. 20/30 (67%), p = 0.10] or CD38 mean fluorescence intensities [6552 ± 451 vs. 6365 ± 420, p = 0.38]. Two of the six MGUS cases (33%) with >90% CD19(-) plasma cells showed progression of disease, whereas none of the cases with >10% CD19(+) plasma cells evolved to PCM.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>MGUS cases with potential for disease progression appeared to lack CD19 expression on >90% of their plasma cells, displaying an immunophenotypic profile similar to PCM plasma cells. A higher relative proportion of CD19(+) plasma cells in MGUS may be associated with a lower potential for disease progression.</p