NEW ASPECTS OF THE USE OF PROTEIN TISSUE-SPECIFIC MARKERS IN THE ESTIMATION OF SEVERITY OF COMMUNITY-ACQUIRED PNEUMONIA

The purpose of the study was to assess the associations of proteins of pulmonary surfactants A (SP-A) and D (SP-D) with the severity of community-acquired pneumonia. Material and methods. A survey of 188 patients diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The average age of the examined patients was 54.3 ± 16.5 years (M ± SD). In 102 patients (54.3 %) severe CAP was verified. All patients underwent clinical, functional, diagnostic and laboratory studies. Results and discussion. It was determined that SP-A and SP-D content was significantly higher in patients with severe CAP compared to patients with a mild course of this disease. The direct association of severe CAP with an elevated SP-AP level, directly associated with an increase in the concentration of C-reactive protein in the blood and erythrocyte sedimentation rate, have been confirmed in early studies. Using partial correlation analysis, it was established that the severe course of CAP is directly related to SP-A (r = 0.221; p = 0.003) and SP-D content (r = 0.262; p < 0.001) regardless of age, smoking, and body weight. Thus, direct associations of SP-A and SP-D with a severe course of CAP reflect the high pathogenetic significance of these protective factors in infectious lung damage

CrossMoDA 2021 challenge: Benchmark of Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation techniques for Vestibular Schwannoma and Cochlea Segmentation

Domain Adaptation (DA) has recently raised strong interests in the medical imaging community. While a large variety of DA techniques has been proposed for image segmentation, most of these techniques have been validated either on private datasets or on small publicly available datasets. Moreover, these datasets mostly addressed single-class problems. To tackle these limitations, the Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation (crossMoDA) challenge was organised in conjunction with the 24th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2021). CrossMoDA is the first large and multi-class benchmark for unsupervised cross-modality DA. The challenge's goal is to segment two key brain structures involved in the follow-up and treatment planning of vestibular schwannoma (VS): the VS and the cochleas. Currently, the diagnosis and surveillance in patients with VS are performed using contrast-enhanced T1 (ceT1) MRI. However, there is growing interest in using non-contrast sequences such as high-resolution T2 (hrT2) MRI. Therefore, we created an unsupervised cross-modality segmentation benchmark. The training set provides annotated ceT1 (N=105) and unpaired non-annotated hrT2 (N=105). The aim was to automatically perform unilateral VS and bilateral cochlea segmentation on hrT2 as provided in the testing set (N=137). A total of 16 teams submitted their algorithm for the evaluation phase. The level of performance reached by the top-performing teams is strikingly high (best median Dice - VS:88.4%; Cochleas:85.7%) and close to full supervision (median Dice - VS:92.5%; Cochleas:87.7%). All top-performing methods made use of an image-to-image translation approach to transform the source-domain images into pseudo-target-domain images. A segmentation network was then trained using these generated images and the manual annotations provided for the source image.Comment: Submitted to Medical Image Analysi

The effectiveness of cardiac resynchronization therapy in patients with chronic heart failure of various origin depending on the structural myocardial injury in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging

Aim. To assess the effect of the size and pattern of myocardial structural injury, determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), on response to cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) in patients with ischemic and non-ischemic heart failure (HF).Material and methods. Forty seven patients with ischemic and non-ischemic HF (age 62,3±8,9 years (mean±SD), 44,6% females and 55,4% males), left ventricle (LV) ejection fraction <35%, QRS complex >130 ms, and sinus rhythm were included in the study. Late-gadolinium enhancement-cardiovascular magnetic resonance (LGE-CMR) was undertaken to evaluate myocardial scar prior to CRT devices implantation. All CMR analysis was performed on CVI42 software. According to signal intensity, fibrosis zone and “grey zone” were defined for quantitative analysis (proportion and mass) of injury. Scar zone included fibrosis zone and “grey zone”. Scar location was assessed using a 16-segmentLV model. Response was defined as a reduction inLV end systolic volume of >15% at 6 months follow-up and HF functional class amelioration.Results. In nonresponse group there was significantly higher proportion and mass of total scar (median 4% [2,5; 19] vs 24% [7; 44], p=0,012,6 g [3,5; 32,5] vs41 g [8; 86], p=0,013)), fibrosis zone (median 0% [0; 3,5] vs 8% [0; 19], p=0,01,0 g [0; 6] vs14 g [0; 34], p=0,014) and “grey zone” (4% [2,5; 15] vs 15% [7; 23], p=0,018,6 g [3,5; 27,5] vs23 g [8; 39], p=0,25). Response proportion in non-ischemic HF patients was higher than in ischemic HF patients (78,5% vs 28,5%, p<0,01). Response to CRT was less in patients with posterolateral scar, more specifically in segments 4,5,6,11,12,15,16 (p<0,05). CRT response in ischemic HF did not depend on size of myocardial structural injury, but depend on scar localization. Lateral scar was associated with poor response. In non-ischemic HF, proportion and mass of fibrosis zone was less in responder group (median 0% [0; 1] vs 8,5% [0; 11], p<0,05,0 g [0; 1] vs14,5 g [0; 22], p<0,05.Conclusion. Response to CRT is significantly higher in non-ischemic than in ischemic HF patients. Nonresponse to CRT is associated with posterolateral scar, regardless of the HF origin. In patients with non-ischemic HF, size of fibrosis zone is lower in the responder group. In patients with ischemic HF, size ofLV structural injury does not affect the CRT efficiency, but lateral scar is associated with CRT nonresponse

Metagenomic Profiles of the Intestinal Virome of Long-Livers

The microbial community of the human intestine is important for maintaining human health. It has been reported that the gut microbiome changes with age, and it can be enrichedwith certain beneficial bacteria while also losing certain commensal bacteria.Little is known about the gut virome of long-livers. Our research aimed to extract, sequence and analyze the viral fraction of long-livers' gut microbiota in comparison with those of young adults and the elderly. We were thereby able to characterize the gut virome profiles and viral diversity of three age groups. Keywords: aging, gut microbiome, viral metagenomics, bacteriophage