188 research outputs found
Relationship Between Oral Health and Clinical Osteoporosis Among Hospitalized Patients with and Without Diabetes
Objective: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with poor oral health and osteoporosis (OP). The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between OP, periodontal disease (PD), and other dental and health outcomes in a cohort of hospitalized patients with and without DM. Method: Using a cross-sectional study design, we enrolled consecutive hospitalized patients. We administered a questionnaire to gather demographic information, oral health history, smoking history, and history of OP. We inspected their dentition and reviewed their charts. Data were analyzed using t-tests, chi-square tests, and logistic regression models. Result: Out of 301 patients enrolled, 275 had PD, 102 had DM, and 30 had OP. In univariate analyses, factors associated with OP included older age... (See full abstract in article)
Global analysis of aberrant pre-mRNA splicing in glioblastoma using exon expression arrays
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tumor-predominant splice isoforms were identified during comparative <it>in silico </it>sequence analysis of EST clones, suggesting that global aberrant alternative pre-mRNA splicing may be an epigenetic phenomenon in cancer. We used an exon expression array to perform an objective, genome-wide survey of glioma-specific splicing in 24 GBM and 12 nontumor brain samples. Validation studies were performed using RT-PCR on glioma cell lines, patient tumor and nontumor brain samples.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, we confirmed 14 genes with glioma-specific splicing; seven were novel events identified by the exon expression array (<it>A2BP1, BCAS1, CACNA1G, CLTA, KCNC2, SNCB</it>, and <it>TPD52L2</it>). Our data indicate that large changes (> 5-fold) in alternative splicing are infrequent in gliomagenesis (< 3% of interrogated RefSeq entries). The lack of splicing changes may derive from the small number of splicing factors observed to be aberrantly expressed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>While we observed some tumor-specific alternative splicing, the number of genes showing exclusive tumor-specific isoforms was on the order of tens, rather than the hundreds suggested previously by <it>in silico </it>mining. Given the important role of alternative splicing in neural differentiation, there may be selective pressure to maintain a majority of splicing events in order to retain glial-like characteristics of the tumor cells.</p
LegoNet: Alternating Model Blocks for Medical Image Segmentation
Since the emergence of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and later vision
transformers (ViTs), the common paradigm for model development has always been
using a set of identical block types with varying parameters/hyper-parameters.
To leverage the benefits of different architectural designs (e.g. CNNs and
ViTs), we propose to alternate structurally different types of blocks to
generate a new architecture, mimicking how Lego blocks can be assembled
together. Using two CNN-based and one SwinViT-based blocks, we investigate
three variations to the so-called LegoNet that applies the new concept of block
alternation for the segmentation task in medical imaging. We also study a new
clinical problem which has not been investigated before, namely the right
internal mammary artery (RIMA) and perivascular space segmentation from
computed tomography angiography (CTA) which has demonstrated a prognostic value
to major cardiovascular outcomes. We compare the model performance against
popular CNN and ViT architectures using two large datasets (e.g. achieving
0.749 dice similarity coefficient (DSC) on the larger dataset). We evaluate the
performance of the model on three external testing cohorts as well, where an
expert clinician made corrections to the model segmented results (DSC>0.90 for
the three cohorts). To assess our proposed model for suitability in clinical
use, we perform intra- and inter-observer variability analysis. Finally, we
investigate a joint self-supervised learning approach to assess its impact on
model performance. The code and the pretrained model weights will be available
upon acceptance.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 4 table
3‐D global MHD model prediction for the first close flyby of Titan by Cassini
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95615/1/grl18965.pd
High throughput sample introduction system for the analysis of drinking waters and wastewaters by ICP-MS
Automated cardiovascular magnetic resonance image analysis with fully convolutional networks
Background: Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is a standard imaging modality for assessing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death globally. CMR enables accurate quantification of the cardiac chamber volume, ejection fraction and myocardial mass, providing information for diagnosis and monitoring of CVDs. However, for years, clinicians have been relying on manual approaches for CMR image analysis, which is time consuming and prone to subjective errors. It is a major clinical challenge to automatically derive quantitative and clinically relevant information from CMR images.
Methods: Deep neural networks have shown a great potential in image pattern recognition and segmentation for a variety of tasks. Here we demonstrate an automated analysis method for CMR images, which is based on a fully convolutional network (FCN). The network is trained and evaluated on a large-scale dataset from the UK Biobank, consisting of 4,875 subjects with 93,500 pixelwise annotated images. The performance of the method has been evaluated using a number of technical metrics, including the Dice metric, mean contour distance and Hausdorff distance, as well as clinically relevant measures, including left ventricle (LV) end-diastolic volume (LVEDV) and end-systolic volume (LVESV), LV mass (LVM); right ventricle (RV) end-diastolic volume (RVEDV) and end-systolic volume (RVESV).
Results: By combining FCN with a large-scale annotated dataset, the proposed automated method achieves a high performance in segmenting the LV and RV on short-axis CMR images and the left atrium (LA) and right atrium (RA) on long-axis CMR images. On a short-axis image test set of 600 subjects, it achieves an average Dice metric of 0.94 for the LV cavity, 0.88 for the LV myocardium and 0.90 for the RV cavity. The mean absolute difference between automated measurement and manual measurement was 6.1 mL for LVEDV, 5.3 mL for LVESV, 6.9 gram for LVM, 8.5 mL for RVEDV and 7.2 mL for RVESV. On long-axis image test sets, the average Dice metric was 0.93 for the LA cavity (2-chamber view), 0.95 for the LA cavity (4-chamber view) and 0.96 for the RA cavity (4-chamber view). The performance is comparable to human inter-observer variability.
Conclusions: We show that an automated method achieves a performance on par with human experts in analysing CMR images and deriving clinically relevant measures
Clínica e cirurgia de equinos
O presente relatório pretende descrever as atividades desenvolvidas no âmbito do estágio
curricular do Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária da Universidade de Évora.
Este relatório está separado em duas partes. Numa primeira parte apresenta-se a casuística
acompanhada nos quatros meses de estágio nas diversas áreas da clínica geral de equinos,
descrevendo-se alguns casos clínicos de forma mais específica.
Na segunda parte é apresentada uma revisão bibliográfica sobre feridas contendo tecido de
granulação, nas extremidades distais dos membros e o seu tratamento. Para terminar discutem-se três casos clínicos com diferente evolução do tecido de granulação.
As feridas são das afeções mais comuns na clínica de equinos e, nesta espécie, umas das
principais complicações é a formação excessiva de tecido de granulação. Desbridamento
cirúrgico, corticosteroides, enxerto de pele e laser são alguns dos tratamentos a que se pode
recorrer, embora algumas vezes nenhum deles seja eficaz; Equine clinic and surgery
Abstract:
The current report prentends to describe the activities developed in the ambit integrated
internship of the master's degree in Veterinary Medicine of the University of Evora.
This report is separated in two parts. In the first part it will be presented the casuistics followed
in the four months of internship in the various areas of general equine practice, with some clinical
cases being described more specifically.
In the second part is presented a literature review about wounds with granulation tissue in the
distal extremities of the limbs and their treatment. To finish, three clinical cases with diferent
granulation tissue evolution are discussed.
Wounds are the most common affections in the horse clinic, and in this specie, one of the main
complications is the excessive formation of granulation tissue. Surgical debridement,
corticosteroids, skin grafts and laser are some of the treatments that can be used, although
sometimes none of them is effective
Recommended from our members
Vaccine Protection Against Zika Virus from Brazil
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a flavivirus that is responsible for an unprecedented current epidemic in Brazil and the Americas1,2. ZIKV has been causally associated with fetal microcephaly, intrauterine growth restriction, and other birth defects in both humans3–8 and mice9–11. The rapid development of a safe and effective ZIKV vaccine is a global health priority1,2, but very little is currently known about ZIKV immunology and mechanisms of immune protection. Here we show that a single immunization of a plasmid DNA vaccine or a purified inactivated virus vaccine provides complete protection in susceptible mice against challenge with a ZIKV outbreak strain from northeast Brazil. This ZIKV strain has recently been shown to cross the placenta and to induce fetal microcephaly and other congenital malformations in mice11. We produced DNA vaccines expressing full-length ZIKV pre-membrane and envelope (prM-Env) as well as a series of deletion mutants. The full-length prM-Env DNA vaccine, but not the deletion mutants, afforded complete protection against ZIKV as measured by absence of detectable viremia following challenge, and protective efficacy correlated with Env-specific antibody titers. Adoptive transfer of purified IgG from vaccinated mice conferred passive protection, and CD4 and CD8 T lymphocyte depletion in vaccinated mice did not abrogate protective efficacy. These data demonstrate that protection against ZIKV challenge can be achieved by single-shot subunit and inactivated virus vaccines in mice and that Env-specific antibody titers represent key immunologic correlates of protection. Our findings suggest that the development of a ZIKV vaccine for humans will likely be readily achievable
High throughput sample introduction system for the analysis of drinking waters and wastewaters by ICP-MS
A Roadmap for HEP Software and Computing R&D for the 2020s
Particle physics has an ambitious and broad experimental programme for the coming decades. This programme requires large investments in detector hardware, either to build new facilities and experiments, or to upgrade existing ones. Similarly, it requires commensurate investment in the R&D of software to acquire, manage, process, and analyse the shear amounts of data to be recorded. In planning for the HL-LHC in particular, it is critical that all of the collaborating stakeholders agree on the software goals and priorities, and that the efforts complement each other. In this spirit, this white paper describes the R&D activities required to prepare for this software upgrade.Peer reviewe
- …