Comparison of secondary signs as shown by unenhanced helical computed tomography in patients with uric acid or calcium ureteral stones

AbstractUnenhanced helical computed tomography (UHCT) has evolved into a well-accepted diagnostic method in patients with suspected ureterolithiasis. UHCT not only shows stones within the lumen of the ureter, it also permits evaluation of the secondary signs associated with ureteral obstruction from stones. However, there we could find no data on how secondary signs might differ in relation to different compositions of ureteral stones. In this study, we compared the degree of secondary signs revealed by UHCT in uric acid stone formers and in patients forming calcium stones. We enrolled 117 patients with ureteral stones who underwent UHCT examination and Fourier transform infra-red analysis of stone samples. Clinical data were collected as follows: age, sex, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), urine pH, and radiological data on secondary signs apparent on UHCT. The uric acid stone formers had significantly lower urine pH and eGFR in comparison to calcium stone formers, and on UHCT they also had a higher percentage of the secondary signs, including rim sign (78.9% vs. 60.2%), hydroureter (94.7% vs. 89.8%), perirenal stranding (84.2% vs. 59.2%) and kidney density difference (73.7% vs. 50.0%). The radiological difference was statistically significant for perirenal stranding (p=0.041). In conclusion, we found that UHCT scanning reveals secondary signs to be more frequent in patients with uric acid ureteral stones than in patients with calcium stones, a tendency that might result from an acidic urine environment

MYH9 is an Essential Factor for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus Infection

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) caused by the PRRS virus (PRRSV) is an important swine disease worldwide. PRRSV has a limited tropism for certain cells, which may at least in part be attributed to the expression of the necessary cellular molecules serving as the virus receptors or factors on host cells for virus binding or entry. However, these molecules conferring PRRSV infection have not been fully characterized. Here we show the identification of non-muscle myosin heavy chain 9 (MYH9) as an essential factor for PRRSV infection using the anti-idiotypic antibody specific to the PRRSV glycoprotein GP5. MYH9 physically interacts with the PRRSV GP5 protein via its C-terminal domain and confers susceptibility of cells to PRRSV infection. These findings indicate that MYH9 is an essential factor for PRRSV infection and provide new insights into PRRSV-host interactions and viral entry, potentially facilitating development of control strategies for this important swine disease

MVA2023 Small Object Detection Challenge for Spotting Birds: Dataset, Methods, and Results

Small Object Detection (SOD) is an important machine vision topic because (i) a variety of real-world applications require object detection for distant objects and (ii) SOD is a challenging task due to the noisy, blurred, and less-informative image appearances of small objects. This paper proposes a new SOD dataset consisting of 39,070 images including 137,121 bird instances, which is called the Small Object Detection for Spotting Birds (SOD4SB) dataset. The detail of the challenge with the SOD4SB dataset is introduced in this paper. In total, 223 participants joined this challenge. This paper briefly introduces the award-winning methods. The dataset, the baseline code, and the website for evaluation on the public testset are publicly available.Comment: This paper is included in the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Machine Vision Applications (MVA2023). It will be officially published at a later date. Project page : https://www.mva-org.jp/mva2023/challeng

A Genetic Polymorphism (rs17251221) in the Calcium-Sensing Receptor Gene (CASR) Is Associated with Stone Multiplicity in Calcium Nephrolithiasis

Calcium nephrolithiasis is one of the most common causes of renal stones. While the prevalence of this disease has increased steadily over the last 3 decades, its pathogenesis is still unclear. Previous studies have indicated that a genetic polymorphism (rs17251221) in the calcium-sensing receptor gene (CASR) is associated with the total serum calcium levels. In this study, we collected DNA samples from 480 Taiwanese subjects (189 calcium nephrolithiasis patients and 291 controls) for genotyping the CASR gene. Our results indicated no significant association between the CASR polymorphism (rs17251221) and the susceptibility of calcium nephrolithiasis. However, we found a significant association between rs17251221 and stone multiplicity. The risk of stone multiplicity was higher in patients with the GG+GA genotype than in those with the AA genotype (chi-square test:P = 0.008;odds ratio  =  4.79;95% confidence interval, 1.44–15.92;Yates' correction for chi-square test:P = 0.013). In conclusion, our results provide evidence supporting the genetic effects of CASR on the pathogenesis of calcium nephrolithiasis