Fecal Calprotectin Predicts Mucosal Healing in Patients With Ulcerative Colitis Treated With Biological Therapies: A Prospective Study

INTRODUCTION: Biological therapies are widely used for the treatment of ulcerative colitis. However, only a low proportion of patients achieve clinical remission and even less mucosal healing. There is currently scarce knowledge about the early markers of therapeutic response, with particular regard to mucosal healing. The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the role of fecal calprotectin (FC) as early predictor of mucosal healing. METHODS: A prospective observational study was conducted on patients with ulcerative colitis, who started biological therapy with infliximab, adalimumab, golimumab, or vedolizumab at our center. All patients underwent colonoscopy, performed by 2 blinded operators, at baseline and week 54 or in case of therapy discontinuation because of loss of response. FC was assessed at baseline and week 8 and evaluated as putative predictor of mucosal healing at week 54. RESULTS: We enrolled 109 patients, and 97 were included in the analysis. Twenty-six patients (27%) experienced loss of response. Over 71 patients (73%) with clinical response at week 54, clinical remission was obtained in 60 patients (61.9%) and mucosal healing in 45 patients (46.4%). After 8 weeks of treatment, FC predicted mucosal healing at week 54 (P < 0.0001). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were estimated to be 75%, 88.9%, 86.6%, and 75.5%, respectively, based on a cutoff of 157.5 mg/kg. DISCUSSION: The present study suggests that FC assessment after 8 weeks of treatment with all the biological drugs could represent a promising early marker of response to therapy in terms of mucosal healing

Self-perceived normality in defecation habits

Background: Available information on normal bowel habits was mainly gathered by means of telephone interviews or mailed questionnaires. Aims: We undertook a prospective study to evaluate the defecatory habits in subjects perceiving themselves as normal concerning this function. Subjects and Methods: A questionnaire (4-week diary with "yes-no" daily answers to six questions concerning bowel habits) was distributed to 204 subjects perceiving their defecation behaviour as normal. Results: The completed questionnaire was returned by 140 subjects. No significant differences were found between sexes or age groups for any variable, even though straining at stool and feeling of incomplete and/or difficult evacuation showed a trend to increase with age. No subject had less than three bowel movements per week or more than three per day. The percentage of symptoms linked to an abnormal defecatory behaviour was well below 10%. Fifty-five percent of subjects reported at least one parameter of abnormal functioning; the most frequent was straining at stool and the rarer was the manual manoeuvres to help defecation. Conclusions: In normal subjects the prevalence of symptoms considered in Rome II criteria as part of an abnormal defecatory behaviour (in more than 25% of defecations) is well below 10%, manual manoeuvres are almost never used to help defecation, and the frequency of defecations is at least three per week. © 2005 Editrice Gastroenterologica Italiana S.r.l

An Innovative Monocular Mobile Object Self-localization Approach Based on Ceiling Vision

This study deals with the estimation of the position of a mobile object using ceiling landmarks images acquired by a low resolution camera placed on a mobile object. The mobile object is moving in an indoor environment where light is given by electric lamps with circular holders. The images of the circular holders are projected on the image plane of the camera and are processed by means of computer vision algorithms. The pixels of the images of the light holders on the ceiling are mapped to the pixels of the images of the light holders on the image plane of the camera by means of a two dimensional dynamic programming algorithm (2D-DPA). The projection distortions are thus compensated and this reduces the estimation errors. The algorithm described in this paper estimates the distance from the camera lens to the center of the landmarks using only ceiling vision. Localization can be easily obtain from such distance estimations. The projections are geometrically described and the distance estimation is based on the pixels mapping information obtained by 2D-DPA

Reducing disk I/O times using anticipatory movements of the disk head

Finding a good rest position for the disk head is very important for the performance of a hard disk. It has been shown in the past that rest positions obtained through anticipatory movements of the disk head can indeed improve response time, but practical algorithms have not been described yet. In this paper we describe a software technique for perfoming anticipatory movements of the disk head. In particular, we show that by partitioning the disk controller memory into a part used for caching and a part used for predictive movements, lower I/O times as compared with the usual read-ahead cache configurations are obtained. Through trace-driven simulations we show in fact that significant improvements in the disk I/O times can be obtained as compared to standard disk caching. Since the technique should be realized at the firmware level in the disk controller and no hardware modifications are needed, the implementation cost is low