Role of CD59 in experimental glomerulonephritis in rats

Role of CD59 in experimental glomerulonephritis in rats. CD59 is a molecule which is present on the host cell membranes and inhibits formation of membrane attack complex. A monoclonal antibody, 6D1, recognizes a rat analogue of human CD59. 6D1 inhibits function of rat CD59 and can enhance complement-mediated hemolysis in vitro. To assess the role of CD59 in complement-mediated glomerular injury, 6D1 was tested in a model of experimental glomerulonephritis induced by a lectin and its antibodies. The left kidney of a rat was perfused either with 200 µg of Lens culinaris hemoagglutinin (LCH) plus 1mg of 6D1 (IgGl fraction) (Group I and III) or with LCH only (Group II) through a cannula placed in the left renal artery. All the perfusate was discarded from a cannula in the renal vein. The holes in the artery and vein were repaired by microsurgery and the blood circulation was re-established. Rats were injected either with 0.125ml of rabbit anti-LCH serum (Group I and II), or with normal rabbit serum (Group III) via tail vein one minute after the recirculation. Fifteen minutes after injection, significant C9 deposition in the glomeruli was observed only in Group I, whereas C3 deposition in Group I and II were comparable. At Day 4, total glomerular cells, proliferating cells, glomerular expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 and fibrin deposition in Group I were all significantly increased when compared with Group II. At Day 7, number of total glomerular cells and leukocytes in the glomeruli of Group I were significantly higher than in Group II. The glomeruli in Group III appeared normal throughout experiments. These data indicate that the functional inhibition of a rat analogue of human CD59 worsens complement-mediated glomerular injury in vivo

Valoración de la función contráctil del ventrículo derecho por deformación en escala de grises bidimensional en una población con hipertensión pulmonar

Quantification of right ventricular function continues to evolve, even though his assessment is difficult due to the complex geometry of this cardiac chamber.Objectiveto characterize right ventricular function by calculating the strain, the longitudinal strain rate of the right ventricular free wall and the ejection fraction and volumes of the ventricle through assessment of the strain by two-dimensional speckle tracking, and to compare it with tricuspid annulus peak systolic excursion (TAPSE) in patients with pulmonary hypertension and in healthy population.Methodobservational descriptive studyResultsWe included 120 patients, of whom 80 suffered from pulmonary hypertension and 40 were healthy. The overall strain of the right ventricular free wall was significantly lower in the group with pulmonary hypertension compared to healthy subjects (-20.5 ± 6 vs. -25 ± 4.5; p <0.001); regional strain showed similar behavior. The overall longitudinal strain rate showed no significant differences between groups. We found a significant correlation between TAPSE and ejection fraction of the right ventricle (r = 0.49; p <0.001) and an inverse correlation between TAPSE and global longitudinal strain of the right ventricle free wall (r = -0.41; p <0.001).Conclusionsthe assessment of regional right ventricular function by two dimensional speckle tracking can be a useful tool for assessing right ventricular systolic function in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension

A proposal of alarm sound recognition system for the medical instrument

In this paper, an alarm sound recognition system of medical instruments is proposed. The difference between existing methods and the proposed method is as below: In the proposed method, the static method is used for recognition, but the dynamical method is used for recognition in existing method. Because the specification of artificial sounds such as alarm is very simple. We show abilities of the proposed method by computer simulation. Then, we propose the recognition system of alarm sounds using digital signal processor, in which neural networks are employed as the classifier. We develop the real-time alarm recognition system with the appropriate pre-processing using acoustic pressure waveform, and make some recognition experiments using real alarm sounds. The results of the experiments reveal that the system can effectively resist the interference of noise and correctly recognize the pattern of alarm sounds with low cost.The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.htmlIFSR 2005 : Proceedings of the First World Congress of the International Federation for Systems Research : The New Roles of Systems Sciences For a Knowledge-based Society : Nov. 14-17, 2162, Kobe, JapanSymposium 3, Session 8 : Intelligent Information Technology and Applications Computational Intelligence (2

A Study of Driver State Classification Using In-vehicle Sensors by Neural Networks

A driver support system for a safeguard against human errors, which cause traffic accidents, has created considerable interests in recent years. Identification of driver states is needed for a suitable driver support system. In this paper, we have proposed the method of classifying driver states using in-vehicle sensors, for a stable measurement with the non-extra workload, by feed-forward neural networks. To investigate the realizability of the method, the data sampling experiment was carried out in the simple circumstance. The data on each driver state are obtained by ordering a driver to drive under some condition. The simple data analysis is carried out by plotting the time series, and we can see the time series of left/right gravity is the most characteristic indicator on the simple left curved course. As a simulation result, it is confirmed that the simple neural network classification system was created by the data screening method using the shape of the neural network’s learning curve.The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.htmlIFSR 2005 : Proceedings of the First World Congress of the International Federation for Systems Research : The New Roles of Systems Sciences For a Knowledge-based Society : Nov. 14-17, 2159, Kobe, JapanSymposium 3, Session 7 : Intelligent Information Technology and Applications Computational Intelligence (1