Evaluation of the Clinical and Sociodemographic Features of Turkish Patients with Vitiligo

Vitiligo is an acquired, pigmentary skin disorder that affects about 0.1-4.0% of the population. In this study, we aimed to investigate the disease features such as age of onset, disease duration, clinical and sociodemographic characteristics, and laboratory parameters of patients with vitiligo. A hundred patients who were in follow-up for vitiligo between the period of June 2013 and May 2014 were included in the study. The clinical features and laboratory parameters were retrospectively obtained from the records of the patients. The mean age was 34.9±16.8 years. The most common clinical types were focal and acrofacial. Facial involvement was the most common localization. Forty-five (45%) patients had an associated systemic disease. Autoimmune thyroid disease, essential hypertension, and alopecia  areata, which were observed in 28%, 8%, and 5% of patients, respectively, were the most common associated diseases. Twenty-one percent of the patients had low ferritin levels, 20% had low iron levels, 12% had low vitamin B12 levels, and 1% had low folic acid levels. The prevalence of anti-TG (anti-thyroglobulin) and anti-TPO (anti-thyroid peroxidase) antibodies were found 17% and 27% of the patients, respectively. We found that the clinical characteristics of vitiligo in our patients were similar to those in other studies. We observed laboratory abnormalities and accompanying diseases associated with vitiligo. Therefore we conclude that laboratory examinations including thyroid antibodies and regular follow-up of these patients are essential.</div

Evaluation of nutritional status in pediatric intensive care unit patients: the results of a multicenter, prospective study in Turkey

IntroductionMalnutrition is defined as a pathological condition arising from deficient or imbalanced intake of nutritional elements. Factors such as increasing metabolic demands during the disease course in the hospitalized patients and inadequate calorie intake increase the risk of malnutrition. The aim of the present study is to evaluate nutritional status of patients admitted to pediatric intensive care units (PICU) in Turkey, examine the effect of nutrition on the treatment process and draw attention to the need for regulating nutritional support of patients while continuing existing therapies.Material and MethodIn this prospective multicenter study, the data was collected over a period of one month from PICUs participating in the PICU Nutrition Study Group in Turkey. Anthropometric data of the patients, calorie intake, 90-day mortality, need for mechanical ventilation, length of hospital stay and length of stay in intensive care unit were recorded and the relationship between these parameters was examined.ResultsOf the 614 patients included in the study, malnutrition was detected in 45.4% of the patients. Enteral feeding was initiated in 40.6% (n = 249) of the patients at day one upon admission to the intensive care unit. In the first 48 h, 86.82% (n = 533) of the patients achieved the target calorie intake, and 81.65% (n = 307) of the 376 patients remaining in the intensive care unit achieved the target calorie intake at the end of one week. The risk of mortality decreased with increasing upper mid-arm circumference and triceps skin fold thickness Z-score (OR = 0.871/0.894; p = 0.027/0.024). The risk of mortality was 2.723 times higher in patients who did not achieve the target calorie intake at first 48 h (p = 0.006) and the risk was 3.829 times higher in patients who did not achieve the target calorie intake at the end of one week (p = 0.001). The risk of mortality decreased with increasing triceps skin fold thickness Z-score (OR = 0.894; p = 0.024).ConclusionTimely and appropriate nutritional support in critically ill patients favorably affects the clinical course. The results of the present study suggest that mortality rate is higher in patients who fail to achieve the target calorie intake at first 48 h and day seven of admission to the intensive care unit. The risk of mortality decreases with increasing triceps skin fold thickness Z-score

Symmetric positive solutions for second order boundary value problems with integral boundary conditions on time scales

This paper investigates the existence of symmetric positive solutions for a class of nonlinear boundary value problem of second order dynamic equations with integral boundary conditions on time scales. Under suitable conditions, the existence of symmetric positive solution is established by using monotone iterative technique. © 2016, Wilmington Scientific Publisher. All Rights Reserved

Dynamic virtual bats algorithm (dvba) for global numerical optimization

This paper presents a novel Dynamic Virtual Bats Algorithm (DVBA) for global optimization. This algorithm is inspired by the bat's echolocation behavior, in particular, focusing on the way they change the wavelength and frequency of the emitted sound wave while looking for prey. The role-based search is developed to improve the global and local search capability of Yang's Bat Algorithm. In the DVBA, there are just two bats that are dynamically switching roles from the explorer bat to the exploiter bat according to their position. DVBA has been evaluated, in comparison with standard Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and standard Bat Algorithm (BA) on a number of mathematical benchmark functions. Experimental results show that the DVBA can provide superior performance than BA and PSO in optimizing these benchmark functions, mainly, in terms of its accuracy and robustness

A novel meta-heuristic algorithm: dynamic virtual bats algorithm

Nature-inspired algorithms are a very important part of meta-heuristics. A novel nature inspired algorithm called the Dynamic Virtual Bats Algorithm (DVBA) is presented in this paper. DVBA is inspired by a bat’s ability to manipulate frequency and wavelength of the emitted sound waves when hunting. A role based search has been developed to improve the diversification and intensification capability of Bat Algorithm. In the DVBA, there are only two bats: explorer and exploiter bat. While the explorer bat explores the search space, the exploiter bat makes an intensive search of the local with the highest probability of locating the desired target. Depending on their location, bats exchange the roles dynamically. The performance of the DVBA is extensively evaluated on a suite of 30 bound-constrained optimization problems from CEC 2014 and compared favorably with other well-known meta-heuristics algorithms. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed DVBA outperform, or is comparable to, its competitors in terms of the quality of final solution and its convergence rates

Symmetric positive solutions for the systems of higher-order boundary value problems on time scales

WOS: 000414917500004In this paper, we discuss the existence of symmetric positive solutions for the systems of higherorder boundary value problems on time scales. Our results extend some recent work in the literature. The analysis of this paper mainly relies on the monotone iterative technique