Comparative analysis of radiocephalic versus brachiocephalic native arteriovenous fistula for hemodialysis in end stage renal disease

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a long term condition caused by damage to both kidneys. The benefits of arteriovenous fistulas over other forms of chronic access are: Arteriovenous fistulas are associated with decreased morbidity and mortality among hemodialysis patients compared with arteriovenous grafts and central venous catheters. Objectives of the study were o choose the proper sites for formation of arteriovenous fistula, to find out the success rate at various sites and to study the complications of arteriovenous fistula.Methods: This prospective study was carried out on total 150 patients over the duration of two years. The fistulae were created using radial artery and cephalic vein side to side (Radiocephalic AVF) and brachial artery and cephalic vein side to side anastomosis (Brachiocephalic AVF). Doppler studies were done before and after every procedure to demonstrate the velocity, volume of blood flow, depth from the skin, diameter of vessels and to access the time of maturation of AVF. Patients were followed up to first dialysis by AVF to assess the overall outcomes and various complications.Results: Brachiocephalic AVF matured earlier than Radiocephalic AVF (mean maturation time Brachiocephalic 38.02 days and Radiocephalic 43.26 days) which was statistically significant. Brachiocephalic AVF matured earlier than Radiocephalic AVF with more flow rate. Complication rate was more at wrist (Radiocephalic AVF with 66.67% of overall complication) than at elbow (Brachiocephalic AVF with 33.33% of overall complication).Conclusions: We concluded that the Brachiocephalic AVF maturation time was significantly less than the maturation time of Radiocephalic AVF and rate of complication was less in Brachiocephalic AVF. The utility of pre-operative colour Doppler to select the vessels for AVF creation was found to be as an essential parameter of pre-operative work up

Face Generation from Textual Features using Conditionally Trained Inputs to Generative Adversarial Networks

Generative Networks have proved to be extremely effective in image restoration and reconstruction in the past few years. Generating faces from textual descriptions is one such application where the power of generative algorithms can be used. The task of generating faces can be useful for a number of applications such as finding missing persons, identifying criminals, etc. This paper discusses a novel approach to generating human faces given a textual description regarding the facial features. We use the power of state of the art natural language processing models to convert face descriptions into learnable latent vectors which are then fed to a generative adversarial network which generates faces corresponding to those features. While this paper focuses on high level descriptions of faces only, the same approach can be tailored to generate any image based on fine grained textual features

The effects of transfection reagent polyethyleneimine (PEI) and non-targeting control siRNAs on global gene expression in human aortic smooth muscle cells

Background: RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful platform utilized to target transcription of specific genes and downregulate the protein product. To achieve effective silencing, RNAi is usually applied to cells or tissue with a transfection reagent to enhance entry into cells. A commonly used control is the same transfection reagent plus a “noncoding RNAi”. However, this does not control for the genomic response to the transfection reagent alone or in combination with the noncoding RNAi. These control effects while not directly targeting the gene in question may influence expression of other genes that in turn alter expression of the target. The current study was prompted by our work focused on prevention of vascular bypass graft failure and our experience with gene silencing in human aortic smooth muscle cells (HAoSMCs) where we suspected that off target effects through this mechanism might be substantial. We have used Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology and bioinformatics analysis to examine the genomic response of HAoSMCs to the transfection reagent alone (polyethyleneimine (PEI)) or in combination with commercially obtained control small interfering RNA (siRNAs) (Dharmacon and Invitrogen). Results: Compared to untreated cells, global gene expression of HAoSMcs after transfection either with PEI or in combination with control siRNAs displayed significant alterations in gene transcriptome after 24 h. HAoSMCs transfected by PEI alone revealed alterations of 213 genes mainly involved in inflammatory and immune responses. HAoSMCs transfected by PEI complexed with siRNA from either Dharmacon or Invitrogen showed substantial gene variation of 113 and 85 genes respectively. Transfection of cells with only PEI or with PEI and control siRNAs resulted in identification of 20 set of overlapping altered genes. Further, systems biology analysis revealed key master regulators in cells transfected with control siRNAs including the cytokine, Interleukin (IL)-1, transcription factor GATA Binding Protein (GATA)-4 and the methylation enzyme, Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH-2) a cytokine with an apical role in initiating the inflammatory response. Conclusions: Significant off-target effects in HAoSMCs transfected with PEI alone or in combination with control siRNAs may lead to misleading conclusions concerning the effectiveness of a targeted siRNA strategy. The lack of structural information about transfection reagents and “non coding” siRNA is a hindrance in the development of siRNA based therapeutics. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-2267-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Comparative analysis of radiocephalic versus brachiocephalic native arteriovenous fistula for hemodialysis in end stage renal disease

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a long term condition caused by damage to both kidneys. The benefits of arteriovenous fistulas over other forms of chronic access are: Arteriovenous fistulas are associated with decreased morbidity and mortality among hemodialysis patients compared with arteriovenous grafts and central venous catheters. Objectives of the study were o choose the proper sites for formation of arteriovenous fistula, to find out the success rate at various sites and to study the complications of arteriovenous fistula.Methods: This prospective study was carried out on total 150 patients over the duration of two years. The fistulae were created using radial artery and cephalic vein side to side (Radiocephalic AVF) and brachial artery and cephalic vein side to side anastomosis (Brachiocephalic AVF). Doppler studies were done before and after every procedure to demonstrate the velocity, volume of blood flow, depth from the skin, diameter of vessels and to access the time of maturation of AVF. Patients were followed up to first dialysis by AVF to assess the overall outcomes and various complications.Results: Brachiocephalic AVF matured earlier than Radiocephalic AVF (mean maturation time Brachiocephalic 38.02 days and Radiocephalic 43.26 days) which was statistically significant. Brachiocephalic AVF matured earlier than Radiocephalic AVF with more flow rate. Complication rate was more at wrist (Radiocephalic AVF with 66.67% of overall complication) than at elbow (Brachiocephalic AVF with 33.33% of overall complication).Conclusions: We concluded that the Brachiocephalic AVF maturation time was significantly less than the maturation time of Radiocephalic AVF and rate of complication was less in Brachiocephalic AVF. The utility of pre-operative colour Doppler to select the vessels for AVF creation was found to be as an essential parameter of pre-operative work up

neurodsp-tools/neurodsp: Minor new version release: 2.1.0

Bug fixes: IIR filters Wavelets Simulation normalization General updates: Plot styling Cycle tiling approach Technical updates: filt timefrequency spectral Documentation updates: Sphinx Docstrings Tutorial

Evaluation of short-term outcomes of impaired creatinine clearance in patients with acute coronary syndromes: A prospective cohort study at tertiary care center

Background: Chronic kidney disease is commonly seen in patients presenting with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), and it has been shown to have poor outcomes. We evaluated the prevalence of impaired creatinine clearance and its impact on short-term clinical outcomes in patients admitted with ACS without prior documented chronic renal disease. Materials and Methods: The present study was an observational, prospective cohort study conducted at a tertiary care center in North India. In patients admitted with a diagnosis of ACS, glomerular filtration rate was estimated (eGFR) by the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease Study Equation. Patients with eGFR 90 mL/min comprised control group. The study group was further categorized into three subgroups on the basis of eGFR (<30 mL/min; 30–59 mL/min; 60–89 ml/min). The primary outcomes compared between study and control group were major adverse cardiac event (MACE) (composite of death, reinfarction, congestive heart failure, cardiogenic shock, and arrhythmia). The secondary outcome measures were individual components of primary outcome. Results: Among the 200 enrolled patients with ACS, the prevalence of impaired creatinine clearance was 29.5%. The study cohort had higher rates of MACE (28.8 vs. 9.2%, P ≤≤ 0.0001), in-hospital mortality (13.6 vs. 3.5%, P = 0.009), and overall mortality (15.3 vs. 5.1%, P = 0.014) as compared to control group. However, the 30-day mortality was not significantly different. The MACE in the study subgroups was higher in eGFR 30–60 mL/min (odds ratio [OR] 3.97) subgroup followed by eGFR 1.5 mg/dl) enhances the ability to predict death by 33% and MACE events by 143%. The OR for predicting death with various cutoff of eGFR was as follows: eGFR <30 ml/min – 3.61, eGFR: 30–60 ml/min – 4.2 and eGFR: 60–90 ml/min – 0.5. Conclusion: Almost one-third of the patients presenting with ACS have impaired creatinine clearance. Patients with impaired creatinine clearance have worse outcome in hospital vis-a-vis their contemporary groups with normal eGFR. eGFR is a better risk assessment parameter than SCr for predicting MACE and overall mortality in ACS patients

neurodsp-tools/neurodsp: 2.2: minor version release

Minor release version: 2.2.0 This is a minor, non-breaking, release version of NeuroDSP, as part of the 2.X.X series. Changelog: Aperiodic Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (#167) IRASA (#212) Autocorrelation (#217) Simulation Fractional Gaussian noise and fractional Brownian motion (#216) Burst detection bug fix (#220) Time series with defined spectral parameters (i.e. height, width, center) (#221) Time series with defined Lorentzian parameters (i.e. chi1, chi2, knee) (#222) Asymmetrical gaussian cycles (#228) Define bursts based on set durations (#239) Extrema phase shifting (i.e. trough-to-trough or peak-to-peak) (#247) Custom cycle support (#248) Cycle length fix (#250) Variable oscillations parameters (i.e. vary cycle simulation parameters on a cycle-by-cycle basis) (#252) One-sided asymmetry (#254) Simulate spikes of action potentials (#259) Plotting 2d array plotting (time series: #246, spectra: #269) Labeling bug fix and improved tests (#255) Plotting saving updates (#258, #260) Maintenance Deprecate increase_n argument of robust_hilbert (#215) Improved speed of multidim decorator (#264) Error for invalid transition bands (#267) Documentation Tutorial for Morlet wavelets (#226) Tutorials and updates for lagged coherence and sliding window matching (#230) Tutorials for DFA, IRASA, and Autocorrelation (#231)If you use this software, please cite it as below