The study of clinical and endoscopic spectrum of upper gastrointestinal manifestations in HIV patients

Background: Opportunistic disorders are the most frequent GI complications of HIV infection and remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality in these patients. These disorders account for high prevalence of upper gastrointestinal symptoms such as dysphagia, odynophagia, retrosternal chest pain, abdominal pain and upper GI bleeding. Hence an attempt is being made to study clinical, endoscopic and biopsy changes in HIV patients with upper GI symptoms which helps us to make early diagnosis of upper GI disorders in HIV patients.Methods: HIV positive patients above 14 yrs diagnosed on the basis of recent NACO criteria having Upper G.I. symptoms, attending OPD of Department of Medicine admitted in Wards. All fifty three patients with upper G.I. symptoms were subjected to detail history, thorough clinical examination, routine and special investigations and Upper G.I Endoscopy.Results: Out of fifty three patients, nineteen (35.8%) cases had normal endoscopy. The most common finding was Antral Gastritis in fourteen (26.4%), followed by Candida esophagitis in twelve (22.6%), esophagitis in three (5.7%), candida esophagitis with antral gastritis in two (3.8%), duodenitis, varices and mass (ulcerated growth) in II part of Duodenum seen in one (1.9%) each.Conclusions: The evaluation of specific gastrointestinal complaints must be based on an assessment of degree of immunosuppression. With the progression of immunodeficiency, EGD becomes a useful diagnostic modality for the early diagnosis of these opportunistic infections and other inflammatory conditions

Study of anaemia in type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background: Anaemia is increasingly recognized entity in the patients with diabetes mellitus and constitutes an additional burden in patients. The prevalence of anaemia in the patients with diabetes is two or three times higher than in patients with comparable renal impairment and iron stores in the general population. As India is foreseen a diabetic capital of the world, it becomes imperative to recognize co-morbidities such as anaemia at the earliest. Hence this study is being conducted with the aim to determine the prevalence and various causes of anaemia in diabetics.Methods: After obtaining informed written consent, all diabetics patients were subjected to detailed history, through clinical examination and investigation with CBC, Renal function test including creatinine clearance. The difference of mean between anaemic and non anaemic diabetic patients was evaluated by unpaired student t test. Finally, correlation between the level of haemoglobin and index of renal damage (albumin-creatinine ratio) was accessed by Pearson correlation. Statistical software of SPSS 10 ver. and EXCEL (office 9) was used to analyse the data.Results: In the present study, nearly two third patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus were anaemic. The maximum number of anaemic patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus had microcytic hypochromic type of anaemia.Conclusions: It is therefore concluded that anaemia is a prevalent finding in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and represents significant unrecognised burden. The anaemia may be attributed to variable contribution of iron deficiency state and chronic inflammation as result of the disease itself

Electrooptic and Dielectric Studies in Cadmium Sulphide Nanorods/Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Mixtures

We present the results based on the electrooptic and dielectric studies in cadmium sulphide (CdS) nanorods/ferroelectric liquid crystal mixtures. Doping of CdS nanorods increases the spontaneous polarization and response time, which due to large dipole-dipole interaction and increase in anchoring energies exists between nanorods and FLC molecules. Dielectric measurements revealed a decrease (~40% for 0.3% CdS in FLC) in permittivity and dielectric strength in doped sample cell than pure FLC mixture. A decrease in dc conductivity and relaxation frequency with doping concentration was also noticed. The preexponent factor and fractional exponent factor are found as predicated by existing theories

Antiinflammatory Therapy with Canakinumab for Atherosclerotic Disease

Background: Experimental and clinical data suggest that reducing inflammation without affecting lipid levels may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Yet, the inflammatory hypothesis of atherothrombosis has remained unproved. Methods: We conducted a randomized, double-blind trial of canakinumab, a therapeutic monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin-1β, involving 10,061 patients with previous myocardial infarction and a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein level of 2 mg or more per liter. The trial compared three doses of canakinumab (50 mg, 150 mg, and 300 mg, administered subcutaneously every 3 months) with placebo. The primary efficacy end point was nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or cardiovascular death. RESULTS: At 48 months, the median reduction from baseline in the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein level was 26 percentage points greater in the group that received the 50-mg dose of canakinumab, 37 percentage points greater in the 150-mg group, and 41 percentage points greater in the 300-mg group than in the placebo group. Canakinumab did not reduce lipid levels from baseline. At a median follow-up of 3.7 years, the incidence rate for the primary end point was 4.50 events per 100 person-years in the placebo group, 4.11 events per 100 person-years in the 50-mg group, 3.86 events per 100 person-years in the 150-mg group, and 3.90 events per 100 person-years in the 300-mg group. The hazard ratios as compared with placebo were as follows: in the 50-mg group, 0.93 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.80 to 1.07; P = 0.30); in the 150-mg group, 0.85 (95% CI, 0.74 to 0.98; P = 0.021); and in the 300-mg group, 0.86 (95% CI, 0.75 to 0.99; P = 0.031). The 150-mg dose, but not the other doses, met the prespecified multiplicity-adjusted threshold for statistical significance for the primary end point and the secondary end point that additionally included hospitalization for unstable angina that led to urgent revascularization (hazard ratio vs. placebo, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.73 to 0.95; P = 0.005). Canakinumab was associated with a higher incidence of fatal infection than was placebo. There was no significant difference in all-cause mortality (hazard ratio for all canakinumab doses vs. placebo, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.06; P = 0.31). Conclusions: Antiinflammatory therapy targeting the interleukin-1β innate immunity pathway with canakinumab at a dose of 150 mg every 3 months led to a significantly lower rate of recurrent cardiovascular events than placebo, independent of lipid-level lowering. (Funded by Novartis; CANTOS ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01327846.

Search for subsolar-mass black hole binaries in the second part of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run

We describe a search for gravitational waves from compact binaries with at least one component with mass 0.2 M⊙–1.0 M⊙ and mass ratio q ≥ 0.1 in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo data collected between 1 November 2019, 15:00 UTC and 27 March 2020, 17:00 UTC. No signals were detected. The most significant candidate has a false alarm rate of 0.2yr−1 ⁠. We estimate the sensitivity of our search over the entirety of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run, and present the most stringent limits to date on the merger rate of binary black holes with at least one subsolar-mass component. We use the upper limits to constrain two fiducial scenarios that could produce subsolar-mass black holes: primordial black holes (PBH) and a model of dissipative dark matter. The PBH model uses recent prescriptions for the merger rate of PBH binaries that include a rate suppression factor to effectively account for PBH early binary disruptions. If the PBHs are monochromatically distributed, we can exclude a dark matter fraction in PBHs fPBH ≳ 0.6 (at 90% confidence) in the probed subsolar-mass range. However, if we allow for broad PBH mass distributions we are unable to rule out fPBH = 1. For the dissipative model, where the dark matter has chemistry that allows a small fraction to cool and collapse into black holes, we find an upper bound fDBH < 10−5 on the fraction of atomic dark matter collapsed into black holes

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in April of 2019 and lasting six months, O3b starting in November of 2019 and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in April of 2020 and lasting 2 weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main dataset, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure