The effects of childbirth on the pelvic-floor

Basically, vaginal delivery is associated with the risk of pelvic floor damage. The pelvic floor sequelae of childbirth includes anal incontinence, urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Pathophysiology, incidence and risk factors for the development of the respective problems are reviewed. Where possible, recommendations for reducing the risk of pelvic floor damage are given

Bony metastases from breast cancer - a study of foetal antigen 2 as a blood tumour marker

Background : Foetal antigen 2 (FA-2), first isolated in the amniotic fluid, was shown to be the circulating form of the aminopropeptide of the alpha 1 chain of procollagen type I. Serum concentrations of FA-2 appeared to be elevated in a number of disorders of bone metabolism. This paper is the first report of its role as a marker of bone metabolism in metastatic breast cancer. Methods: Serum FA-2 concentrations were measured by radioimmunoassay in 153 women with different stages of breast cancer and in 34 normal controls. Results: Serum FA-2 was significantly elevated in women with bony metastases (p < 0.015). Its levels were not significantly different among women with non-bony metastases, with non-metastatic disease, as well as among normal controls. Conclusions: FA-2 is a promising blood marker of bone metabolism. Further studies to delineate its role in the diagnosis and management of bony metastases from breast cancer are required

Update to the study protocol, including statistical analysis plan for a randomized clinical trial comparing comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation after heart valve surgery with control: the CopenHeartVR trial

Comparative StudyRandomized Controlled TrialThis is the final version of the article. Available from BioMed Central via the DOI in this record.BACKGROUND: Heart valve diseases are common with an estimated prevalence of 2.5% in the Western world. The number is rising because of an ageing population. Once symptomatic, heart valve diseases are potentially lethal, and heavily influence daily living and quality of life. Surgical treatment, either valve replacement or repair, remains the treatment of choice. However, post-surgery, the transition to daily living may become a physical, mental and social challenge. We hypothesize that a comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation program can improve physical capacity and self-assessed mental health and reduce hospitalization and healthcare costs after heart valve surgery. METHODS: This randomized clinical trial, CopenHeartVR, aims to investigate whether cardiac rehabilitation in addition to usual care is superior to treatment as usual after heart valve surgery. The trial will randomly allocate 210 patients 1:1 to an intervention or a control group, using central randomization, and blinded outcome assessment and statistical analyses. The intervention consists of 12 weeks of physical exercise and a psycho-educational intervention comprising five consultations. The primary outcome is peak oxygen uptake (VO2 peak) measured by cardiopulmonary exercise testing with ventilatory gas analysis. The secondary outcome is self-assessed mental health measured by the standardized questionnaire Short Form-36. Long-term healthcare utilization and mortality as well as biochemistry, echocardiography and cost-benefit will be assessed. A mixed-method design will be used to evaluate qualitative and quantitative findings, encompassing a survey-based study before the trial and a qualitative pre- and post-intervention study. CONCLUSION: This randomized clinical trial will contribute with evidence of whether cardiac rehabilitation should be provided after heart valve surgery. The study is approved by the local regional Research Ethics Committee (H-1-2011-157), and the Danish Data Protection Agency (j.nr. 2007-58-0015). TRIAL REGISTRATION: Trial registered 16 March 2012; ClinicalTrials.gov ( NCT01558765 ).This work is supported by the Strategic Research Council, The Heart Centre Research Foundation Rigshospitalet, Familien Hede Nielsens Fond, The Regional Research Council of Region Sealand (Denmark), The National Institute of Public Health, and the University of Southern Denmark

Investigations on antibody binding to a micro-cantilever coated with a BAM pesticide residue

The attachment of an antibody to an antigen-coated cantilever has been investigated by repeated experiments, using a cantilever-based detection system by Cantion A/S. The stress induced by the binding of a pesticide residue BAM (2,6 dichlorobenzamide) immobilized on a cantilever surface to anti-BAM antibody is measured using the CantiLab4© system from Cantion A/S with four gold-coated cantilevers and piezo resistive readout. The detection mechanism is in principle label-free, but fluorescent-marked antibodies have been used to subsequently verify the binding on the cantilever surface. The bending and increase in mass of each cantilever has also been investigated using a light interferometer and a Doppler Vibrometer. The system has been analyzed during repeated measurements to investigate whether the CantiLab4© system is a suited platform for a pesticide assay system

Shape oscillations of an oil drop rising in water: effect of surface contamination

Inertial shape oscillations of heptane drops rising in water are investigated experimentally. Diameters from 0.59 to 3.52 mm are considered, corresponding to a regime where the rising motion should not affect shape oscillations for pure immiscible fluids. The interface, however, turns out to be contaminated. The drag coefficient is considerably increased compared to that of a clean drop due to the well-known. Marangoni effect resulting from a gradient of surfactant concentration generated by the fluid motion along the interface. Thanks to the decomposition of the shape into spherical harmonics, the eigenfrequencies and the damping rates of oscillation modes n = 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been measured. Frequencies are not affected by contamination, while damping rates are increased by a considerable amount that depends neither on drop instantaneous velocity nor on diameter. This augmentation, however, depends on the mode number: it is maximum for mode two (multiplied by 2.4) and then relaxes towards the value of a clean drop as n increases. A previous similar investigation of a drop attached to a capillary has not revealed such an increase of the damping rates, indicating that the coupling between rising motion and surface contamination is responsible for this effect

The effects of possible contamination on the radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls I:Castor oil

Some fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts were contaminated with castor oil in the late 1950s. We have conducted experiments in order to establish if the AAA pretreatment cleaning procedures conducted on Dead Sea Scroll manuscript samples in the last two dating series (Bonani et al. 1992; Jull et al. 1995) were effective in removing oil contamination. Our experiments show that not all oil contamination can be expected to have been removed by the acid-alkaline-acid (AAA) pretreatment, and that the radiocarbon ages previously reported therefore cannot be guaranteed to be correct. Any samples contaminated with castor oil were most likely reported with ages that are too young by an unknown amount

ABCD Neurocognitive Prediction Challenge 2019: Predicting individual fluid intelligence scores from structural MRI using probabilistic segmentation and kernel ridge regression

We applied several regression and deep learning methods to predict fluid intelligence scores from T1-weighted MRI scans as part of the ABCD Neurocognitive Prediction Challenge (ABCD-NP-Challenge) 2019. We used voxel intensities and probabilistic tissue-type labels derived from these as features to train the models. The best predictive performance (lowest mean-squared error) came from Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR; $\lambda=10$), which produced a mean-squared error of 69.7204 on the validation set and 92.1298 on the test set. This placed our group in the fifth position on the validation leader board and first place on the final (test) leader board.Comment: Winning entry in the ABCD Neurocognitive Prediction Challenge at MICCAI 2019. 7 pages plus references, 3 figures, 1 tabl