Frequency of Celiac Disease in Patients With Increased Intestinal Gas (Flatulence)

Excessive flatulence which impairs social performance in patients is one of the common reasons for referrals to gastroenterology clinics. Celiac Disease is a rare but important cause of increased intestinal gas (bloating) and if not diagnosed, patients face complications such as malabsorption, anemia, osteoporosis and even intestinal lymphoma. This study aimed to determine the frequency of Celiac Disease in patients with excessive flatulence.One hundred and fifty patients with a chief complaint of experiencing flatulence more than 15 times a day and lasting for three months were referred to the gastroenterology clinic of Rasoul-e-Akram Teaching Hospital. Serological tests for Celiac Disease, Anti TTG Ab (IgA-IgG) were requested and the patients with positive tests underwent upper GI endoscopy. Biopsies of the second part of the duodenum were then sent to the laboratory.From one hundred and thirty patients who completed the study, 92 (70.7) were female. Mean age of the patients was 32 ± 13 years. Anti TTG Ab was found in 5 patients (3.85). Only 2 patients (1.5) had a documented positive pathology for Celiac Disease.According to the results of this study and other studies, we conclude that Celiac Disease is an uncommon etiology for excessive flatulence but it is of importance to investigate it in excessive flatulence patients

An enhanced certificateless cryptosystem for mobile ad hoc networks

Due to the importance of security in many critical applications in MANETs and the limitation of the resources in mobile devices, it is important to have lightweight cryptosystems. Although some lightweight certificateless cryptosystems for MANETs have been proposed, it is possible to improve them in the term of reducing the complexity of the computations. In this paper, we have tried to propose a lightweight certificateless public key cryptographic scheme based on bilinear pairings. In addition, we compared our proposed scheme with other existing certificateless pairing based and result shows that the proposed scheme is more efficient based on computational cost and the rate of growth of computational expense viewpoints

The inhibitory effect of a Lactobacillus acidophilus derived biosurfactant on Serratia marcescens biofilm formation

Objective(s): Serratia marcescens is one of the nosocomial pathogen. The ability to form biofilm is an important feature in the pathogenesis of S. marcescens. The aim of this study was to determine the anti�adhesive properties of a biosurfactant isolated from Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4356, on S. marcescens strains. Materials and Methods: Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4356, was selected as a probiotic strain to produce biosurfactant. Anti�adhesive activities was determined by pre�coating and co� incubating methods in 96�well culture plates. Results: The FTIR analysis of derived biosurfactant revealed the composition as protein component. Because of the release of such biosurfactants, L. acidophilus was able to interfere with the adhesion and biofilm formation of the S. marcescens strains. In co� incubation method this biosurfactant in 2.5 mg/ml concentration showed anti�adhesive activity against all tested strains of S. marcescens (P<0.05). Conclusion: Our results show anti�adhesive properties of L. acidophilus biosurfactant will be useful against microorganisms responsible for infections in the urinary, vaginal and gastrointestinal tracts, as well as skin, making it a suitable alternative to conventional antibiotics. © 2015, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

PrivGenDB: Efficient and privacy-preserving query executions over encrypted SNP-Phenotype database

Privacy and security issues limit the query executions over genomics datasets, notably single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), raised by the sensitivity of this type of data. Therefore, it is important to ensure that executing queries on these datasets do not reveal sensitive information, such as the identity of the individuals and their genetic traits, to a data server. In this paper, we propose and present a novel model, we call PrivGenDB, to ensure the confidentiality of SNP-phenotype data while executing queries. The confidentiality in PrivGenDB is enabled by its system architecture and the search functionality provided by searchable symmetric encryption (SSE). To the best of our knowledge, PrivGenDB construction is the first SSE-based approach ensuring the confidentiality of SNP-phenotype data as the current SSE-based approaches for genomic data are limited only to substring search and range queries on a sequence of genomic data. Besides, a new data encoding mechanism is proposed and incorporated in the PrivGenDB model. This enables PrivGenDB to handle the dataset containing both genotype and phenotype and also support storing and managing other metadata, like gender and ethnicity, privately. Furthermore, different queries, namely Count, Boolean, Negation and k′-out-of-k match queries used for genomic data analysis, are supported and executed by PrivGenDB. The execution of these queries on genomic data in PrivGenDB is efficient and scalable for biomedical research and services. These are demonstrated by our analytical and empirical analysis presented in this paper. Specifically, our empirical studies on a dataset with 5000 entries (records) containing 1000 SNPs demonstrate that a count/Boolean query and a k′-out-of-k match query over 40 SNPs take approximately 4.3s and 86.4μs, respectively, outperforming the existing schemes

Antagonistic activities of some probiotic lactobacilli culture supernatant on serratia marcescens swarming motility and antibiotic resistance

Background and Objectives: Serratia marcescens, a potentially pathogenic bacterium, benefits from its swarming motility and resistance to antibiotic as two important virulence factors. Inappropriate use of antibiotics often results in drug resistance phenomenon in bacterial population. Use of probiotic bacteria has been recommended as partial replacement. In this study, we investigated the effects of some lactobacilli culture supernatant on swarming, motility and antibiotic resistance of S. marcescens. Materials and Methods: Antimicrobial activity of lactobacilli supernatant and susceptibility testing carried out on S. marcescens isolates. Pretreatment effect of lactobacilli culture supernatant on antibiotic - resistance pattern in S. marcescens was determined by comparison of the MIC of bacteria before and after the treatment. Results: Our results showed that pretreatment with L. acidophilus ATCC 4356 supernatant can affect the resistance of Serratia strains against ceftriaxone, but it had no effect on the resistance to other antibiotics. Furthermore, culture supernatant of lactobacilli with concentrations greater than 2, had an effect on the swarming ability of S. marcescens ATCC 13880 and inhibited it. Conclusion: Probiotic bacteria and their metabolites have the ability to inhibit virulence factors such as antibiotic resistance and swarming motility and can be used as alternatives to antibiotics. © 2018, Tehran University of Medical Science. All rights reserved

Modification of cell surface properties of Pseudomonas alcaligenes S22 during hydrocarbon biodegradation

Biodegradation of water insoluble hydrocarbons can be significantly increased by the addition of natural surfactants one. Very promising option is the use of saponins. The obtained results indicated that in this system, after 21 days, 92% biodegradation of diesel oil could be achieved using Pseudomonas alcaligenes. No positive effect on the biodegradation process was observed using synthetic surfactant Triton X-100. The kind of carbon source influences the cell surface properties of microorganisms. Modification of the surface cell could be observed by control of the sedimentation profile. This analytical method is a new approach in microbiological analysis

Potential therapeutic applications of microbial surface-activecompounds

Numerous investigations of microbial surface-active compounds or biosurfactants over the past two decades have led to the discovery of many interesting physicochemical and biological properties including antimicrobial, anti-biofilm and therapeutic among many other pharmaceutical and medical applications. Microbial control and inhibition strategies involving the use of antibiotics are becoming continually challenged due to the emergence of resistant strains mostly embedded within biofilm formations that are difficult to eradicate. Different aspects of antimicrobial and anti-biofilm control are becoming issues of increasing importance in clinical, hygiene, therapeutic and other applications. Biosurfactants research has resulted in increasing interest into their ability to inhibit microbial activity and disperse microbial biofilms in addition to being mostly nontoxic and stable at extremes conditions. Some biosurfactants are now in use in clinical, food and environmental fields, whilst others remain under investigation and development. The dispersal properties of biosurfactants have been shown to rival that of conventional inhibitory agents against bacterial, fungal and yeast biofilms as well as viral membrane structures. This presents them as potential candidates for future uses in new generations of antimicrobial agents or as adjuvants to other antibiotics and use as preservatives for microbial suppression and eradication strategies