Is early diagnosis of myofascial pain syndrome possible with the detection of latent trigger points by shear wave elastography?

Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the contribution of shear wave elastography to the diagnosis of myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) of the upper part of the trapezius. Material and methods: Ethical committee approval was obtained for the study. Thirty volunteer women with trigger points in the upper part of the trapezius muscle and 30 healthy women with a similar age distribution were included in the study. The patient group performed a self-stretching exercise program for 4 weeks. No intervention was applied to the control group. Muscle stiffness values of both groups were evaluated with shear wave elastography (SWE), and pain levels of all volunteers were evaluated by the Visual Analogue Scale at the beginning and the end of the study. The statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 18.0. Results: There was a significant decrease after the treatment in terms of upper trapezius muscle stiffness and the pain levels in the patient group (p 0.05). Conclusions: SWE is a reliable method for detecting latent trigger points in MPS, and it can be used for evaluating the response to treatment

Oral health and related factors in a group of children with cystic fibrosis in Istanbul, Turkey

Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients can be considered as high caries risk patients because they frequently consume sugar.rich food between meals and they have a high intake of sugar containing syrups, aerosols, and salivary flow reducing medication. Variable caries prevalences were reported in CF patients in previous studies. There are no studies related to CF and salivary thromboplastic activity, which can be presented as a marker of wound healing and bleeding tendency of oral cavity.Objective: The aim of this study was to compare oral health status and salivary pH, flow rate, and thromboplastic activity in children with CF and healthy controls.Materials and Methods: Asample of 35 children with CF (23 girls and 12 boys), and 12 healthy control subjects (6 girls and 6 boys) were selected. Caries experience, oral hygiene, and dental erosion were assessed. Salivary flow rate, pH, thromboplastic activity, and total protein content were determined. Differences between the groups were evaluated using Chi.square test with a significance level set at 0.05.Results: The differences between children with CF and healthy controls in tooth brushing frequency, use of fluoride tablets, caries experience, dental erosion index, oral hygiene index, salivary flow rate and total protein levels were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Salivary thromboplastic activity of the CF group was significantly lower than the healthy controls (P < 0.01).Conclusion: Large population studies may be necessary to establish the role of salivary thromboplastic activity in children with CF considering our findings related to the decreased salivary thromboplastic activity, which  may indicate delayed oral wound healing process.Key words: Caries, children, cystic fibrosis, saliva, salivary thromboplastic activit

The effect of racemic gossypol and AT-101 on angiogenic profile of OVCAR-3 cells: a preliminary molecular framework for gossypol enantiomers

To compare the effect of racemic gossypol with its (–)/(–) enantiomer (AT-101) on expression profiles of angiogenic molecules by mRNA levels in human ovarian cancer cell line OVCAR-3. Methods: Cell viability assay (2,3-bis (2-methoxy-4-nitro-5- sulfophenyl)-5-[(phenylamino) carbonyl]-2H-tetrazolium hydroxide) was used to detect cytotoxicity of gossypol enantiomers. DNA fragmentation by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent (ELISA) assay was used to evaluate the rate of apoptosis. The mRNA expression levels of angiogenic molecules were investigated by Human Angiogenesis RT2 ProfilerTM PCR Array (SuperArray, Frederick, MD). Results: Both racemic form and AT-101 resulted in a significant cytotoxicity and induced apoptosis. This effect was observed in a dose- and time dependent manner. However, AT-101 was much more potent. In addition, the treatment of 10 μM of racemic gossypol alone and 3 μM of AT-101 alone resulted in significant down-regulation (≥ 3 fold) in mRNA levels of some pivotal angiogenic molecules in OVCAR-3, but altered gene profiles were different by the treatment of each enantiomer. Conclusion: The efficacy of two gossypol enantiomers in OVCAR-3 cells showed distinction. AT-101 was much more potent than racemic gossypol, not only by means of cell death and apoptosis, but also by modulation of angiogenic molecules released from OVCAR-3 cells. Further studies with endothelial cells should be done to verify the anti-angiogenic effect of gossypol enantiomers in cancer treatment

Forecasting Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika cases in Recife, Brazil: a spatio-temporal approach based on climate conditions, health notifications and machine learning

Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread rapidly over the last decades. The emergence chikungunya fever and zika in South America poses new challenges to vector monitoring and control. This situation got worse from 2015 and 2016, with the rapid spread of chikungunya, causing fever and muscle weakness, and Zika virus, related to cases of microcephaly in newborns and the occurrence of Guillain-Barret syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system. The objective of this work was to construct a tool to forecast the distribution of arboviruses transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti by implementing dengue, zika and chikungunya transmission predictors based on machine learning, focused on multilayer perceptrons neural networks, support vector machines and linear regression models. As a case study, we investigated forecasting models to predict the spatio-temporal distribution of cases from primary health notification data and climate variables (wind velocity, temperature and pluviometry) from Recife, Brazil, from 2013 to 2016, including 2015’s outbreak. The use of spatio-temporal analysis over multilayer perceptrons and support vector machines results proved to be very effective in predicting the distribution of arbovirus cases. The models indicate that the southern and western regions of Recife were very susceptible to outbreaks in the period under investigation. The proposed approach could be useful to support health managers and epidemiologists to prevent outbreaks of arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti and promote public policies for health promotion and sanitation

A review exploring the overarching burden of Zika virus with emphasis on epidemiological case studies from Brazil

This paper explores the main factors for mosquito-borne transmission of the Zika virus by focusing on environmental, anthropogenic, and social risks. A literature review was conducted bringing together related information from this genre of research from peer-reviewed publications. It was observed that environmental conditions, especially precipitation, humidity, and temperature, played a role in the transmission. Furthermore, anthropogenic factors including sanitation, urbanization, and environmental pollution promote the transmission by affecting the mosquito density. In addition, socioeconomic factors such as poverty as well as social inequality and low-quality housing have also an impact since these are social factors that limit access to certain facilities or infrastructure which, in turn, promote transmission when absent (e.g., piped water and screened windows). Finally, the paper presents short-, mid-, and long-term preventative solutions together with future perspectives. This is the first review exploring the effects of anthropogenic aspects on Zika transmission with a special emphasis in Brazil

A kinetic and thermodynamic investigation into the removal of methyl orange from wastewater utilizing fly ash in different process configurations

The removal of methyl orange using coal fly ash, which is a widely available low-cost adsorbent, has been investigated. Adsorption studies for dye removal were conducted using various configurations such as batch, column and heap adsorption at various temperatures and adsorbent dosages at neutral pH. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Tempkin isotherm models were used to describe the process. The Freundlich model best represented the adsorption. Kinetic studies show the adsorption followed pseudo-second-order kinetics. Thermodynamic studies show that the process is spontaneous, endothermic and random. Column configuration was found to be the most efficient with a dye removal percentage of 99.95%, followed by heap adsorption at 99.25% removal and lastly batch configuration with 96.68% removal. Economic analysis shows that column operation would be the most effective for practical implementation