Assessing the Responsiveness of the Persian Version of the Western Ontario Meniscal Evaluation Tool in Patients with Meniscus Injuries

Background and Objective: Responsiveness is one of the important properties of health-related questionnaires in demonstrating the changes in a patient's clinical conditions before and after therapy. The present study was carried out with the aim of assessing the responsiveness of the Western Ontario Meniscal Evaluation Tool (WOMET) and determining its minimal clinically important difference in patients undergoing physical therapy interventions after meniscus injuries. Methods: This cross-sectional methodological study was performed on 100 patients aged 18-70 years with meniscus injuries who underwent physical therapy interventions. Patients completed WOMET and Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) questionnaires in the first and tenth sessions. The minimum score obtained from the WOMET questionnaire was zero and the maximum was 1600, and the minimum score obtained from the KOOS questionnaire was zero and the maximum was 168. Internal and external responsiveness were the primary outcomes, and effect size tests, ROC curves, and correlation coefficients were used to examine them. The relationship between the WOMET and KOOS questionnaires were considered as secondary outcomes, which were evaluated by calculating the correlation coefficient. Findings: The results of internal responsiveness showed that the standardized response mean for the entire WOMET questionnaire was 0.11 (insignificant) and Cohen's d score for the entire WOMET questionnaire was -1.586 (large). The difference in the mean internal responsiveness between recovered (20%) and unrecovered (80%) patients reached a significant level (p<0.001). This questionnaire had an acceptable external responsiveness; the area under the curve of the ROC curve was greater and equal to 0.7 and the optimal cut-off point was 20.031 (p<0.001). The Pearson correlation coefficient between WOMET and KOOS questionnaires (except the emotions subscale) was moderate to large (0.5-0.8) with p<0.001. Conclusion: The findings of the study showed that the Persian version of the WOMET questionnaire has a high level of responsiveness and is a suitable tool for evaluating the quality of life among patients suffering from meniscus injury

Differentiation of Glioma and Radiation Injury in Rats Using In Vitro Produce Magnetically Labeled Cytotoxic T-Cells and MRI

A limitation with current imaging strategies of recurrent glioma undergoing radiotherapy is that tumor and radiation injury cannot be differentiated with post contrast CT or MRI, or with PET or other more complex parametric analyses of MRI data. We propose to address the imaging limitation building on emerging evidence indicating that effective therapy for recurrent glioma can be attained by sensitized T-cells following vaccination of primed dendritic cells (DCs). The purpose of this study was to determine whether cord blood T-cells can be sensitized against glioma cells (U-251) and if these sensitized cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs) can be used as cellular magnetic resonance imaging probes to identify and differentiate glioma from radiation necrosis in rodent models.Cord blood T and CD14+ cells were collected. Isolated CD14+ cells were then converted to dendritic cells (DCs), primed with glioma cell lysate and used to sensitize T-cells. Phenotypical expression of the generated DCs were analyzed to determine the expression level of CD14, CD86, CD83 and HLA-DR. Cells positive for CD25, CD4, CD8 were determined in generated CTLs. Specificity of cytotoxicity of the generated CTLs was also determined by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release assay. Secondary proliferation capacity of magnetically labeled and unlabeled CTLs was also determined. Generated CTLs were magnetically labeled and intravenously injected into glioma bearing animals that underwent MRI on days 3 and 7 post- injection. CTLs were also administered to animals with focal radiation injury to determine whether these CTLs accumulated non-specifically to the injury sites. Multi-echo T2- and T2*-weighted images were acquired and R2 and R2* maps created. Our method produced functional, sensitized CTLs that specifically induced U251 cell death in vitro. Both labeled and unlabeled CTLs proliferated equally after the secondary stimulation. There were significantly higher CD25 positive cells (p = <0.006) in CTLs. In addition, T2- and T2*-weighted MR images showed increased low signal intensity areas in animals that received labeled CTLs as compared to the images from animals that received control cells. Histological analysis confirmed the presence of iron positive cells in sites corresponding to MRI low signal intensity regions. Significant differences (p = <0.001) in tumor R2 and R2* values were observed among the groups of animals. Animals with radiation injury exhibited neither MRI hypointense areas nor presence of iron positive cells.Our results indicate that T-cells can be effectively sensitized by in vitro methods and used as cellular probes to identify and differentiate glioma from radiation necrosis

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum