Complications of nephrotic syndrome

Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is one of the most common glomerular diseases that affect children. Renal histology reveals the presence of minimal change nephrotic syndrome (MCNS) in more than 80% of these patients. Most patients with MCNS have favorable outcomes without complications. However, a few of these children have lesions of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, suffer from severe and prolonged proteinuria, and are at high risk for complications. Complications of NS are divided into two categories: disease-associated and drug-related complications. Disease-associated complications include infections (e.g., peritonitis, sepsis, cellulitis, and chicken pox), thromboembolism (e.g., venous thromboembolism and pulmonary embolism), hypovolemic crisis (e.g., abdominal pain, tachycardia, and hypotension), cardiovascular problems (e.g., hyperlipidemia), acute renal failure, anemia, and others (e.g., hypothyroidism, hypocalcemia, bone disease, and intussusception). The main pathomechanism of disease-associated complications originates from the large loss of plasma proteins in the urine of nephrotic children. The majority of children with MCNS who respond to treatment with corticosteroids or cytotoxic agents have smaller and milder complications than those with steroid-resistant NS. Corticosteroids, alkylating agents, cyclosporin A, and mycophenolate mofetil have often been used to treat NS, and these drugs have treatment-related complications. Early detection and appropriate treatment of these complications will improve outcomes for patients with NS

Anti-Photoagaing and Photo-Protective Compounds from Marine Organisms

This Special Issue Book ""Anti-Photoagaing and Photo-Protective Compounds from Marine Organisms"" is aimed at collecting literature on the below-mentioned keyword topics, which can significantly increase our basic understanding of marine-derived compounds in cosmeceutical product development and increases the value of marine products at the industrial level

Contextual Linear Bandits under Noisy Features: Towards Bayesian Oracles

We study contextual linear bandit problems under uncertainty on features; they are noisy with missing entries. To address the challenges from the noise, we analyze Bayesian oracles given observed noisy features. Our Bayesian analysis finds that the optimal hypothesis can be far from the underlying realizability function, depending on noise characteristics, which is highly non-intuitive and does not occur for classical noiseless setups. This implies that classical approaches cannot guarantee a non-trivial regret bound. We thus propose an algorithm aiming at the Bayesian oracle from observed information under this model, achieving $\tilde{O}(d\sqrt{T})$ regret bound with respect to feature dimension $d$ and time horizon $T$. We demonstrate the proposed algorithm using synthetic and real-world datasets.Comment: 30 page

Association of glutathione-S-transferase polymorphisms with atopic dermatitis risk in preschool age children

Background: Glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzymes are critical for detoxifying reactive oxygen species (ROS) and their products which have been implicated in the pathology of inflammatory diseases such as atopic dermatitis (AD). Methods: We investigated the effects of genetic polymorphisms of GST on the risk of AD in preschool age children. Biomarkers for oxidative stress were also evaluated with respect to GST genotype. Results: The GSTP1 Val105 allele was significantly associated with an increased risk of AD [odds ratio (OR)=1.62, p<0.05]. The combination of the GSTP1 Val105 allele and the GSTT1 null genotype further increased this risk by 2.3-fold (p<0.01). No association was observed for the GSTM1 null or GSTT1 null genotype alone. In children with AD, blood total antioxidant capacity was significantly less (p<0.001), while malondialdehyde was higher (p=0.12). Children with the GSTP1 Val105 allele had significantly lower concentrations of erythrocyte glutathione compared to GSTP1 Ile/Ile homozygotes (p=0.03). Conclusions: Our study suggests that the GSTP1 Val105 allele is an important determinant of susceptibility to AD in preschool age children and increased oxidative stress may play a role in the pathogenesis of AD. Clin Chem Lab Med 2009;47:1475–81.Peer Reviewe