Experimental rat models of chronic allograft nephropathy: a review

Chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN) is the leading cause of late allograft loss after renal transplantation (RT), which continues to remain an unresolved problem. A rat model of CAN was first described in 1969 by White et al. Although the rat model of RT can be technically challenging, it is attractive because the pathogenesis of CAN is similar to that following human RT and the pathological features of CAN develop within months as compared with years in human RT. The rat model of RT is considered as a useful investigational tool in the field of experimental transplantation research. We have reviewed the literature on studies of rat RT reporting the donor and recipient strain combinations that have investigated resultant survival and histological outcomes. Several different combinations of inbred and outbred rat combinations have been reported to investigate the multiple aspects of transplantation, including acute rejection, cellular and humoral rejection mechanisms and their treatments, CAN, and potential targets for its prevention

Biological Pathways and Potential Targets for Prevention and Therapy of Chronic Allograft Nephropathy

Renal transplantation (RT) is the best option for patients with end-stage renal disease, but the half-life is limited to a decade due to progressive deterioration of renal function and transplant failure from chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN), which is the leading cause of transplant loss. Extensive research has been done to understand the pathogenesis, the biological pathways of fibrogenesis, and potential therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of CAN. Despite the advancements in the immunosuppressive agents and patient care, CAN continues to remain an unresolved problem in renal transplantation. The aim of this paper is to undertake a comprehensive review of the literature on the pathogenesis, biological pathways of RT fibrogenesis, and potential therapeutic targets for the prevention and therapy of CAN

Inguinal Hernia Repair: Principles and Practice in the United Kingdom

PubMe

Hypertensive disorder of pregnancy and its immediate outcome on neonates in a tertiary care hospital of Western Nepal

Background: Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy remain a major cause of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. This study prospectively examined the immediate neonatal outcome of women with maternal hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HPD).Methods: This is a prospective study conducted at NICU in Universal College of Medical Sciences Hospital over a period from 2nd February 2018 to 1st February 2019. Fifty-two mothers and their newborn were selected. Mothers with gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and preeclampsia superimposed on chronic hypertension and chronic hypertension were included.Results: Mean maternal age was 26.4 years. Mean gestational age was 34±4 weeks. 38 were male and 24 were female with male: female ratio 1.72:1. Thirty seven (71.2%) mothers needed lower uterine caesarian section, fourteen (26.9%) mothers delivered NVD and one (1.9%) forceps delivery. Low birth weight (<2.5kg) babies were 25 (48.1%%), very low birth weight (<1.5kg) were 9 (17.3%) and normal weight were 18 (34.3%). Intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) were 18(30%). Perinatal asphyxia 10 (19.2%) were most common cause of admission, other cause of admission were sepsis and prematurity.Conclusions: Eclampsia is still a common and serious complication of pregnancy. Proper antenatal care, detection of preeclampsia with early management and timely referral of high risk patient, administered of MgSO4 in correct doses and properly timed caesarean section in selected cases would reduce the incidence of eclampsia associated maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in our facility

Adversarial sample generation and training using geometric masks for accurate and resilient license plate character recognition

Reading dirty license plates accurately in moving vehicles is challenging for automatic license plate recognition systems. Moreover, license plates are often intentionally tampered with a malicious intent to avoid police apprehension. Usually, such groups and individuals know how to fool the existing recognition systems by making minor unnoticeable plate changes. Designing and developing deep learning methods resilient to such real-world 'attack' practices remains an active research problem. As a solution, this work develops a resilient method to recognize license plate characters. Extracting 1057 character images from 160 Nepalese vehicles, as the first step, we trained several standard deep convolutional neural networks to obtain 99.5% character classification accuracy. On adversarial images generated to simulate malicious tampering, however, our model's accuracy dropped to 25%. Next, we enriched our dataset by generating and adding geometrically masked images, retrained our models, and investigated the models' predictions. The proposed approach of training with generated adversarial images helped our adversarial attack-aware license plate character recognition (AA-LPCR) model achieves an accuracy of 99.7%. This near-perfect accuracy demonstrates that the proposed idea of random geometric masking is highly effective for improving the accuracy of license plate recognition models. Furthermore, by performing interpretability studies to understand why our models work, we identify and highlight attack-prone regions in the input character images. In sum, although Nepal's embossed license plate detection systems are vulnerable to malicious attacks, our findings suggest that these systems can be upgraded to close to 100% resilience

Evidence-Based Contingency Planning to Enhance Local Resilience to Flood Disasters

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 addresses the importance of “Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to ‘Build Back Better’ in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction” as the fourth priority action. One of the practical tools to achieve effective preparedness for flood disaster response is evidence-based contingency planning, which is based on scientific approaches such as flood simulation and quantitative risk assessment. This method, however, is not always feasible to disaster-prone areas in Asia due to the lack of data on natural and social conditions. This chapter proposes a method with six steps for local communities to conduct contingency planning by assuming the dynamic change of inundation using flood simulation, assessing flood risk with key indicators, deciding response strategies against the identified flood risk and developing a contingency plan beforehand. This method was first applied to one of the Asian flood-prone areas, Calumpit Municipality in the Pampanga River basin of the Philippines, to verify its effectiveness in areas where the availability of natural and socio-economic data is limited

Debris-Flow Deposition and Erosion Processes of the Sediment Deposit Upstream of a Check Dam

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Upregulation of Transglutaminase andε(γ-Glutamyl)-Lysine in the Fisher-Lewis Rat Model of Chronic Allograft Nephropathy

Background. Tissue transglutaminase (TG2), a cross-linking enzyme, modulates deposition of extracellular matrix protein in renal fibrosis. This study aimed to examine TG2 and its cross-link product ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine in the Fisher-Lewis rat renal transplantation (RTx) model of chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN). Materials and Methods. Left renal grafts from male Fisher and Lewis were transplanted into Lewis rats, generating allografts and isografts, respectively. Blood pressure, renal function, and proteinuria were monitored for up to 52 weeks. At termination, CAN was assessed in the renal tissue by light and electron microscopy, TG2 and ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine by immunofluorescence, and the urinary ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine by high performance liquid chromatography. Results. Compared to the isograft, the allografts were hypertensive, proteinuric, and uraemic and developed CAN. Extracellular TG2 (glomerulus: 64.55 + 17.61 versus 2.11 + 0.17, P<0.001; interstitium: 13.72 + 1.62 versus 3.19 + 0.44, P<0.001), ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine (glomerulus: 21.74 + 2.71 versus 1.98 + 0.37, P<0.01; interstitium: 37.96 + 17.06 versus 0.42 + 0.11, P<0.05), TG2 enzyme activity (1.09 + 0.13 versus 0.41 + 0.03 nmol/h/mg protein, P<0.05), TG2 mRNA (20-fold rise), and urinary ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine (534.2 + 198.4 nmol/24 h versus 57.2 + 4.1 nmol/24 h,P<0.05) levels were significantly elevated in the allografts and showed a positive linear correlation with tubulointerstitial fibrosis. Conclusion. CAN was associated with upregulation of renal TG2 pathway, which has a potential for pharmacological intervention. The elevated urinary ε(γ-glutamyl)-lysine, measured for the first time in RTx, is a potential biomarker of CA

Methodology for Agricultural Flood Damage Assessment

This chapter describes a method for assessing flood damage to the agricultural sector, specifically focusing on flood damage to rice crops. The chapter also includes the case studies of flood damage assessment conducted in the Asian river basins, the Pampanga River basin of the Philippines, and the Lower Indus River basin of Pakistan. The assessment was performed by defining flood damage to rice crops as a function of flood depth, duration, and growth stage of rice plants and using depth-duration-damage function curves for each growth stage of rice plants. In the case studies, flood characteristics such as flood depth, duration, and distribution were computed using a rainfall-runoff-inundation (RRI) model. Flood damage to rice crops was assessed for the 2011 flood and 100-year flood events in the case of the Pampanga River basin and for the 2010 flood in the case of Lower Indus River basin. The calculated values of agricultural damage were compared with reported data for validation of methodology, and it was found that the calculated damage reasonably agreed with reported data. The rice-crop damage assessment method described in this chapter can also be applied in other areas for flood risk assessment