In vitro and in vivo ocular biocompatibility of electrospun poly(ɛ-caprolactone) nanofibers.

Biocompatibility is a requirement for the development of nanofibers for ophthalmic applications. In this study, nanofibers were elaborated using poly(ε-caprolactone) via electrospinning. The ocular biocompatibility of this material was investigated. MIO-M1 and ARPE-19 cell cultures were incubated with nanofibers and cellular responses were monitored by viability and morphology. The in vitro biocompatibility revealed that the nanofibers were not cytotoxic to the ocular cells. These cells exposed to the nanofibers proliferated and formed an organized monolayer. ARPE-19 and MIO-M1 cells were capable of expressing GFAP, respectively, demonstrating their functionality. Nanofibers were inserted into the vitreous cavity of the rat's eye for 10days and the in vivo biocompatibility was investigated using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), histology and measuring the expression of pro-inflammatory genes (IL-1β, TNF-α, VEGF and iNOS) (real-time PCR). The OCT and the histological analyzes exhibited the preserved architecture of the tissues of the eye. The biomaterial did not elicit an inflammatory reaction and pro-inflammatory cytokines were not expressed by the retinal cells, and the other posterior tissues of the eye. Results from the biocompatibility studies indicated that the nanofibers exhibited a high degree of cellular biocompatibility and short-term intraocular tolerance, indicating that they might be applied as drug carrier for ophthalmic use

Eficacia y seguridad del adhesivo tisular Tisuacryl en el cierre de la piel de la episiotomía

Se realizó un ensayo clínico fase III, en el Hospital Docente Materno Infantil 10 de Octubre, de Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba, entre julio de 1999 y marzo del 2000, con el objetivo de evaluar la eficacia y seguridad del adhesivo tisular Tisuacryl en el cierre de la piel de la episiotomía. Cada grupo constó de 300 pacientes, de acuerdo a los criterios de inclusión establecidos para el ensayo. En el grupo estudio se presentaron menos molestias en la episiorrafia (95.6 %) que en el grupo control (56.3 %) a los 30 minutos post parto, así como al tercer día posterior al nacimiento (97.6 % vs. 61.3 %). Al séptimo día, los resultados en el afrontamiento, estética y molestias en la herida fueron significativamente mejores con el adhesivo tisular evaluado. Los riesgos relativos de resultados adversos al séptimo día posterior al parto fueron 3.2 veces mayores en relación con afrontamiento y 2.9 veces con la estética no satisfactorias cuando se utilizó catgut cromado al comparar con el Tisuacryl. Para las molestias en la episiorrafia, el riesgo relativo se elevó a 24.2, todos con diferencias estadísticas significativas. Se concluye que el uso del adhesivo tisular Tisuacryl para el cierre de la piel en la episiotomía tiene menor probabilidad de afrontamiento y estética de la herida no satisfactoria y de menor sensación dolorosa en la herida quirúrgica que el catgut cromado.Peer Reviewe

Multi-score Learning for Affect Recognition: the Case of Body Postures

An important challenge in building automatic affective state recognition systems is establishing the ground truth. When the groundtruth is not available, observers are often used to label training and testing sets. Unfortunately, inter-rater reliability between observers tends to vary from fair to moderate when dealing with naturalistic expressions. Nevertheless, the most common approach used is to label each expression with the most frequent label assigned by the observers to that expression. In this paper, we propose a general pattern recognition framework that takes into account the variability between observers for automatic affect recognition. This leads to what we term a multi-score learning problem in which a single expression is associated with multiple values representing the scores of each available emotion label. We also propose several performance measurements and pattern recognition methods for this framework, and report the experimental results obtained when testing and comparing these methods on two affective posture datasets

Andrological, pathologic, morphometric, and ultrasonographic findings in rams experimentally infected with Brucella ovis

AbstractBrucella ovis is considered the most important infectious cause of reproductive disorders in sheep. The disease is characterized by epididymitis, subfertility and infertility in rams. B. ovis occasionally results in abortion in ewes, as well. The aim of this study was to evaluate kinetic changes in the reproductive organs of rams experimentally infected with B. ovis. Nine rams were experimentally inoculated intrapreputially with 2mL of a suspension containing 1.2×109CFU (colony-forming units)/mL of B. ovis (strain ATCC25840). In addition, 50μL of a suspension containing 1.2×1010CFU/mL of the same B. ovis strain was inoculated into each conjunctival sac, resulting in 3.6×109CFU total per ram. Six of nine infected rams had developed clinical changes in the tail of the epididymis at 30 days post-infection (dpi), but these changes regressed in 50% of these rams. Ultrasound demonstrated an increase in the area of the tail of the epididymis (P<0.001), reduction in the area of the testes (P<0.001), and an increased length and width of the seminal vesicles (P<0.001) during the course of infection. A sperm granuloma was diagnosed on the basis of ultrasonography findings. Microscopically, there was epididymitis, testicular degeneration, and seminal vesiculitis. Inflammatory cells were detected in the semen even before the development of epididymitis. Moreover, inflammatory cells were also found in the semen of asymptomatic rams, indicating that the presence of leukocytes in the ejaculate is a valuable method for screening potential carriers of infections in the genital tract