Jaw Osteonecrosis in Patients Receiving Oral Bisphosphonates Therapy

Abstract We describe the cases of three patients, under the care of the rheumatology service, who presented with osteonecrosis of the jaw whist on oral bisphosphonate therapy. The first case is of a 74-year-old woman with a 12 year history of sero-negative inflammatory arthritis, having been on oral steroids for 11 years, Methotrexate for the preceding 6 years, and oral bisphosphonates for 9 years. Clinical and radiographic examination revealed extensive jaw necrosis. The second patient was a 72-year-old woman with temporal arteritis, on long term oral steroids, and oral bisphosphonates presenting with jaw osteonecrosis. The third case is of an 81-year-old lady with a diagnosis of Polymyalgia Rheumatica on reducing dose of prednisolone along with calcium and vitamin D3 and oral bisphosphonate therapy as part of steroid induced prophylaxis guidelines. On reviewing the literature regarding bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw, there is indeed recognition of this occurring with oral bisphosphonates. However, this is far less common than with intravenous preparations. Reports to the UK MHRA regarding adverse reactions have shown 53 cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw associated with oral bisphosphonates, but this is thought to represent under-reporting. We suggest consideration of patient counselling and consent, and preventive dental work prior to initiation of oral bisphosphonate therapy

Investigation of faecal volatile organic compounds as biomarkers for the diagnosis of necrotising enterocolitis

Necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is the most prevalent and harmful illness in the neonatal intensive care unit. It primarily affects premature babies, with higher incidence in low birthweight patients. NEC usually occurs in the early days of life and may develop rapidly. Its diagnosis is based on medical observation because no early diagnostic tool is currently available. Over the last two decades, developments in analytical chemistry have allowed scientists to perform untargeted investigation of biological samples. Biomarkers are being sought, for a range of disorders, by investigating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in bio-fluids. For the analysis of gas samples, solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) is a suitable technique to preconcentrate volatile compounds prior to analysis using devices such as gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Recently, much attention has been directed towards the development of sensors and electronic noses to be used as diagnostic tools in hospitals, as they are generally more compact than a GC-MS and do not require specialised personnel. The work presented here is based on the hypothesis that faeces from patients suffering from necrotising enterocolitis show a specific pattern of volatile organic compounds in the days prior to diagnosis when compared with faeces from healthy patients. The objectives of this work were to develop two methods for the analysis of premature faeces using headspace–SPME–GC–MS and headspace – gas chromatography – sensor (HS–GC–Sensor), to analyse samples from healthy premature infants and premature infants affected by NEC using both instruments and to analyse the data collected. Methods were developed individually for each analytical technique. Two pipelines were applied for mass spectrometric data analysis while classification models were exclusively built using sensor data. Results obtained from HS–SPME–GC–MS data showed that the age at sampling had an influence on the number of compounds identified and on their intensities or relative abundance. Heptanal, 2-E-pentenal, hexanal and 2-methylbutanoic acid were identified as relevant compounds. Classifiers were built at days 1 to 6 prior to diagnosis. Accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of up to 74%, 62% and 79%, respectively, were obtained one day prior to diagnosis based on mass spectrometric data, while accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 100% were obtained based on sensor data at two days prior to diagnosis. Therefore, classification of samples based on headspace analysis of faeces might have potential for the early diagnosis of necrotising enterocolitis

SoNeUCON_{ABC}Pro: an access control model for social networks with translucent user provenance

Proceedings of: SecureComm 2017 International Workshops, ATCS and SePrIoT, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 22–25, 2017Web-Based Social Networks (WBSNs) are used by millions of people worldwide. While WBSNs provide many benefits, privacy preservation is a concern. The management of access control can help to assure data is accessed by authorized users. However, it is critical to provide sufficient flexibility so that a rich set of conditions may be imposed by users. In this paper we coin the term user provenance to refer to tracing users actions to supplement the authorisation decision when users request access. For example restricting access to a particular photograph to those which have “liked” the owners profile. However, such a tracing of actions has the potential to impact the privacy of users requesting access. To mitigate this potential privacy loss the concept of translucency is applied. This paper extends SoNeUCONABC model and presents SoNeUCONABCPro, an access control model which includes translucent user provenance. Entities and access control policies along with their enforcement procedure are formally defined. The evaluation demonstrates that the system satisfies the imposed goals and supports the feasibility of this model in different scenarios.This work was supported by the MINECO grants TIN2013-46469-R (SPINY: Security and Privacy in the Internet of You) and TIN2016-79095-C2-2-R (SMOG-DEV); by the CAM grant S2013/ICE-3095 (CIBERDINE: Cybersecurity, Data, and Risks); and by the Programa de Ayudas para la Movilidad of Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain (J. M. de Fuentes and L. Gonzalez-Manzano grants)

QRTEngine: An easy solution for running online reaction time experiments using Qualtrics

Performing online behavioral research is gaining increased popularity among researchers in psychological and cognitive science. However, the currently available methods for conducting online reaction time experiments are often complicated and typically require advanced technical skills. In this article, we introduce the Qualtrics Reaction Time Engine (QRTEngine), an open-source JavaScript engine that can be embedded in the online survey development environment Qualtrics. The QRTEngine can be used to easily develop browser-based online reaction time experiments with accurate timing within current browser capabilities, and it requires only minimal programming skills. After introducing the QRTEngine, we briefly discuss how to create and distribute a Stroop task. Next, we describe a study in which we investigated the timing accuracy of the engine under different processor loads using external chronometry. Finally, we show that the QRTEngine can be used to reproduce classic behavioral effects in three reaction time paradigms: a Stroop task, an attentional blink task, and a masked-priming task. These findings demonstrate that QRTEngine can be used as a tool for conducting online behavioral research even when this requires accurate stimulus presentation times

Sample multiplexing-based targeted pathway proteomics with real-time analytics reveals the impact of genetic variation on protein expression.

Targeted proteomics enables hypothesis-driven research by measuring the cellular expression of protein cohorts related by function, disease, or class after perturbation. Here, we present a pathway-centric approach and an assay builder resource for targeting entire pathways of up to 200 proteins selected from \u3e10,000 expressed proteins to directly measure their abundances, exploiting sample multiplexing to increase throughput by 16-fold. The strategy, termed GoDig, requires only a single-shot LC-MS analysis, ~1 µg combined peptide material, a list of up to 200 proteins, and real-time analytics to trigger simultaneous quantification of up to 16 samples for hundreds of analytes. We apply GoDig to quantify the impact of genetic variation on protein expression in mice fed a high-fat diet. We create several GoDig assays to quantify the expression of multiple protein families (kinases, lipid metabolism- and lipid droplet-associated proteins) across 480 fully-genotyped Diversity Outbred mice, revealing protein quantitative trait loci and establishing potential linkages between specific proteins and lipid homeostasis

Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hundreds of studies of maternity care interventions have been published, too many for most people involved in providing maternity care to identify and consider when making decisions. It became apparent that systematic reviews of individual studies were required to appraise, summarise and bring together existing studies in a single place. However, decision makers are increasingly faced by a plethora of such reviews and these are likely to be of variable quality and scope, with more than one review of important topics. Systematic reviews (or overviews) of reviews are a logical and appropriate next step, allowing the findings of separate reviews to be compared and contrasted, providing clinical decision makers with the evidence they need.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The methods used to identify and appraise published and unpublished reviews systematically, drawing on our experiences and good practice in the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews are described. The process of identifying and appraising all published reviews allows researchers to describe the quality of this evidence base, summarise and compare the review's conclusions and discuss the strength of these conclusions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Methodological challenges and possible solutions are described within the context of (i) sources, (ii) study selection, (iii) quality assessment (i.e. the extent of searching undertaken for the reviews, description of study selection and inclusion criteria, comparability of included studies, assessment of publication bias and assessment of heterogeneity), (iv) presentation of results, and (v) implications for practice and research.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Conducting a systematic review of reviews highlights the usefulness of bringing together a summary of reviews in one place, where there is more than one review on an important topic. The methods described here should help clinicians to review and appraise published reviews systematically, and aid evidence-based clinical decision-making.</p