Pancreas divisum. Correlation between anatomical abnormalities and bile precipitation in the gallbladder in seven patients

Pancreas divisum is a genetic defect associated with recurrent acute pancreatitis due to insufficient drainage of the accessory pancreatic duct. Seven young patients diagnosed with pancreatic divisum and thickening of the gallbladder bile as shown on magnetic resonance cholangio-pancreatography without pancreatic ductal changes underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy. During the mean follow-up of 32 months no episode of pancreatitis was reported. There is an association between PD and higher concentration of bile in the gallbladder. Cholecystectomy can be considered curative in patients with PD in the absence of indications for major surgery

Navigating in a sea of repeats in RNA-seq without drowning

The main challenge in de novo assembly of NGS data is certainly to deal with repeats that are longer than the reads. This is particularly true for RNA-seq data, since coverage information cannot be used to flag repeated sequences, of which transposable elements are one of the main examples. Most transcriptome assemblers are based on de Bruijn graphs and have no clear and explicit model for repeats in RNA-seq data, relying instead on heuristics to deal with them. The results of this work are twofold. First, we introduce a formal model for representing high copy-number repeats in RNA-seq data and exploit its properties to infer a combinatorial characteristic of repeat-associated subgraphs. We show that the problem of identifying in a de Bruijn graph a subgraph with this characteristic is NP-complete. In a second step, we show that in the specific case of a local assembly of alternative splicing (AS) events, using our combinatorial characterization we can implicitly avoid such subgraphs. In particular, we designed and implemented an algorithm to efficiently identify AS events that are not included in repeated regions. Finally, we validate our results using synthetic data. We also give an indication of the usefulness of our method on real data. \ua9 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Choosing the individual rehabilitation program for patients with intermittent claudication

This study is aimed at identifying the collateral circulation in case of femoral-aorta-iliac axis obstruction, with the purpose of a more correct therapeutic indication being either medical or surgical or physiotherapeutic or combined

Densitometric changes of the patella in patients undergoing unilateral knee arthroplasty

Introduction. Although the intervention of knee arthroplasty became routine, there is no standard reference on the densitometric characteristics of the patella before and after surgery. Scope of this work is the evaluation of patellar bone density before and after unilateral knee arthroplasty.Patients and methods. BMD was assessed by DEXA examination in 146 individuals, who have been divided into three distinct groups. Group I: 68 subjects with a mean age of 70.6 years, with an unilateral femoral-tibial knee prothesis. Group II: healthy subjects of similar age (average: 64) and without implants. Group III: healthy adults with a mean age of 26.6 years. The follow-up was performed at 6 months to a maximum of 2 years post surgery.Results. The results were obtained from 68 subjects examined with the DEXA software dedicated to the forearm, which turned out to be the most appropriate for our purpose.The follow-up performed every 6 months after surgery showed a reduction of the density values in the operated knee in the 1st control with a return to the pre-surgiucal situation in the control performed after 1 year. In subsequent checks there was a further increase of the patellar density of the operated knee.Conclusion. Patellar DEXA examination is recommended as an addition to the clinical and radiological standard examination