IMPACT OF ALCOHOL ON PANCREAS IN ALCOHOLIC PATIENTS

Objective: Prolonged hazardous drinking can result in progressive and irreversible damage to the pancreas gland. This occurs on the background of pancreatic inflammation, acinar atrophy and, ultimately, fibrosis and can result in significant exocrine and endocrine insufficiency. Withdrawal of alcohol at an early stage may arrest the process and, even when the condition is established, may reduce the number of inflammatory episodes and allow for better control of both exocrine and endocrine insufficiencies. This study is aimed to identify the impact of alcohol on the pancreas and to educate the patient about the importance of alcohol cessation. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in a multispecialty clinic in the gastroenterology department for a period of one month. 60 patients were involved in the study who were diagnosed with pancreatitis (acute or chronic). The data was obtained by directly communicating with the patients which consisted of demographics and social habits. Results: Among 60 patients, the male was dominant (85%) than female (15%). Majority of the patients were in the age group of 41-60 y (65%) followed by patients 2140 y of age (25%) and patients above 60 y of age (10%). Epigastric pain was the most common presenting complaint in all patients (67%) followed by vomiting (33%). Majority of the patients involved are alcoholics (60%). Conclusion: Proper attention to the health at the time of diagnosis of disease by alcohol cessation can prevent the progression of the disease and helps the patient to lead a healthy life

Thoracic segmental spinal anaesthesia vs general anaesthesia for laparoscopic cholecystectomy: a comparative study

Background: Regional anaesthesia techniques are now being preferred over General anaesthesia in patients with major medical problems and those at high risk for GA. Thoracic segmental spinal anaesthesia has recently gained popularity because of its safety and efficacy in procedures like laparoscopic cholecystectomy, breast surgeries etc. Methods: A comparative study involving 50 patients of ASA grade I & II of both genders with age group of 25-55 years, weighing between 50-85 kg posted for lap. Cholecystectomy in GGH, Kakinada for a study period of 5 months. 50 Patients were divided into Group A & Group B with 25 patients in each group. After taking informed & written conscent, Group A patients were given Thoracic Segmental Spinal Anaesthesia at T10 level with Inj.0.5% isobaric Levo-bupivacaine 1.75 ml (13.75 mg) with Inj. Fentanyl 0.25 ml (25 mcg) and Group B patients were given GA with fentanyl, propofol, sevoflurane, succinylcholine and vecuronium. Results: conscious patients with less hemodynamic variability, greater duration of post operative analgesia, greater duration for first rescue analgesia were observed in Group A. Whereas greater hemodynamic variability, intubation response, more requirement of intraoperative opioid, less duration of post operative analgesia, lesser time for first rescue analgesia were observed in Group B. Conclusions: TSSA is safe alternative as it provides excellent analgesia. With TSSA, GA can be avoided in patents with comorbidities

REGULATORY DOSSIER- ASEAN COMMON TECHNICAL DOCUMENT (ACTD) FOR ASEM COUNTRIES

The Regulatory Affairs department is very often the first point of contact between the government authorities and the company. The attitudes and actions of Regulatory Affairs Professionals will condition the perceptions of the government officials to the company. Dossier is a collection or file of documents on the same subject, especially a file containing detailed information about a person or a topic. Any preparation for human use that is intended to modify or explore physiological systems or pathological states for the benefit of the recipient is called as “pharmaceutical product for human use”. This guideline merely demonstrates an appropriate write-up format for acquired data. Throughout the ACTD, the display of information should be unambiguous and transparent, in order to facilitate the review of the basic data and to help a reviewer become quickly oriented to the application contents. This ASEAN Common Technical Dossier (ACTD) is a guideline of the agreed upon common format for the preparation of a well-structured Common Technical Dossier (CTD) applications that will be submitted to ASEAN regulatory authorities for the registration of pharmaceuticals for human use. This guideline describes a CTD format that will significantly reduce the time and resources needed to compile applications for registration and in the future, will ease the preparation of electronic documental submissions. ICH‐ECTD is an internationally driven standard designed to reduce cost in the administration, assessment and archiving of applications for marketing authorization of medicinal products for human use, to reduce the use of paper and streamline the assessment process making the system more efficient

The prognostic value of the hypoxia markers CA IX and GLUT 1 and the cytokines VEGF and IL 6 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma treated by radiotherapy ± chemotherapy

BACKGROUND: Several parameters of the tumor microenvironment, such as hypoxia, inflammation and angiogenesis, play a critical role in tumor aggressiveness and treatment response. A major question remains if these markers can be used to stratify patients to certain treatment protocols. The purpose of this study was to investigate the inter-relationship and the prognostic significance of several biological and clinicopathological parameters in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) treated by radiotherapy ± chemotherapy. METHODS: We used two subgroups of a retrospective series for which CT-determined tumoral perfusion correlated with local control. In the first subgroup (n = 67), immunohistochemistry for carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX) and glucose transporter-1 (GLUT-1) was performed on the pretreatment tumor biopsy. In the second subgroup (n = 34), enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine pretreatment levels of the cytokines vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in serum. Correlation was investigated between tumoral perfusion and each of these biological markers, as well as between the markers mutually. The prognostic value of these microenvironmental parameters was also evaluated. RESULTS: For CA IX and GLUT-1, the combined assessment of patients with both markers expressed above the median showed an independent correlation with local control (p = 0.02) and disease-free survival (p = 0.04) with a trend for regional control (p = 0.06). In the second subgroup, IL-6 pretreatment serum level above the median was the only independent predictor of local control (p = 0.009), disease-free survival (p = 0.02) and overall survival (p = 0.005). CONCLUSION: To our knowledge, we are the first to report a link in HNSCC between IL-6 pretreatment serum levels and radioresistance in vivo. This link is supported by the strong prognostic association of pretreatment IL-6 with local control, known to be the most important parameter to judge radiotherapy responses. Furthermore, the combined assessment of CA IX and GLUT-1 correlated independently with prognosis. This is a valuable indication that a combined approach is important in the investigation of prognostic markers

The Murchison Widefield Array Transients Survey (MWATS). A search for low frequency variability in a bright Southern hemisphere sample

We report on a search for low-frequency radio variability in 944 bright (> 4Jy at 154 MHz) unresolved, extragalactic radio sources monitored monthly for several years with the Murchison Widefield Array. In the majority of sources we find very low levels of variability with typical modulation indices < 5%. We detect 15 candidate low frequency variables that show significant long term variability (>2.8 years) with time-averaged modulation indices M = 3.1 - 7.1%. With 7/15 of these variable sources having peaked spectral energy distributions, and only 5.7% of the overall sample having peaked spectra, we find an increase in the prevalence of variability in this spectral class. We conclude that the variability seen in this survey is most probably a consequence of refractive interstellar scintillation and that these objects must have the majority of their flux density contained within angular diameters less than 50 milli-arcsec (which we support with multi-wavelength data). At 154 MHz we demonstrate that interstellar scintillation time-scales become long (~decades) and have low modulation indices, whilst synchrotron driven variability can only produce dynamic changes on time-scales of hundreds of years, with flux density changes less than one milli-jansky (without relativistic boosting). From this work we infer that the low frequency extra-galactic southern sky, as seen by SKA-Low, will be non-variable on time-scales shorter than one year.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure

The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations, but is initially focused on three key science projects. These are detection and characterization of 3-dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) at redshifts from 6 to 10, solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation effects on signals from distant background sources,and high-sensitivity exploration of the variable radio sky. The array design features 8192 dual-polarization broad-band active dipoles, arranged into 512 tiles comprising 16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture 1.5km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3km. All tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom FPGA-based hardware, yielding a Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromatic uv coverage and unprecedented point spread function (PSF) quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet environment,allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the IEE

A new layout optimization technique for interferometric arrays, applied to the MWA

Antenna layout is an important design consideration for radio interferometers because it determines the quality of the snapshot point spread function (PSF, or array beam). This is particularly true for experiments targeting the 21 cm Epoch of Reionization signal as the quality of the foreground subtraction depends directly on the spatial dynamic range and thus the smoothness of the baseline distribution. Nearly all sites have constraints on where antennas can be placed---even at the remote Australian location of the MWA (Murchison Widefield Array) there are rock outcrops, flood zones, heritages areas, emergency runways and trees. These exclusion areas can introduce spatial structure into the baseline distribution that enhance the PSF sidelobes and reduce the angular dynamic range. In this paper we present a new method of constrained antenna placement that reduces the spatial structure in the baseline distribution. This method not only outperforms random placement algorithms that avoid exclusion zones, but surprisingly outperforms random placement algorithms without constraints to provide what we believe are the smoothest constrained baseline distributions developed to date. We use our new algorithm to determine antenna placements for the originally planned MWA, and present the antenna locations, baseline distribution, and snapshot PSF for this array choice.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA

WSClean : an implementation of a fast, generic wide-field imager for radio astronomy

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.Astronomical widefield imaging of interferometric radio data is computationally expensive, especially for the large data volumes created by modern non-coplanar many-element arrays. We present a new widefield interferometric imager that uses the w-stacking algorithm and can make use of the w-snapshot algorithm. The performance dependencies of CASA's w-projection and our new imager are analysed and analytical functions are derived that describe the required computing cost for both imagers. On data from the Murchison Widefield Array, we find our new method to be an order of magnitude faster than w-projection, as well as being capable of full-sky imaging at full resolution and with correct polarisation correction. We predict the computing costs for several other arrays and estimate that our imager is a factor of 2-12 faster, depending on the array configuration. We estimate the computing cost for imaging the low-frequency Square-Kilometre Array observations to be 60 PetaFLOPS with current techniques. We find that combining w-stacking with the w-snapshot algorithm does not significantly improve computing requirements over pure w-stacking. The source code of our new imager is publicly released.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Interferometric imaging with the 32 element Murchison Wide-field Array

The Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) is a low frequency radio telescope, currently under construction, intended to search for the spectral signature of the epoch of re-ionisation (EOR) and to probe the structure of the solar corona. Sited in Western Australia, the full MWA will comprise 8192 dipoles grouped into 512 tiles, and be capable of imaging the sky south of 40 degree declination, from 80 MHz to 300 MHz with an instantaneous field of view that is tens of degrees wide and a resolution of a few arcminutes. A 32-station prototype of the MWA has been recently commissioned and a set of observations taken that exercise the whole acquisition and processing pipeline. We present Stokes I, Q, and U images from two ~4 hour integrations of a field 20 degrees wide centered on Pictoris A. These images demonstrate the capacity and stability of a real-time calibration and imaging technique employing the weighted addition of warped snapshots to counter extreme wide field imaging distortions.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. This is the draft before journal typesetting corrections and proofs so does contain formatting and journal style errors, also has with lower quality figures for space requirement