NSAID-Associated Perforation of a Meckel’s Diverticulum: A Case Report

Meckel’s diverticulum is the most frequent congenital malformation of the gastrointestinal tract. The most common ectopic tissue within a Meckel’s is heterotopic gastric mucosa, with bleeding being the most common presentation. However, perforation of a Meckel’s diverticulum is a rare presentation. NSAID-associated Meckel’s perforation has been suggested, however has not been documented in the literature. We present a case of a 17-year-old female with acute abdominal pain and tenderness following a 24-hour history of excessive ingestion of NSAIDS for pain related to tooth extraction. Chest radiograph demonstrated free intra-abdominal air and she was subsequently taken for exploratory laparotomy. A perforated Meckel’s diverticulum was isolated and resected. Though NSAID-associated bleeding of heterotopic gastric mucosa has been described, and perforation of the Meckel’s diverticulum has been suggested, no clear association between heterotopic gastric mucosa and perforation exists. On the other hand, the relationship between NSAIDS and gastric ulcer perforation is well documented. A similar mechanism may also play a role in NSAID-associated Meckel’s perforation. With how common NSAID use is, we believe it is important to document NSAID-associated perforation of a Meckel’s diverticulum

50 Years of Cumulative Open-Source Data Confirm Stable and Robust Biodiversity Distribution Patterns for Macrofungi

Fungi are a hyper-diverse kingdom that contributes significantly to the regulation of the global carbon and nutrient cycle. However, our understanding of the distribution of fungal diversity is often hindered by a lack of data, especially on a large spatial scale. Open biodiversity data may provide a solution, but concerns about the potential spatial and temporal bias in species occurrence data arising from different observers and sampling protocols challenge their utility. The theory of species accumulation curves predicts that the cumulative number of species reaches an asymptote when the sampling effort is sufficiently large. Thus, we hypothesize that open biodiversity data could be used to reveal large-scale macrofungal diversity patterns if these datasets are accumulated long enough. Here, we tested our hypothesis with 50 years of macrofungal occurrence records in Norway and Sweden that were downloaded from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). We first grouped the data into five temporal subsamples with different cumulative sampling efforts (i.e., accumulation of data for 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years). We then predicted the macrofungal diversity and distribution at each subsample using the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) species distribution model. The results revealed that the cumulative number of macrofungal species stabilized into distinct distribution patterns with localized hotspots of predicted macrofungal diversity with sampling efforts greater than approximately 30 years. Our research demonstrates the utility and importance of the long-term accumulated open biodiversity data in studying macrofungal diversity and distribution at the national level.publishedVersio

Impacts of exercise intervention on various diseases in rats.

BackgroundExercise is considered as an important intervention for treatment and prevention of several diseases, such as osteoarthritis, obesity, hypertension, and Alzheimer's disease. This review summarizes decadal exercise intervention studies with various rat models across 6 major systems to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the effects that exercise brought.MethodsPubMed was utilized as the data source. To collect research articles, we used the following terms to create the search: (exercise [Title] OR physical activity [Title] OR training [Title]) AND (rats [Title/Abstract] OR rat [Title/Abstract] OR rattus [Title/Abstract]). To best cover targeted studies, publication dates were limited to "within 11 years." The exercise intervention methods used for different diseases were sorted according to the mode, frequency, and intensity of exercise.ResultsThe collected articles were categorized into studies related to 6 systems or disease types: motor system (17 articles), metabolic system (110 articles), cardiocerebral vascular system (171 articles), nervous system (71 articles), urinary system (2 articles), and cancer (21 articles). Our review found that, for different diseases, exercise intervention mostly had a positive effect. However, the most powerful effect was achieved by using a specific mode of exercise that addressed the characteristics of the disease.ConclusionAs a model animal, rats not only provide a convenient resource for studying human diseases but also provide the possibility for exploring the molecular mechanisms of exercise intervention on diseases. This review also aims to provide exercise intervention frameworks and optimal exercise dose recommendations for further human exercise intervention research

Influence of depression symptoms on serum tumor necrosis factor-α of patients with chronic low back pain

Introduction: Patients with chronic low back pain (cLBP) have high rates of comorbid psychiatric disorders, mainly depression. Recent evidence suggests that depressive symptoms and pain, as interacting factors, have an effect on the circulating levels of inflammatory markers relevant to coronary artery disease. Our previous work showed a higher serum level of an inflammatory marker tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα) in patients with cLBP, which did not correlate with intensity of low back pain alone. In the present study we investigated the cross-sectional associations of depressive symptoms, low back pain and their interaction with circulating levels of TNFα. Methods: Each group of 29 patients with cLBP alone or with both cLBP and depression was age-matched and sex-matched with 29 healthy controls. All subjects underwent a blood draw for the assessment of serum TNFα and completed a standardised questionnaire regarding medication, depression scores according to the German version of Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), pain intensity from a visual analogue scale, and back function using the Roland and Morris questionnaire. The correlations between TNFα level and these clinical parameters were analysed. Results: There were no differences in TNFα level between cLBP patients with and without depression. Both cLBP patients with (median = 2.51 pg/ml, P = 0.002) and without (median = 2.58 pg/ml, P = 0.004) depression showed significantly higher TNFα serum levels than healthy controls (median = 0 pg/ml). The pain intensity reported by both patient groups was similar, while the patients with depression had higher CES-D scores (P < 0.001) and worse back function (P < 0.001). The variance analysis showed that the interaction between TNFα level and pain intensity, CES-D scores, sex, body mass index and medication was statistically significant. Conclusions: Depression as a comorbidity to cLBP did not influence the serum TNFα level. It seems that TNFα somehow acts as a mediator in both cLBP and depression, involving similar mechanisms that will be interesting to follow in further studies

Grasp Stability Assessment Through Attention-Guided Cross-Modality Fusion and Transfer Learning

Extensive research has been conducted on assessing grasp stability, a crucial prerequisite for achieving optimal grasping strategies, including the minimum force grasping policy. However, existing works employ basic feature-level fusion techniques to combine visual and tactile modalities, resulting in the inadequate utilization of complementary information and the inability to model interactions between unimodal features. This work proposes an attention-guided cross-modality fusion architecture to comprehensively integrate visual and tactile features. This model mainly comprises convolutional neural networks (CNNs), self-attention, and cross-attention mechanisms. In addition, most existing methods collect datasets from real-world systems, which is time-consuming and high-cost, and the datasets collected are comparatively limited in size. This work establishes a robotic grasping system through physics simulation to collect a multimodal dataset. To address the sim-to-real transfer gap, we propose a migration strategy encompassing domain randomization and domain adaptation techniques. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fusion framework achieves markedly enhanced prediction performance (approximately 10%) compared to other baselines. Moreover, our findings suggest that the trained model can be reliably transferred to real robotic systems, indicating its potential to address real-world challenges.Comment: Accepted by IROS 202

Proteomic analysis of the endophytic fungus Undifilum oxytropis

The filamentous Ascomycete fungus Undifilum oxytropis is an endophyte of locoweed plants of the genera Oxytropis that produces a toxic alkaloid swainsonine. Swainsonine, an alpha-mannosidase inhibitor causes a general toxicosis and neurological problems (locoism) when consumed by grazing animals. Swainsonine is also being assessed for its anti-cancer properties. While the ecology of U. oxytropis has been studied, little is known about the genetics and proteomics of any swainsonine-producing fungus. To help understand the proteins in U. oxytropis, the proteome of U. oxytropis was analyzed using 2-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE). Proteins from U. oxytropis mycelia were extracted and separated by in-gel isoelectric focusing (IEF). The entire immobilized pH gradient (IPG) strip was cut into a set of gel sections and each gel section was digested with trypsin and then identified using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). 2-DE maps were also developed for U. oxytropis to define its proteome. In the isoelectric point (pI) range of 3-11 and 10-250 kDa ranges, more than 450 spots were detected in 2-DE silver-stained gels, and 52 proteins were identified by LC-MS/MS. Most of the identified proteins were involved in energy production, oxidoreductase activity, carbohydrate metabolic process, amino acid and cellular ketone metabolic process. A large group of identified proteins were related to stress proteins and heat shock proteins. This work presents the first two-dimensional reference map of this alkaloid-producing fungus. Details of the proteome serve as a baseline for further study of this swainsonine-producing fungus and are essential for a reverse genetic analysis of the fungus.Keywords: Undifilum oxytropis fungus, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, proteome reference map, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, swainsonin

Treatment of vulval condyloma with a combination of paiteling and cryotherapy, and its effect on late recurrence

Purpose: To study the clinical effectiveness of a combination of Paiteling and cryotherapy in the treatment of vulval condyloma acuminatum (VCA), and its effect on late recurrence. Methods: Eighty-six VCA patients were chosen as research subjects, and were randomized into group A and group B. Group A patients were treated with combination of Paiteling and cryotherapy, while group B patients received cryotherapy only. The clinical effects of the two treatment methods on VCA were evaluated by measuring area of damaged skin, levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP), as well as degree of recurrence of VCA in the two groups, before and after treatment. Results: Total clinical treatment effectiveness in group A was significantly higher compared with group B (p &lt; 0.05). After treatment, the area of damaged skin, and levels of IL-6 and CRP were markedly lower in group A than in group B (p &lt; 0.001). After 6 months of treatment, disease control was higher in group A than in group B (p &lt; 0.05). There was also a lower incidence of adverse reactions in group A than in group B (p &lt; 0.05). Conclusion: These results indicate that the combination of Paiteling and cryotherapy is more effective than cryotherapy alone in improving treatment effectiveness and reducing late recurrence of VCA. Therefore, the combined treatment has potentials clinical application in the management of VCA