Cholestatic hepatitis as a possible new side-effect of oxycodone: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Oxycodone is a widely-used semisynthetic opioid analgesic that has been used for over eighty years. Oxycodone is known to cause side effects such as nausea, pruritus, dizziness, constipation and somnolence. As far as we are aware cholestatic hepatitis as a result of oxycodone use has not been reported so far in the world literature.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 34-year-old male presented with cholestatic jaundice and severe pruritus after receiving oxycodone for analgesia post-T11 vertebrectomy. Extensive laboratory investigations and imaging studies did not reveal any other obvious cause for his jaundice and a liver biopsy confirmed canalicular cholestatis suggestive of drug-induced hepatotoxicity. The patient's symptoms and transaminases normalised on withdrawal of oxycodone confirming that oxycodone was the probable cause of the patient's hepatotoxicity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that cholestatic hepatitis is possibly a rare side effect of oxycodone use. Physicians should be aware of the possibility of this potentially serious picture of drug-induced hepatotoxicity.</p

Assessment of the Visual Analogue Score in the Evaluation of the Pruritus Of Cholestasis

Background and Aims: A visual analogue score (VAS), based on application of a visual analogue scale, has been widely used to assess pruritus in clinical studies of patients with cholestatic liver disease. A VAS is a numerical score of the severity of the perception of pruritus, and, hence, is inherently subjective. The objective of this study was to assess the reliability of a VAS as an index of pruritus in cholestatic patients. Methods: In 8 patients with chronic pruritus due to primary biliary cholangitis, values for a VAS of pruritus were compared with corresponding measurements of scratching activity, which were generated by a monitoring system specifically designed to quantitate this activity. The relationship between individual values for the VAS and corresponding values for scratching activity during a specific interval immediately preceding the recording of the VAS was examined by determining the Spearman\u27s rank correlation coefficient. Results: The mean Spearman\u27s rank correlation coefficient between individual values for the VAS and corresponding mean values for scratching activity was 0.072; the range of these coefficients was -0.04 to 0.26. A VAS of pruritus is an unreliable index of scratching activity, and, hence, of the pathophysiological process responsible for the pruritus of cholestasis. Conclusions: It is concluded that the use of a VAS as a primary quantitative endpoint in trials of the efficacy of potential therapies for the pruritus of cholestasis may be inappropriate

V Jornadas de la enseñanza de las Matemáticas en Navarra

Los días 3 y 4 de noviembre de 2017 se realizaron las V Jornadas de la enseñanza de las Matemáticas en Navarra (Matematikaren Irakaskuntzarako V Jardunaldiak Nafarroan). La Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNA) acogió en las aulas de su sede de Pamplona estas Jornadas de enseñanza de las Matemáticas. Los actos se desarrollaron durante la tarde del viernes, día tres, y la mañana del sábado, cuatro de noviembre. Se trata de la quinta edición de esta actividad que organiza la Sociedad Navarra de Profesores de Matemáticas «Tornamira» y que una vez más ha contado con el patrocinio y colaboración de la Universidad Pública de Navarra y del Departamento de Educación del Gobierno de Navarra. Esta colaboración se formalizó en el momento de la inauguración, pues en la mesa de autoridades se contó con la presencia de David Fernández (asesor del Centro de Apoyo al Profesorado de Pamplona), Aitzol Lasa (profesor del Departamento de Matemáticas de la UPNA), Alfonso Carlosena (rector de la UPNA) y María Solana (consejera de Educación) y J. Javier Jiménez (presidente de Tornamira

Class Separation Improvements in Pixel Classification Using Colour Injection

This paper presents an improvement in the colour image segmentation in the Hue Saturation (HS) sub-space. The authors propose to inject (add) a colour vector in the Red Green Blue (RGB) space to increase the class separation in the HS plane. The goal of the work is the development of an algorithm to obtain the optimal colour vector for injection that maximizes the separation between the classes in the HS plane. The chromatic Chrominace-1 Chrominance-2 sub-space (of the Luminance Chrominace-1 Chrominance-2 (YC1C2) space) is used to obtain the optimal vector to add. The proposal is applied on each frame of a colour image sequence in real-time. It has been tested in applications with reduced contrast between the colours of the background and the object, and particularly when the size of the object is very small in comparison with the size of the captured scene. Numerous tests have confirmed that this proposal improves the segmentation process, considerably reducing the effects of the variation of the light intensity of the scene. Several tests have been made in skin segmentation in applications for sign language recognition via computer vision, where an accurate segmentation of hands and face is required