Comparative Evaluation of Efficacy of Three Different Storage Media in Maintaining the Viability of Periodontal Ligament Cells: An In Vitro Study

Introduction: Dental trauma is the most common injury which occurs in oro-facial region. Traumatic dental injuries are often seen among injuries to the face. Among them, tooth avulsion (0.5%-16%) is a complex traumatic injury characterized by the rupture of the neurovascular bundle and periodontal ligament (PDL) exposing the tooth to the outer environment. It occurs most often in the age group of 7-10 years, when the alveolar bone is resilient and offers minimal resistance to extrusive forces. Avulsion is a potential threat to the vitality of Periodontal ligament cells which are essential for the healing of replanted avulsed teeth. Hence management protocols should include management of the pulp and the periodontal ligament cells in the long-term survival and prognosis of avulsed teeth.2 The types of healing that takes place after the avulsion injury are as follows: 1.Favorable healing: a. Healing with a normal periodontal ligament (without root resorption) b. Healing with surface resorption (repair-related resorption) 2.Unfavorable healing: a. Healing with ankylosis (replacement). b. Healing with inflammatory resorption (infection related resorption).3 Two of the most critical factors affecting the prognosis of an avulsed tooth after replantation are extra oral dry time and the storage medium in which the tooth is placed.4As replantation of avulsed teeth occurs more frequently between 1 and 4 hours after avulsion, degeneration of cemental periodontal ligament fibers is a common event and the presence of necrotic Periodontal ligament remnants on root surface stimulates the occurrence of inflammatory root resorption, which is the major cause of loss of replanted teeth.5Secondly, storage or transport medium to support cell viability is more important than the extra oral Introduction: An ideal storage medium should be one that is capable of preserving the viability, mitogenicity and clonogenic capacity of the damaged Periodontal ligament cells to facilitate proliferation of these cells over the denuded root surface, thereby preventing further root resorption.Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Casein phosphopeptide amorphous calcium phosphate as a storage media for avulsed tooth in maintaining periodontal ligament cell viability in comparison with Hank’s Balanced Salt Solution and Oral Rehydration Solution.Materials and Methods: Forty freshly extracted human premolar teeth with normal periodontium and closed apices were taken. Forty teeth were randomly assigned into five experimental groups. It was then incubated for 30 minutes in falcon tubes with 2.5 ml solution of 0.2 mg/ml of collagenase II and 2.4 mg/ml solution of dispase grade II in phosphate buffered saline. After incubation, 50 μl of fetal bovine serum was added to each tube with the help of micropipette. Cells were labelled with 0.4% trypan blue for determination of viability. The number of viable cells in a grid of Neubauer’s chamber were counted under a light microscope at 40X magnification.Results: Results were analysed using Kruskul-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney U test.Conclusion: GC Tooth Mousse, Hanks balanced salt solution and Oral rehydration solution can be used as storage medium. GC Tooth Mousse is better than Hanks balanced salt solution and Oral rehydration solution as a storage medium

Study of prenatal, natal, and neonatal risk factors associated with autism

Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder is one of the common developmental disabilities. Underlying autism etiology is most likely polygenic but environmental factors may also contribute. Obstetrical and neonatal risk factors have been considered for the development of autism. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to know the presence of antenatal, perinatal and neonatal complications in autistic children. Materials and Methods: Children who were diagnosed with autism were included in the study. Visits were made to the special school for the collection of data with prior consent, and birth details were collected from the parents. Results: A total of 54 children were included in the study. Age of the children ranged from 3 years to 17 years with the mean age of 10.93 years. 39 (72.2%) were boys and 15 (27.8 %) were girls. Advanced maternal age at delivery was noted in 24% of the cases. Antenatal risk factors were seen in 24% of cases and natal risk factors in 20% of the cases. 17% had birth asphyxia. Neonatal intensive care unit admission was noted in 20% of cases, neonatal seizures in 5.6%, respiratory distress in 9.3%, and low birth weight in 17% of cases. 60% of them were first born. Overall, the presence of antenatal, natal, and postnatal risk factors were noted in 57% autism cases. Conclusion: In children with autism, there is increased prevalence of obstetric and neonatal risk factors. These variables should be examined in future for precise assessments of exposures

Effectiveness of chitosan mouthwash on plaque formation and levels of salivary Streptococcus and Lactobacillus count: an in vivo study

Background: The objectives of the present study were to clinically evaluate the effectiveness of chitosan mouthwash on Plaque formation and to evaluate the antimicrobial activity against salivary Streptococcus mutans (SM) and Lactobacillus (LB).Methods: A total of 20 participants with decay-missing-filled index ≥4 and simplified oral hygiene index score >1.3 were recruited for the study after taking informed consent. All the participants were provided a bottle of chitosan mouthwash in addition to their usual oral hygiene procedure. Baseline salivary SM and LB levels were determined, using chair-side CRT® bacteria test prior giving chitosan mouthwash and after 14 days, during which children are advised to use 10 ml of mouthwash for 60 seconds two times daily. Plaque index score recorded using Silness and Loe plaque index. Paired t-test (or corresponding non-parametric) and percentage comparison method using cross tables were used for statistical analysis.Results: The baseline plaque index score of 0.758 and after 14 days of mouthwash use, it reduced to 0.434. The mean difference in the plaque index showed significant reduction in the plaque score (i.e., with the difference of 0.324). The results showed the antiplaque effects with a short duration of 14 days use of chitosan (CH) mouthwash. The antibacterial activity demonstrated a range of inhibitory effect on salivary SM and LB.Conclusions: CH showed an evident strong effect against salivary SM and LB levels and controlling the plaque biofilm formation. So water soluble CH can be used in new formulations for oral applications not only as antimicrobial agent but also for plaque biofilm control

Assessing variations of extreme indices inducing weather-hazards on critical infrastructures over Europe?the INTACT framework

Extreme weather events are projected to be more frequent and severe across the globe because of global warming. This poses challenging problems for critical infrastructures, which could be dramatically affected (or disrupted), and may require adaptation plans to the changing climate conditions. The INTACT FP7-European project evaluated the resilience and vulnerability of critical infrastructures to extreme weather events in a climate change scenario. To identify changes in the hazard induced by climate change, appropriate extreme weather indicators (EWIs), as proxies of the main atmospheric features triggering events with high impact on the infrastructures, were defined for a number of case studies and different approaches were analyzed to obtain local climate projections. We considered the influence of weighting and bias correction schemes on the delta approach followed to obtain the resulting projections, considering data from the Euro-CORDEX ensemble of regional future climate scenarios over Europe. The aim is to provide practitioners, decision-makers, and administrators with appropriate methods to obtain actionable and plausible results on local/regional future climate scenarios. Our results show a small sensitivity to the weighting approach and a large sensitivity to bias correcting the future projections.This work has been carried out within the activities of INTACT project, receiving funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° FP7-SEC-2013-1-606799. The information and views set out in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Regional Climate, and the Working Group on Coupled Modelling, former coordinating body of CORDEX and responsible panel for CMIP5

Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.Comment: invited review, 36 figures, 900+ references; minor stylistic changes from the published versio

Genome-Wide Association Study in Asian Populations Identifies Variants in ETS1 and WDFY4 Associated with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus is a complex and potentially fatal autoimmune disease, characterized by autoantibody production and multi-organ damage. By a genome-wide association study (320 patients and 1,500 controls) and subsequent replication altogether involving a total of 3,300 Asian SLE patients from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Thailand, as well as 4,200 ethnically and geographically matched controls, genetic variants in ETS1 and WDFY4 were found to be associated with SLE (ETS1: rs1128334, P = 2.33×10−11, OR = 1.29; WDFY4: rs7097397, P = 8.15×10−12, OR = 1.30). ETS1 encodes for a transcription factor known to be involved in a wide range of immune functions, including Th17 cell development and terminal differentiation of B lymphocytes. SNP rs1128334 is located in the 3′-UTR of ETS1, and allelic expression analysis from peripheral blood mononuclear cells showed significantly lower expression level from the risk allele. WDFY4 is a conserved protein with unknown function, but is predominantly expressed in primary and secondary immune tissues, and rs7097397 in WDFY4 changes an arginine residue to glutamine (R1816Q) in this protein. Our study also confirmed association of the HLA locus, STAT4, TNFSF4, BLK, BANK1, IRF5, and TNFAIP3 with SLE in Asians. These new genetic findings may help us to gain a better understanding of the disease and the functions of the genes involved

Tevatron Run II combination of the effective leptonic electroweak mixing angle

Drell-Yan lepton pairs produced in the process pp[over ¯]→ℓ⁺ℓ⁻+X through an intermediate γ*/Z boson have an asymmetry in their angular distribution related to the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak force and the associated mixing of its neutral gauge bosons. The CDF and D0 experiments have measured the effective-leptonic electroweak mixing parameter sin²θ[subscript eff][superscript lept] using electron and muon pairs selected from the full Tevatron proton-antiproton data sets collected in 2001-2011, corresponding to 9–10  fb⁻¹ of integrated luminosity. The combination of these measurements yields the most precise result from hadron colliders, sin²θ[subscript eff][superscript lept] = 0.23148±0.00033. This result is consistent with, and approaches in precision, the best measurements from electron-positron colliders. The standard model inference of the on-shell electroweak mixing parameter sin²θ[subscript W], or equivalently the W-boson mass M[subscript W], using the zfitter software package yields sin²θ[subscript W] = 0.22324±0.00033 or equivalently, M[subscript W] = 80.367±0.017  GeV/c²

Global overview of the management of acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic (CHOLECOVID study)

Background: This study provides a global overview of the management of patients with acute cholecystitis during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: CHOLECOVID is an international, multicentre, observational comparative study of patients admitted to hospital with acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on management were collected for a 2-month study interval coincident with the WHO declaration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and compared with an equivalent pre-pandemic time interval. Mediation analysis examined the influence of SARS-COV-2 infection on 30-day mortality. Results: This study collected data on 9783 patients with acute cholecystitis admitted to 247 hospitals across the world. The pandemic was associated with reduced availability of surgical workforce and operating facilities globally, a significant shift to worse severity of disease, and increased use of conservative management. There was a reduction (both absolute and proportionate) in the number of patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 3095 patients (56.2 per cent) pre-pandemic to 1998 patients (46.2 per cent) during the pandemic but there was no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality after cholecystectomy comparing the pre-pandemic interval with the pandemic (13 patients (0.4 per cent) pre-pandemic to 13 patients (0.6 per cent) pandemic; P = 0.355). In mediation analysis, an admission with acute cholecystitis during the pandemic was associated with a non-significant increased risk of death (OR 1.29, 95 per cent c.i. 0.93 to 1.79, P = 0.121). Conclusion: CHOLECOVID provides a unique overview of the treatment of patients with cholecystitis across the globe during the first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The study highlights the need for system resilience in retention of elective surgical activity. Cholecystectomy was associated with a low risk of mortality and deferral of treatment results in an increase in avoidable morbidity that represents the non-COVID cost of this pandemic

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. Methods The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model—a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates—with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality—which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. Findings The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2–100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1–290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1–211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4–48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3–37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7–9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. Interpretation Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere