938 research outputs found
Comparison of gabapentin and ketotifen in treatment of uremic pruritus in hemodialysis patients
Objectives: Uremic pruritus is a common problem in hemodialysis patients. Several treatments have been used for decreasing itching in these patients. Gabapentin and ketotifen are two drugs used for treating uremic patients.The aim of this study was to compare gabapentin and ketotifen in treatment of uremic pruritus in hemodialysis patients. Methods: In this double-blind randomized clinical trial, 52 hemodialysis patients with uremic pruritus referred to 5azarTeaching Hospital in Gorgan in 2013 were studied. Patients were randomly assigned to two groups of 26 subjects (groups G and K). In group G, patients treated with gabapentin capsules 100 mg daily for 2 weeks, and in Group K, patients treated with ketotifen 1 mg twice daily for 2 weeks. Before and at the end of study, pruritus severity was determined based on Shiratori›s severity scores. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS-21 statistical software. Results: There was no significant different between two groups in the age and sex. After two weeks of treatment, severity of pruritus was significantly reduced in both groups (88.4 in group G vs. 76.9 in group K). Gabapentin compared with ketotifen had a better effect on improving itching in the age group of 30-60 years and in males. 5 patients (19.2) in both groups suffered from drowsiness and dizziness, but no serious side effects were observed. Conclusions: The results showed that gabapentin and ketotifen significantly improved pruritus in hemodialysis patients, and no significant difference was observed between two groups. © 2016, Professional Medical Publications. All rights reserved
Characterization of topological states on a lattice with Chern number
We study Chern numbers to characterize the ground state of strongly
interacting systems on a lattice. This method allows us to perform a numerical
characterization of bosonic fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states on a lattice
where conventional overlap calculation with known continuum case such as
Laughlin state, breaks down due to the lattice structure or dipole-dipole
interaction. The non-vanishing Chern number indicates the existence of a
topological order in the degenerate ground state manifold.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, V2: changes in the presentatio
Topologically Robust Transport of Photons in a Synthetic Gauge Field
Electronic transport in low dimensions through a disordered medium leads to
localization. The addition of gauge fields to disordered media leads to
fundamental changes in the transport properties. For example, chiral edge
states can emerge in two-dimensional systems with a perpendicular magnetic
field. Here, we implement a "synthetic'' gauge field for photons using
silicon-on-insulator technology. By determining the distribution of transport
properties, we confirm the localized transport in the bulk and the suppression
of localization in edge states, using the "gold standard'' for localization
studies. Our system provides a new platform to investigate transport properties
in the presence of synthetic gauge fields, which is important both from the
fundamental perspective of studying photonic transport and for applications in
classical and quantum information processing.Comment: 4.5 pages, 3 figures and supplementary materia
Impact of creatinine clearance on helicobacter pylori eradication rate in patients with peptic ulcer disease
Introduction. Gastrointestinal complaints are common in patients with kidney failure. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of creatinine clearance on Helicobacter pylori (HP) eradication rate in patients with peptic ulcer disease. Materials and Methods. In this clinical trial, 132 patients with a range of kidney function (normal to end-stage renal disease) and peptic ulcer disease with HP infection were enrolled and divided into 5 groups by their creatinine clearance. For all patients, a 14-day standard regimen of triple therapy for peptic ulcer was started with omeprazole, 20 mg; clarithromycin, 500 mg; and amoxicillin, 1 g; twice per day. After 6 weeks, HP eradication rate were evaluated and compared between the groups with urea breath test. Results. The mean age of the participants was 44.84 ± 12.20 years and 68 (51.5%) were women. The five groups were not significantly different in terms of age, sex distribution, or body mass index. The results of urea breath test at 6 weeks were positive in 23 patients (17.4%). There was no significant difference in HP eradication rate (negative urea breath test) between the five groups. Conclusions. This study showed no association between the success rate of eradication of HP infection and kidney function. © 2015, Iranian Society of Nephrology. All rights reserved
Augmented Intensity Vectors for Direction of Arrival Estimation in the Spherical Harmonic Domain
Pseudointensity vectors (PIVs) provide a means of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation for spherical microphone arrays using only the zeroth and the first-order spherical harmonics. An augmented intensity vector (AIV) is proposed which improves the accuracy of PIVs by exploiting higher order spherical harmonics. We compared DOA estimation using our proposed AIVs against PIVs, steered response power (SRP) and subspace methods where the number of sources, their angular separation, the reverberation time of the room and the sensor noise level are varied. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline methods and performs at least as accurately as the state-of-the-art method with strong robustness to reverberation, sensor noise, and number of sources. In the single and multiple source scenarios tested, which include realistic levels of reverberation and noise, the proposed method had average error of 1.5∘ and 2∘, respectively
Multiple source localization in the spherical harmonic domain using augmented intensity vectors based on grid search
Multiple source localization is an important task in acoustic signal processing with applications including dereverberation, source separation, source tracking and environment mapping. When using spherical microphone arrays, it has been previously shown that Pseudo-intensity Vectors (PIV), and Augmented Intensity Vectors (AIV), are an effective approach for direction of arrival estimation of a sound source. In this paper, we evaluate AIV-based localization in acoustic scenarios involving multiple sound sources. Simulations are conducted where the number of sources, their angular separation and the reverberation time of the room are varied. The results indicate that AIV outperforms PIV and Steered Response Power (SRP) with an average accuracy between 5 and 10 degrees for sources with angular separation of 30 degrees or more. AIV also shows better robustness to reverberation time than PIV and SRP
Expression levels of vascular endothelial growth factors A and C in patients with peptic ulcers and gastric cancer
Purpose: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is one of the most important growth factors for metastatic tumors. To clarify the role of VEGF-A and C in patients with peptic ulcer disease (PUD) or gastric cancer (GC), we evaluated the expression levels of these two molecules. We also analyzed the effect of Helicobacter pylori infection on VEGF-A and C expression levels
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