Functions of autophagy in lipid homeostasis and survival in androgen-dependent prostate cancer cells

Androgen deprivation therapy, one of the standard treatments for prostate cancer, induces apoptosis as well as autophagy in androgen-responsive PCa cells. As modulation of autophagy is a new paradigm for enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of various cancer therapies, we sought to determine the functions of autophagy during androgen deprivation. In this study, we confirmed that androgen removal or inhibition induces autophagy in two different hormone sensitive prostate cancer cells. Androgen deprivation also caused depletion of lipid droplets which was abrogated on inhibition of autophagy by pharmacological means (3-methyladenine, bafilomycin A1) or using a genetic approach (Atg5 siRNA). In addition, colocalization of lipid droplets and autophagic vesicles was observed in LNCaP cells, which was further enhanced by blocking the autophagic flux. These findings suggest that autophagy mediates lipid droplet degradation and lipolysis in androgen sensitive prostate cancer cells. Furthermore, inhibition of autophagy by chloroquine during androgen deprivation synergistically killed LNCaP cells in a dose and time dependent manner. We further confirmed that chloroquine caused accumulation of autophagosomes and decreased cytosolic ATP levels. Moreover, chloroquine induced apoptosis in androgen deprived LNCaP cells. These findings suggest that chloroquine may be used as an adjuvant in hormone therapy to improve therapeutic efficacy

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Hypertensive Retinopathy in Hypertensive Patients in a Tertiary Hospital of Gandaki Province of Nepal

Introduction: Hypertensive retinopathy is one of the major complications of hypertension. The presence of hypertensive retinopathy may be an indicator of the presence of other complications too. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and risk factors of hypertensive retinopathy in hypertensive patients in a tertiary care hospital in Nepal. Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study conducted among 95 hypertensive patients aged 30 years and above. Standard proforma was used to collect socio-demographic and clinical variables of the patients. Detailed eye examination including fundus evaluation under mydriasis was done on all patients and hypertensive retinopathy was graded according to Keith-Wagener-Barker classification. Statistical analysis was carried out using Epi-info 7. Results: The mean age of the study sample was 59.74±15.11 years. The prevalence of hypertensive retinopathy was 38.95%. Among the patients with hypertensive retinopathy, the prevalence of grade I, II, III, and IV retinopathies were 7.36%, 17.89%, 10.52%, and 3.15% respectively. There was a statistically significant association between hypertensive retinopathy and controlled blood pressure and treatment of hypertension. However, there was no statistically significant association between hypertensive retinopathy and gender, duration of hypertension, residence, family history, history of smoking, and diet. Conclusion: Uncontrolled blood pressure and untreated patients of hypertension were the significant risk factors for hypertensive retinopathy. Early diagnosis and treatment of hypertension are essential to prevent loss of vision

Research Publications of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru: A Scientometrics Study

The study attempts to analyse research publications of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru in physics during the period 2010 - 2019. The bibliographic data for this study was extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database. The study analyses the year-wise research publications, types of document, preferred journals for publication, prolific author, h-index, most collaborating institutions and countries, etc. This paper analyses 2593 research papers published by scientists of the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru during the period under the study. The findings indicate that the growth of literature pattern is linear, and journals articles (2421) are the most preferred form of publications by the researchers to communicate their research. Ajay Kumar Sood is found to be the most prolific author and Physical Review B is the most preferred journal. In the most cited publications, only one paper was single-authored and other 19 research papers were multiple-authored. Indian Institute of Technology and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research were the leading collaborating institutions (195). The USA, Germany, France, England, and Sweden were the top five most collaborative countries

Interprofessional working: perceptions of healthcare professionals in Nepalese hospitals

Interprofessional working (IPW) is an essential part of the health service delivery system. Effective delivery of health services relies on the contribution of healthcare professionals (HCPs) from all groups. The aim of the study is to examine how HCPs collaborate and to assess their perceptions of IPW on healthcare delivery. This study follows a qualitative research approach. It was conducted in three hospitals in Nepal using semi-structured interview schedule. Purposive sampling method was used to select the hospitals and the participants. All together thirty-eight HCPs participated in the research. This study suggests that IPW is an integral part of HCPs’ life and they viewed it as a booster to support them to deliver the optimal and desired health outcomes. HCPs perceived that organisational support and involvement of service users are important for the successful delivery IPW. Verbal means of communication are mostly used during IPW. Nursing and allied health professionals (AHPs) are more critical to the medical professionals because they feel domination and professional isolation from the medical professionals. This study recognises factors that support IPW and also identifies various barriers to IPW in Nepalese hospitals

Risk of Multiple Myeloma In Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Meta-Analysis of Case-Control and Cohort Studies

Multiple myeloma is a malignant neoplasm of plasma cells mainly affecting elderly patients. Despite the wealth of information available on therapeutic strategies, the etiology and pathogenesis of myeloma remain unclear. In the current study, a meta-analysis was conducted to assess the possible association between rheumatoid arthritis and myeloma

Service Users’ Involvement and Engagement in Interprofessional Care

Interprofessional care is joint working between health care professionals by pooling their skills, knowledge and expertise, to make joint decisions and learn from each other for the benefits of service users and healthcare professionals. Service users involvement is considered as one of the important aspects of planning, management and decision making process in the delivery of health care to service users. Service users’ involvement is not the same as public involvement and partnership arrangements in health care. The active involvement and engagement of service users in health care positively contributes to improve quality of care, to promote better health and to shape the future of health services. Service users are always at the centre of health care professionals’ values, work ethics and roles. Moreover, service users centred interprofessional team collaboration is very important to deliver effective health services. Keywords: interprofessional; service users; health care; benefits; collaboration. | PubMe

Brain Tumor Segmentation Methods based on MRI images: Review Paper

Statistically, incidence rate of brain tumors for women is 26.55 per 100,000 and this rate for men is 22.37 per 100,000 on average. The most dangerous occurring type of these tumors are known as Gliomas. The form of cancerous tumors so-called Glioblastomas are so aggressive that patients between ages 40 to 64 have only a 5.3% chance with a 5-year survival rate. In addition, it mostly depends on treatment course procedures since 331 to 529 is median survival time that shows how this class is commonly severe form of brain cancer. Unfortunately, a mean expenditure of glioblastoma costs 100,000$. Due to high mortality rates, gliomas and glioblastomas should be determined and diagnosed accurately to follow early stages of those cases. However, a method which is suitable to diagnose a course of treatment and screen deterministic features including location, spread and volume is multimodality magnetic resonance imaging for gliomas. The tumor segmentation process is determined through the ability to advance in computer vision. More precisely, CNN (convolutional neural networks) demonstrates stable and effective outcomes similar to other automated methods in terms of tumor segmentation algorithms. However, I will present all methods separately to specify effectiveness and accuracy of segmentation of tumor. Also, most commonly known techniques based on GANs (generative adversarial networks) have an advantage in some domains to analyze nature of manual segmentations.

Impaired Functional Criticality of Human Brain during Alzheimer's Disease Progression

The progression of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has been proposed to comprise three stages, subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and AD. Was brain dynamics across the three stages smooth? Was there a critical transition? How could we characterize and study functional criticality of human brain? Based on dynamical characteristics of critical transition from nonlinear dynamics, we proposed a vertex-wise Index of Functional Criticality (vIFC) of fMRI time series in this study. Using 42 SCD, 67 amnestic MCI (aMCI), 34 AD patients as well as their age-, sex-, years of education-matched 54 NC, our new method vIFC successfully detected significant patient-normal differences for SCD and aMCI, as well as significant negative correlates of vIFC in the right middle temporal gyrus with total scores of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in SCD. In comparison, standard deviation of fMRI time series only detected significant differences between AD patients and normal controls. As an index of functional criticality of human brain derived from nonlinear dynamics, vIFC could serve as a sensitive neuroimaging marker for future studies; considering much more vIFC impairments in aMCI compared to SCD and AD, our study indicated aMCI as a critical stage across AD progression