Analyzing Digital Image by Deep Learning for Melanoma Diagnosis

Image classi cation is an important task in many medical applications, in order to achieve an adequate diagnostic of di erent le- sions. Melanoma is a frequent kind of skin cancer, which most of them can be detected by visual exploration. Heterogeneity and database size are the most important di culties to overcome in order to obtain a good classi cation performance. In this work, a deep learning based method for accurate classi cation of wound regions is proposed. Raw images are fed into a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) producing a probability of being a melanoma or a non-melanoma. Alexnet and GoogLeNet were used due to their well-known e ectiveness. Moreover, data augmentation was used to increase the number of input images. Experiments show that the compared models can achieve high performance in terms of mean ac- curacy with very few data and without any preprocessing.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A survey of metabolic syndrome in first-degree relatives (fathers) of patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome

Objectives: Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) are at twice the risk of developing metabolic syndrome, compared to women from the general population. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in the first-degree relatives (fathers) of patients suffering from PCOS.Design: This was a case control study.Setting and subjects: The study was conducted on 34 fathers of women with PCOS who presented at gynaecological clinics in Shiraz, Iran (as the case group), and 34 fathers of healthy women (as the control group).Outcomes measures: Metabolic syndrome was determined according to Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) and International Diabetes Federation (IDF) indices. A blood sample was obtained to assay serum insulin, blood sugar, testosterone and lipoproteins. The data were analysed using independent t-test, Fisher’s exact test and the chisquare test.Results: According to the ATP III index, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 29.35% in the fathers of the PCOS patients and 8.8% in the fathers of women in the control group (p-value < 0.05). According to the IDF index, this rate was 17.41 in the fathers of patients with PCOS (p-value < 0.05). According to the quantitative insulin sensitivity check and homeostasis model insulin resistance indices, the prevalence of insulin resistance, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and hypercholesterolaemia was higher in the fathers of patients with PCOS than in the control group, but the difference was not significant (p-value > 0.05).Conclusion: The fathers of the women with PCOS were at a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, impaired glucose tolerance and diabetes.Keywords: metabolic disorders, polycystic ovarian syndrome, Insulin resistance, impaired glucose toleranc

Isolation of a 60 kDa protein with in vitro anticancer activity against human cancer cell lines from the purple fluid of the Persian Gulf sea hare, Aplysia dactylomela

Sea hares have greatly attracted the interest of all those investigating chemical defense substances. Most of these substances are low molecular weight compounds derived from algal diets. In vitroanticancer effect of a 60 kDa protein isolated from the purple fluid of Aplysia dactylomela on four human cancer cell lines was investigated in this study. A 60 kDa protein was purified from secreted purple fluid of A. dactylomela, a sea hare from Persian Gulf. The protein purification procedure consisted basically of ammonium sulfate precipitation, ion exchange chromatography using DEAE– Sepharose and ultra-filtration method. In vitro antiproliferative and cytotoxic activity of the protein ofinterest were evaluated on L929, K562, HL60 and NB4 human cancer cell lines. The antiproliferative and cytotxic effects of 60 kDa protein on human cancer cell lines were measured by MTT assay. Resultsshowed that the 60 kDa protein of the purple fluid of A. dactylomela exhibited the antiproliferative effect on human cancer cell lines, especially on NB4 cell line. It was maximally active at 0.5 – 1.5 ìg/ml on NB4 cell line. Interestingly, the protein did not show significant cytotoxic effects

Developing and validating a checklist for accreditation in leadership and management of hospitals in Iran

INTRODUCTION: In the Iranian Accreditation System, leadership and management standards have been almost ignored and not paid enough and necessary attention to the structural components and the infrastructures standards in management and leadership sections. Governing body, medical staff, chief executive officer (CEO), and nursing management standards are inadequate and lack accountability. These standards could lead to reform and finally provide the context for accomplishment of an appropriate accreditation program. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a descriptive, comparative, and qualitative study. It was done in two phases. The first phase included literature review of the standards of the selected countries followed by comparison of the standards of the board of trustees, medical staff, CEOs, and nursing management standards to develop the primary framework for Iranian hospitals. In phase two, the primary framework was validated true three rounds of Delphi technique. RESULTS: Surveying the accreditation system standards in selected countries included the USA, Egypt, Malaysia, and Iran. It was found that the management and leadership standards were classify as governing body, medical staff, CEOs, and nursing management standards. The result of this study provides a framework for improvement of the Iranian national accreditation program. CONCLUSION: In regarded to the importance of the leadership and management standards in reform and change and promotion of the health services quality, efficiency, and effectiveness, the results of this study showed that the present standards of the Iranian accreditation assessment system and guidelines lack the necessary infrastructures for implementing a successful national accreditation progra

Skin Lesion Segmentation Ensemble with Diverse Training Strategies

This paper presents a novel strategy to perform skin lesion segmentation from dermoscopic images. We design an effective segmentation pipeline, and explore several pre-training methods to initialize the features extractor, highlighting how different procedures lead the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to focus on different features. An encoder-decoder segmentation CNN is employed to take advantage of each pre-trained features extractor. Experimental results reveal how multiple initialization strategies can be exploited, by means of an ensemble method, to obtain state-of-the-art skin lesion segmentation accuracy

European Dermatology Forum guidelines on topical photodynamic therapy 2019 Part 2: emerging indications – field cancerization, photorejuvenation and inflammatory/infective dermatoses

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Correlation of Circulating Omentin-1 with Bone Mineral Density in Multiple Sclerosis: The Crosstalk between Bone and Adipose Tissue

BACKGROUND: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are at increased risk of osteoporosis and fractures. Adipose tissue-derived adipokines may play important roles in the osteoimmunology of MS. In order to determine whether omentin-1 and vaspin may be related to bone health in MS patients, we compared circulating levels of these recently identified adipokines, between MS patients and healthy controls. METHODS: A total of 35 ambulatory MS patients with relapsing-remitting courses were compared with 38 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Bone mineral density (BMD) was determined for the lumbar spine (L2-L4) and the proximal femur using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Circulating omentin-1, vaspin, osteocalcin, osteopontin, osteoprotegerin, the receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand, matrix metalloproteinase 9, C-reactive protein and 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels were evaluated by highly specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methods. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between the two groups regarding bone-related cytokines, adipocytokines, and the BMD measurements of patients with MS and the healthy controls. However, in multiple regression analysis, serum omentin-1 levels were positively correlated with BMD at the femoral neck (β = 0.49, p = 0.016), total hip (β = 0.42, p = 0.035), osteopontin (β = 0.42, p = 0.030) and osteocalcin (β = 0.53, p = 0.004) in MS patients. No correlations were found between vaspin, biochemical, and BMD measures in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated omentin-1 serum levels are correlated with BMD at the femoral neck and the serum levels of osteocalcin and osteopontin in MS patients. Therefore, there is crosstalk between adipose tissue and bone in MS

Parasites and immunotherapy: with or against?

Immunotherapy is a sort of therapy in which antibody or antigen administrates to the patient in order to treat or reduce the severity of complications of disease. This kind of treatment practiced in a wide variety of diseases including infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, cancers and allergy. Successful and unsuccessful immunotherapeutic strategies have been practiced in variety of parasitic infections. On the other hand parasites or parasite antigens have also been considered for immunotherapy against other diseases such as cancer, asthma and multiple sclerosis. In this paper immunotherapy against common parasitic infections, and also immunotherapy of cancer, asthma and multiple sclerosis with parasites or parasite antigens have been reviewe