Magnetic polymethylmethacrylate cements for hyperthermic cancer treatment

PhD ThesisPolymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) bone cements have been used for stabilizing bone prostheses and filling cavities due to their suitable mechanical properties. PMMA bone cements, with and without addition of magnetic glass-ceramic (MGC), have been recently investigated for the treatment of bone cancer. The addition of MGC to PMMA bone cements allows for the treatment of cancer via magnetic induction hyperthermia.This PhD thesis focused on the potential of MGC addition to commercial dental and orthopaedic PMMA cements for bone cancer treatment. MGC was prepared by melt-quenching technique at 1550°C. It contained a crystalline magnetic phase embedded in the glass matrix. MGC was mixed with dental and orthopaedic PMMA cements in amounts up to 40%. A method for production of magnetic PMMA cements (MPCs) with high reproducibility and dimensional accuracy was developed. The mechanical properties, in vitro bioactivity, cytotoxicity and heat generation of the resulted MPCswere evaluated.Compressive strength and four-point bending tests on MPCs were performed using the ISO 5833:2002 standard. The magnetic cements containing up to 30% MGC met the ISO 5833:2002 standard requirements.In vitro bioactivity was tested in a simulated body fluid (SBF). Apatite crystals started to form on the surface of MPCs after 2 weeks of immersion in SBF, showing the bioactive properties of these MPCs. Although cytotoxicity test results were found inconclusive, there was a decrease in the cell viability with addition of MGC in the bone cement. Preliminary induction heating tests showed that all MPC samples could be heated to a similar temperature range in 5 minutes using magnetic fields compatible with operating rooms in hospitals. The thermal, mechanical and biological properties of MPCs, analysed during this PhD thesis, showed that MPCs are promising biomaterials for the treatment of bone cancer using magnetic induction hyperthermia

Güç Mesafesinin Demografik Niteliklerle Birlikte Sosyal Sermaye Üzerine Etkisi

Bu araştırma güç mesafesinin demografik özelliklerle birlikte sosyal sermaye üzerindeki etkisini araştırmak amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırma verisi anket tekniği ile toplanmıştır. Katılımcıların tanımlayıcı bilgi formunda, güç mesafesi ölçeğinde ve sosyal sermaye ölçeğinde yer alan ifadelere cevap vermesi istenmiştir. Malatya Organize Sanayi Bölgesi Tekstil sektöründeki işletme çalışanları araştırmanın anakütlesini oluşturmaktadır. Anakütle içinden kolayda örneklem yöntemi ile seçilmiş toplam 401 çalışana anket uygulanmıştır. Bu nedenle araştırmanın örneklemi 401 çalışandan oluşmaktadır. Toplanan verinin analizinde öncelikle Cronbach Alpha güvenirlik testi yapılmıştır. Ardından hipotezlerin testi için çok yönlü regresyon analizi uygulanmıştır. Sonuç olarak güç mesafesinin demografik özelliklerle birlikte sosyal sermaye ve onun öğeleri olan güven, norm ve sosyal ağlar üzerinde etkili oldukları saptanmıştır

The prevelance of human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes detected by PCR in women with normal and abnormal cervico-vaginal cytology

Objectives: Cervical cancer is the second most common type of cancer for women worldwide with a great proportion proved to be related to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. As infection with HPV is the strongest risk factor for cervical neoplasia, detection of HPV genotypes in cervical and vaginal specimens of women with normal and abnormal cytology seems to be of paramount importance in cervical cancer screening. The objective of the study is to evaluate the prevalence and HPV genotypes among women with normal or abnormal Pap smear tests. Material and methods: This retrospective study was conducted in a tertiary care university hospital in western Turkey. A total of 201 patients in whom both HPV typing and Pap test was performed between 2012 and 2016 in our obstetrics and gynecology department were enrolled in this study. Clinical and laboratory data were obtained for all participants. Cervical smears of the patients were classified by the Bethesda system and HPV analyses were done using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Results: This study included 201 women, 72 of whom had normal and 129 of whom had abnormal Pap smear results. HPV DNA was detected in 91 (45.2%) of the 201 investigated women. Out of 72 patients with normal cervico-vaginal cytology, HPV positivity was detected in 35 (49%) patients, whereas 33 (35%) patients out of 94 with ASCUS , 18 (62%) patients out of 29 with LSIL and 5 (83%) patients out of 6 with HSIL had HPV positivity. Out of 35 HPV positive women that had normal pap test results, 25 (75%) were found to have high risk HPV (HR-HPV) genotypes. In women with ASCUS, LSIL and HSIL, HR-HPV genotype rates were found to be 94%, 89% and 100% respectively. The most common identified HPV types were HPV58, HPV16, HPV31, HPV33, HPV11 and HPV35. Conclusions: The frequency of HPV infection was found to be higher in our study compared to previous reports. Moreover, although HR-HPV genotypes were also detected in patients with normal cervical cytology, a majority of patients with HR-HPV genotypes were associated with abnormal cervical smear cytology including high rates of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion

Comparison of Feedforward Perceptron Network with LSTM for Solar Cell Radiation Prediction

Intermittency of electrical power in developing countries, as well as some European countries such as Turkey, can be eluded by taking advantage of solar energy. Correct prediction of solar radiation constitutes a very important step to take advantage of PV solar panels. We propose an experimental study to predict the amount of solar radiation using a classical artificial neural network (ANN) and deep learning methods. PV panel and solar radiation data were collected at Duzce University in Turkey. Moreover, we included meteorological data collected from the Meteorological Ministry of Turkey in Duzce. Data were collected on a daily basis with a 5-min interval. Data were cleaned and preprocessed to train long-short-term memory (LSTM) and ANN models to predict the solar radiation amount of one day ahead. Models were evaluated using coefficient of determination (R2), mean square error (MSE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean biased error (MBE). LSTM outperformed ANN with R2, MSE, RMSE, MAE, and MBE of 0.93, 0.008, 0.089, 0.17, and 0.09, respectively. Moreover, we compared our results with two similar studies in the literature. The proposed study paves the way for utilizing renewable energy by leveraging the usage of PV panels

Evaluation of near accommodation in type 1 diabetic patients

Aim: To evaluate accommodation in type 1 diabetic patients by PowerRef3 in our study. The PowerRef 3 can be used in studying the near triad of accommodation, vergence and pupil responses in healthy and clinical populations. Method: The accommodation of 14 patients (mean age: 33.14 ± 10.27) with type 1 diabetes and 16 control subjects (mean age: 35.81 ± 5.88) were measured by PowerRef3 at 30 cm with a standard accommodation target. The metabolic status of the diabetic patients and accommodation were compared with those of control subjects. Results: The mean accommodation, spherical equivalents and age was not significantly different between diabetic and control subjects.  The mean duration of diabetes was 13 ± 5.7 years (min: 7, max: 27). The mean accommodation was not significantly correlated with duration of diabetes and glycated hemoglobin levels, but it was significantly correlated with the spherical equivalents (p<0.05) and weakly correlated other metabolic parameters (fasting plasma glucose, cholesterol, low density lipoprotein, high density lipoprotein and triglyceride levels). Conclusion: The accommodation of type 1 diabetes patients at pre-presbyopic ages without diabetic retinopathy was similar to control subjects with PowerRef 3 measurements. This may reflect that good diabetes control, which will prevent retinopathy, may prevent the decrease in accommodation in type 1 diabetes patients

Serum Paraoxonase, Arylesterase, and GlutathioneS-Transferase Activities and Oxidative Stress Levels in Patients with Mushroom Poisoning

OBJECTIVES: Consumption of toxic species of mushrooms may have detrimental effects and increase oxidative stress. Paraoxonase, arylesterase and glutathione-S-transferase are antioxidants that resist oxidative stress. In this study, we analyzed the changes in these enzymes during intoxication due to mushrooms. METHODS: The study enrolled 49 adult patients with a diagnosis of mushroom poisoning according to clinical findings and 49 healthy volunteers as the control group. The patients with mild clinical findings were hospitalized due to the possibility that the patient had also eaten the mushrooms and due to clinical findings in the late period, which could be fatal. Paraoxonase, arylesterase, and glutathione-S-transferase concentrations, as well as total antioxidant and oxidant status, were determined in the 49 patients and 49 healthy volunteers by taking blood samples in the emergency department. RESULTS: While paraoxonase, arylesterase, and total antioxidant status were significantly decreased in the patient group (po0.05), glutathione-S-transferase, total oxidant status and the oxidative stress index were significantly higher (po0.05). There was a positive correlation between the hospitalization time and the oxidative stress index (r=0.752, po0.001), whereas a negative correlation was found with glutathione-S-transferase (r=-0.420, p=0.003). CONCLUSION: We observed a significant decrease in paraoxonase and arylesterase and an increase in glutathione-S-transferase and oxidative stress indexes in patients with mushroom poisoning, indicating that these patients had an oxidative status. In particular, a low total antioxidant status and high oxidative stress index may gain importance in terms of the assessment of hospitalization duration

The clinical, cytogenetics and molecular characterization of inverted duplication/deletion of chromosome 8p in a boy with mental and motor retardation: Genotype-phenotype correlation in a case report

Background: Rearrangements that occur mainly through the non-allelic homologous recombination (NAHR) during maternal meiosis in short arms of chromosome 8 is relatively associated with various clinical spectrum.Aim: The objective of this study was to report cytogenetics and molecular characterization of a mental and motor retarded boy with short arm of chromosome 8 rearrangements [invdupdel(8p)] in this current case report. Subjects and methods: We report an 11-year-old boy with scoliosis, intellectual disability, mental-motor retardation and characteristic facial features. Agenesis of corpus callosum was detected with brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) analysis. Derivative chromosome 8 structure was identified after conventional cytogenetics – karyotype analysis, Multiplex Ligation-Dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA) and Microarray-based Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) techniques. Genotype-phenotype correlation in the current proband case will be discussed.Results: Case was diagnosed as 46, XY, der (8), del (8) (p23.1) invdup (8) (p11.1-p23.1) by using advanced comparable techniques. Subtelomeric MLPA analysis showed deletion of FBXO25 gene which is located at 8p23.3 locus and FISH with subtelomeric probes for 8p shows also only deleted region. The microarray- CGH profilling showed 7,9 mb deletion for 8p23.1 and 31 mb duplication for 8p11.1 locuses.Conclusion: Results from the current case emphasized that the cases with clinical manifestations of such disorders extremely need to be examined by combined comparable genetics techniques such as; karyotyping, FISH, MLPA and chromosomal microarray for the accurate phenotype – genotype correlation.Keywords: Chromosomal rearrangement, Corpus callosum, Invdupdel(8p)Array-CGH, MLP

Gene regulatory and gene editing tools and their applications for retinal diseases and neuroprotection: From proof-of-concept to clinical trial.

Gene editing and gene regulatory fields are continuously developing new and safer tools that move beyond the initial CRISPR/Cas9 technology. As more advanced applications are emerging, it becomes crucial to understand and establish more complex gene regulatory and editing tools for efficient gene therapy applications. Ophthalmology is one of the leading fields in gene therapy applications with more than 90 clinical trials and numerous proof-of-concept studies. The majority of clinical trials are gene replacement therapies that are ideal for monogenic diseases. Despite Luxturna's clinical success, there are still several limitations to gene replacement therapies including the size of the target gene, the choice of the promoter as well as the pathogenic alleles. Therefore, further attempts to employ novel gene regulatory and gene editing applications are crucial to targeting retinal diseases that have not been possible with the existing approaches. CRISPR-Cas9 technology opened up the door for corrective gene therapies with its gene editing properties. Advancements in CRISPR-Cas9-associated tools including base modifiers and prime editing already improved the efficiency and safety profile of base editing approaches. While base editing is a highly promising effort, gene regulatory approaches that do not interfere with genomic changes are also becoming available as safer alternatives. Antisense oligonucleotides are one of the most commonly used approaches for correcting splicing defects or eliminating mutant mRNA. More complex gene regulatory methodologies like artificial transcription factors are also another developing field that allows targeting haploinsufficiency conditions, functionally equivalent genes, and multiplex gene regulation. In this review, we summarized the novel gene editing and gene regulatory technologies and highlighted recent translational progress, potential applications, and limitations with a focus on retinal diseases

Generation and Analysis of Expressed Sequence Tags from Olea europaea L.

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is an important source of edible oil which was originated in Near-East region. In this study, two cDNA libraries were constructed from young olive leaves and immature olive fruits for generation of ESTs to discover the novel genes and search the function of unknown genes of olive. The randomly selected 3840 colonies were sequenced for EST collection from both libraries. Readable 2228 sequences for olive leaf and 1506 sequences for olive fruit were assembled into 205 and 69 contigs, respectively, whereas 2478 were singletons. Putative functions of all 2752 differentially expressed unique sequences were designated by gene homology based on BLAST and annotated using BLAST2GO. While 1339 ESTs show no homology to the database, 2024 ESTs have homology (under 80%) with hypothetical proteins, putative proteins, expressed proteins, and unknown proteins in NCBI-GenBank. 635 EST's unique genes sequence have been identified by over 80% homology to known function in other species which were not previously described in Olea family. Only 3.1% of total EST's was shown similarity with olive database existing in NCBI. This generated EST's data and consensus sequences were submitted to NCBI as valuable source for functional genome studies of olive

Presence of Class I and Class II Integrons in Methicilin Resistant Staphylococci and Their Relations with Antibiotic Resistance: A Preliminary Study from Turkey

Background: Emergence of antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern. It is known that antibiotic resistance is transferred by different ways. Integrons as one of these mechanisims cause to spread antibiotic resistance in Gram negative bacteria but also it is shown to be effective for transferring genes in Gram positive bacteria. In the present study we aimed to examine the prevalence of class I and class II integrons in MRSA and MRCNS strains isolated from patients and to determine the relationship between antibiotic resistance and the presence of integrons. Methods: Sixty four MRSA and 62 MRCNS strains were included in this study. Antibiotic susceptibility testings were performed. Genomic and plasmid DNAs were extracted and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) was used for the detection of the intI and intII genes. The PCR products were visualised in 1.5 % agarose gel electrophoresis. Pearson chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used for comparing categorical variables. Results: Among 126 staphylococci 11 (8.7% - 4 MRSA and 7 MRCNS) were shown to carry class I integron; whereas 7 MRCNS (5.5%) were class II positive. Both of class I and class II integrons were detected to possess in four MRSA (3.2%). There was no statistically significant relation between presence of integrons and resistance to each of antibiotics (p>0.05). Conclusion & Recommendation: In the present study we did not find any significant relation between resistance rates and the presence of integrons but we suggest that these results showed an important data about the extended distributions of integrons not only among Gram negative bacteria but also in staphylococci.Keywords: MRSA, MRCNS, class I integron, class II integron, anbiotic resistanceDOI: 10.7176/JHMN/75-0