The association between celiac disease and eosinophilic esophagitis in children and adults

BACKGROUND: An association between eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and celiac disease (CD) has been suggested in the literature. Our aim was to confirm and quantify the association between these two diseases. METHODS: All patients in a large Canadian city diagnosed with EoE or CD over a five-year period were identified. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. RESULTS: Over the five-year study EoE was diagnosed in 421 patients and CD was diagnosed in 763 patients. The incidence of EoE ranged from 2.1 to 10.7 cases per 100,000 population. The incidence of CD ranged from 10.4 to 15.7 cases per 100,000 population. Among the EoE cohort, 83 (20%) cases of EoE and 245 (32%) cases of CD were diagnosed in pediatric patients. The incidence of EoE in the pediatric subpopulation ranged from 3.7 to 6.9 cases per 100,000 population. The incidence of CD in the pediatric subpopulation ranged from 9.5 to 22.7 cases per 100,000 population. The concomitant diagnosis of both EoE and CD was made in three patients, all of whom were pediatric males. The SIR for EoE in the CD cohort was 48.4 (95% CI = 9.73, 141.41) with a SIR for CD within the paediatric EoE cohort of 75.05 (95% CI = 15.08, 219.28). CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the association between EoE and CD. However, this association may be limited to pediatrics where the risk of each condition is increased 50 to 75-fold in patients diagnosed with the alternative condition. The concomitant diagnosis of these conditions should be considered in pediatric patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms

Experience using processes for pervasive applications

Pervasive Computing envisions seamless computing support for users while performing their everyday tasks. Many of these tasks are hard to capture by the notion of a single application as their requirements on computing support vary over time. To ease the development of applications for such tasks, we have designed an application model for process-oriented pervasive applications, called Sentient Processes, and a supporting middleware system implementing the flow control for processes. In this paper, we show the capabilities of the Sentient Process model to capture everyday user tasks by the example of a process supporting a student in managing his classes during a term

Adaptation Support for Stateful Components in PCOM

Abstract. In ever-changing environments as they are envisioned in Pervasive Computing, applications have to adapt to changes in their execution environment. The automated composition of applications from components that are distributed across different devices is an adaptation technique that has been proposed by a number of researchers. While many approaches support the dynamic reselection of stateless components in order to adapt running applications, they often fall short of providing programmable solutions to automatically reselect components that carry application-specific state. In this paper, we discuss the requirements towards this support and we propose a framework that enables the (semi-)automatic reselection of PCOM components.

Pas de Deux: Active Ulcerative Colitis in an HIV-Positive Patient

A 40-year-old male who was found to be human immunodeficiency virus-positive when he presented with bloody diarrhea in 1986 is described. Clinical, laboratory, endoscopic and histological findings were all compatible with ulcerative colitis, and stool cultures were repeatedly negative for pathogens. Colitis was initially mild and controlled with intermittent oral aminosalicylic acid products. Since 1993 he has had more significant symptoms requiring prednisone up to 40 mg/day. Repeat colonoscopy disclosed pancolitis and biopsies did not show evidence of cytomegalovirus infection. He has not had an acquired immune deficiency syndrome-defining illness. CD4 cells fell below normal as his colitis worsened. This case raises questions about immune regulation in ulcerative colitis because the patient has active disease in addition to a reduced number of T helper cells. It also presents a difficult management problem because the patient has a limited life expectancy and is reluctant to accept colectomy, and further immunosuppressive therapy may be dangerous

Experience using processes for pervasive applications

Abstract: Pervasive Computing envisions seamless computing support for users while performing their everyday tasks. Many of these tasks are hard to capture by the notion of a single application as their requirements on computing support vary over time. To ease the development of applications for such tasks, we have designed an application model for process-oriented pervasive applications, called Sentient Processes, and a supporting middleware system implementing the flow control for processes. In this paper, we show the capabilities of the Sentient Process model to capture everyday user tasks by the example of a process supporting a student in managing his classes during a term.

Elucidation of the genetic causes of bicuspid aortic valve disease.

AIMS The present study aims to characterize the genetic risk architecture of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) disease, the most common congenital heart defect. METHODS AND RESULTS We carried out a genome-wide association study (GWAS) including 2236 BAV patients and 11 604 controls. This led to the identification of a new risk locus for BAV on chromosome 3q29. The single nucleotide polymorphism rs2550262 was genome-wide significant BAV associated (P = 3.49 × 10-08) and was replicated in an independent case-control sample. The risk locus encodes a deleterious missense variant in MUC4 (p.Ala4821Ser), a gene that is involved in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transformation. Mechanistical studies in zebrafish revealed that loss of Muc4 led to a delay in cardiac valvular development suggesting that loss of MUC4 may also play a role in aortic valve malformation. The GWAS also confirmed previously reported BAV risk loci at PALMD (P = 3.97 × 10-16), GATA4 (P = 1.61 × 10-09), and TEX41 (P = 7.68 × 10-04). In addition, the genetic BAV architecture was examined beyond the single-marker level revealing that a substantial fraction of BAV heritability is polygenic and ∼20% of the observed heritability can be explained by our GWAS data. Furthermore, we used the largest human single-cell atlas for foetal gene expression and show that the transcriptome profile in endothelial cells is a major source contributing to BAV pathology. CONCLUSION Our study provides a deeper understanding of the genetic risk architecture of BAV formation on the single marker and polygenic level