BACKGROUND: Endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) is an important tool in the diagnosis of mediastinal and hilar pathology. We describe our experience with EBUS-TBNA performed in a teaching institution primarily under conscious sedation. METHODS: Patients who underwent EBUS-TBNA were included in this retrospective review. We focused on the diagnostic ...

Background: Graves Ophthalmopathy (GO) develops or worsens in up to 1/3 of patients treated with radioactive iodine (RAI) for Graves' hyperthyroidism. We sought to identify the prevalence of development or worsening of GO in patients treated with RAI for Graves' hyperthyroidism and to identify risk factors associated with that outcome. ...

Establishing human cell models of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) to mimic motor neuron-specific phenotypes holds the key to understanding the pathogenesis of this devastating disease. Here, we developed a closely representative cell model of SMA by knocking down the disease-determining gene, survival motor neuron (SMN), in human embryonic stem cells ...

Background. The role of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) in estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancer remains to be fully elucidated. We evaluated TIMP-1 as a prognostic marker in patients treated with adjuvant tamoxifen and investigated TIMP-1s association with Ki67 and ER/progesterone receptor (PR)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Rash, liver dysfunction, and diarrhea are known major adverse events associated with erlotinib and gefitinib. However, clinical trials with gefitinib have reported different proportions of adverse events compared to trials with erlotinib. In an in vitro study, cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2D6 was shown to be involved in the ...

Background: Problem-based learning (PBL) is a well used educational strategy, more frequently used in the pre-clinical phase rather than the clinical phase of medical student learning. This practical application explores its use in a Family Medicine undergraduate clerkship. Method: The PBL application is described during a 10- week rotation in ...

Background:The intake of a Western diet enriched in animal fat has been shown to be a major risk factor for Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Previous rodent studies have indicated that these conditions may be triggered by the accumulation of the sphingolipid ceramide in insulin-sensitive tissues. However, data are lacking ...

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is a common condition in adulthood. The disorder is characterized by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Alongside these symptoms, it is discussed whether symptoms of emotional dysregulation could add additional and better description of the psychopathology of ADHD. Neither the current ICD-10 and DSM-IV nor the ...

PURPOSE: Scintigraphy with radiolabelled autologous white blood cells (WBC) is a widely used method for the detection of sites of infection. In this study we evaluated the role of WBC scintigraphy in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with suspected soft tissue infection caused by dermal fillers in the face. ...

The cerebral blood volume (CBV) is a crucial physiological indicator of tissue viability and vascular reactivity. Thus, noninvasive CBV mapping has been of great interest. For this, ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide (USPIO) nanoparticles, including monocrystalline iron oxide nanoparticles, can be used as long-half-life, intravascular susceptibility agents of CBV MRI measurements. ...

Formyl Peptide Receptors (FPRs) are vital in the host inflammatory response, playing an important regulatory role in multiple diseases. A Gd(iii) DOTA conjugate of cFLFLFK has been synthesised which targets and visualises FPR1 upon leukocytes in the inflammatory response via magnetic resonance imaging for the first time.

During a longitudinal study of the experience of reaching help quickly, 34 homebound women (ages 85 to 97) who lived alone reported 106 reach-help-quickly incidents (RHQIs). The purpose of this study was to expand knowledge about RHQIs and intentions relative to them and to compare those facets of experience for ...

Spatiotemporal correlations of spontaneous blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signals measured in the resting brain have been found to imply many resting-state coherent networks under both awake/conscious and anesthetized/unconscious conditions. To understand the resting-state brain networks in the unconscious state, spontaneous BOLD signals from the rat sensorimotor cortex were studied ...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the safety, efficacy, and long-term results of endovascular stent graft placement for ureteroarterial fistula (UAF). METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed stent graft placement for UAF performed at our institution from 2004 to 2012. Fistula location was assessed by contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) and angiography, and freedom from hematuria ...

Recent biochemical diagnostic guidelines for insulinomas require demonstration of hypoglycemia with inappropriately elevated (nonsuppressed) insulin, C-peptide, or proinsulin, but these criteria may overlap with those in patients without insulinomas. Use of an "amended" insulin-glucose ratio that accounts for the normal variation in insulin secretion according to prevailing glycemia may improve ...

PURPOSE: ORM1 is a plasma drug binding protein. Its polymorphism rs17650 (*S>*F) has been reported to be an important factor affecting the binding ability and effect of antiretroviral protease inhibitors. The aim of this study was to determine whether the ORM1 rs17650 polymorphism also influences warfarin therapy. METHODS: A total ...

PURPOSE: The reimbursement of phytotherapy drugs for the treatment of mild anxiety and insomnia ended in March 2006 in France. The aim of this study is to investigate the short-term impact of stopping phytotherapy reimbursement. METHODS: We monitored the prescriptions of 27 422 patients who received hypnotic and sedative phytotherapy drug ...

Open-label extensions [studies SP516 (NCT00501969) and SP715 (NCT00594386)] of the CLEOPATRA-PD and PREFER studies were conducted to evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of the dopaminergic agonist, rotigotine, over several years of follow-up in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). Eligible subjects completing the double-blind trials received open-label adjunctive rotigotine ...

BACKGROUND: The refinement of experimental stroke models is important for further development of neuroprotective interventions. AIMS AND/OR HYPOTHESIS: Our goal was to study the reproducibility of outcomes obtained in five rat models of middle cerebral artery (MCA) ligation in order to identify the optimal model for the preclinical studies. METHODS: ...

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypoglycemic effect of new biliopancreatic diversion and duodenal-jejunal bypass in Goto-Kakizaki rats and observe effects of the new surgical procedure on the glucose tolerance of GK rats. METHODS: Twenty-four 10-week-old rats (SPF grade) were randomly divided into groups A, B, ...

A number of maternal and perinatal factors to increase an infant's risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) have been found in past investigations. We analysed data for potential SIDS risk factors including the presence of complications or conditions considered as detrimental to the infant's or mother's health. The data ...

ACCESSIBLE SUMMARY: ● Empathy is considered as an integral component of the therapeutic nurse-patient relationship. ● Valid and reliable Chinese instruments to assess nursing students' empathy are scarce. ● This study evaluates psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Profession Students among Taiwanese undergraduate nursing students. ● A Chinese ...

Objectives. To compare the proportion of trauma craniotomies performed within 4 hours of presentation to emergency departments (ED) with and without on-site neurosurgery. Design. A retrospective cohort analysis of data collected prospectively between January 2005 and April 2010 from patients with traumatic brain injury who were admitted to the paediatric ...

Three major changes will probably be introduced in the DSM-5 regarding obsessive-compulsive disorder: OCD will be classified in the diagnostic category 'obsessive-compulsive and related disorders', the clinician should consider the degree of insight into a symptomatology (good to poor insight) and a subtype of tic-related OCD will be introduced. The ...

Clinicians providing consultation through mental health telephone consultation programs express concern about the potential legal risk of the practice. In this survey of six state mental health telephone consultation program directors, we report the annual number of children referred for consultation and the number of lawsuits against consultant clinicians. Between ...

Abstract Under oxidative stress conditions, mitochondria are the major site for cellular production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide anion and H(2)O(2) that can attack numerous mitochondrial proteins including dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase (DLDH). While DLDH is known to be vulnerable to oxidative inactivation, the mechanisms have not been clearly ...

Depression is a prominent feature in fibromyalgia syndrome. Patients with fibromyalgia syndrome who are obese, with poor sleep quality, and those who have recurrent episodes of binge eating are at greater risk to develop depression. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine the hypothesis that the relationship between ...

Of the many innovations in health care delivery proposed in the context of health reform for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes, the group visit model is relatively easy to implement and is effective for improving health outcomes and patient and provider satisfaction, with a neutral to positive effect ...

PURPOSE: Current Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines recommend avoiding hypoxemia after severe pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). Yet, recent studies on optimum admission oxygenation and ventilation parameters associated with discharge survival in pediatric TBI are lacking. MATERIALS AND METHODS: After IRB approval, a retrospective study involving pediatric patients ages ≤14 years with ...

The development of antibiotic resistance in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major cause of the pathogen's morbidity and is strongly correlated with the biofilm formation. Motility and adherence capacity in long-term stressed cells have not been extensively analyzed even though P. aeruginosa considered a model organism for the ...

Primary cutaneous histiocytoid or signet-ring cell carcinoma represents an extremely rare adnexal neoplasm that most frequently presents on the eyelid but more rarely may present in the axilla. As this tumor can resemble metastatic carcinoma with signet-ring cells, especially lobular carcinoma of the breast, it can often present a diagnostic ...

(15) N NMR chemical shift became a broadly utilized tool for characterization of complex structures and comparison of their properties. Despite the lack of systematic studies, the influence of solvent on the nitrogen coordination shift, Δ(15) N(coord) , was hitherto claimed to be negligible. Herein, we report the dramatic impact ...

Seasonal shifts in bacterial diversity of microbial mats were analyzed in three hot springs (39-68 °C) of Patagonia, using culture-independent methods. Three major bacterial groups were detected in all springs: Phyla Cyanobacteria and Bacteroidetes, and Order Thermales. Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria and Green Non-Sulfur Bacteria were also detected in small amounts and only ...

Backbone dynamics and conformational properties of drug peptide salmon calcitonin have been studied in aqueous solution using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Although salmon calcitonin (sCT) is largely unfolded in solution (as has been reported in several circular dichroism studies), the secondary H(α) chemical shifts and three bond H(N) -H(α) coupling ...

Some evidences highlighted a higher clinical expression of hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsy (HNPP) in males, and a higher load of traumatic nerve injuries due to different occupational activity has been invoked to explain this observation. It is unknown whether this increased clinical impairment corresponds to a greater ...

Background Wheat protein derivatives are used in a variety of products worldwide. Gluten is commercially used 'as is' or with modifications such as hydrolysis, which is carried out to overcome its insolubility. Several cases of contact urticaria following exposure to hydrolysed wheat protein (HWP) in cosmetics or of anaphylaxis caused ...

Lung cancer screening may detect cancer that will never become symptomatic (overdiagnosis), leading to overtreatment. Changes in size on sequential low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening, expressed as volume-doubling time (VDT), may help to distinguish aggressive cancer from cases that are unlikely to become symptomatic. To assess VDT for screening-detected lung ...

Background An increased frequency of occupational contact hand dermatitis among surgical operating theatre personnel has been noticed. Objectives To evaluate patients with occupational contact dermatitis caused by their rubber gloves, and to describe a method for analysing the content of the allergens in the gloves. Materials and methods Patch tests ...

Pain occurring in Parkinson's disease (PD) may affect a large proportion of patients. Based on the results of the methodologically more robust case-control studies that detected a significantly greater frequency of pain in PD patients than in control subjects, pain should now be considered as a non-motor symptom of PD. ...

In enterics, the transcription factor SoxR triggers a global stress response by sensing a broad spectrum of redox-cycling compounds. In the non-enteric bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptomyces coelicolor, SoxR is activated by endogenous redox-active small molecules and only regulates a small set of genes. We investigated if the more general ...

Lower back pain is a common problem frequently encountered without specific biomarkers that correlate well with an individual patient's pain generators. MRI quantification of diffusion and T(2) relaxation properties may provide novel insight into the mechanical and inflammatory changes that occur in the lumbosacral nerve roots in patients with lower ...

BACKGROUND: This study aims to report glycolipid changes after sleeve gastrectomy (SG) or Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) in the setting of a prospective randomized clinical trial. METHODS: One hundred patients were randomly assigned to RYGB (n = 45) and SG (n = 55). Fasting glucose, insulin, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c%), triglycerides, and serum cholesterol (total, ...

Acute gastroenteritis (AG) represents both the main cause of acute vomiting in children under 3 years old and a major cause of access to the emergency department. Even if several drugs may be able to reduce the emesis, the pharmacological treatment of vomiting in children remains a controversial issue, and several ...

The adenocarcinoma cell line HeLa serves as a model system for cancer research in general and cervical cancer in particular. In this study, hydrazide enrichment in combination with state-of-the art nanoLC-MS/MS analysis was used to profile N-linked glycosites in HeLa cells. N-Linked glycoproteins were selectively enriched in HeLa cells by ...

We established a novel gene expression analysis platform, Multiplex Competitive RT-PCR Using Fluorescent Universal Primers (MCF-PCR), to study multi-gene expression patterns simultaneously. This platform combines fluorescent universal primers, multiplex competitive RT-PCR, and capillary electrophoretic separation, which ensures MCF-PCR a reliable, medium-throughput, cost-effective technology for gene expression profiling. With cloned standard ...

Advanced free energy perturbation molecular dynamics (FEP/MD) simulation methods are available to accurately calculate absolute binding free energies of protein-ligand complexes. However, these methods rely on several sophisticated command scripts implementing various biasing energy restraints to enhance the convergence of the FEP/MD calculations, which must all be handled properly to ...

Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood, is responsible for over 15 % of pediatric cancer deaths. We have shown that neuroblastoma cell lines overexpress focal adhesion kinase (FAK), a non-receptor protein tyrosine kinase that controls a number of tumorigenic pathways. In this study, we hypothesized that inhibition of ...

Abstract Objective: Prospective longitudinal studies of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and sub-diagnostic obsessive-compulsive symptomatology in the non-clinical population, using age-defined cohorts, are rare. This study aimed to investigate the effect of OC symptoms on distress and psychosocial function and the effect of early-onset OC symptoms. Methods: 591 subjects drawn from the ...

The kinetics of proton reduction are reported for Ni and NiO surfaces and compared to that measured at Ni@NiO nanoparticles. Kinetic acceleration is found to occur by virtue of oxide overlayers and not due to size effects on the nanoscale.

ABSTRACT Background: Aging societies will be confronted with increased numbers of long-term care (LTC) residents with multimorbidity of physical and mental disorders other than dementia. Knowledge about the prevalence rates, medical and psychosocial characteristics, and care needs of this particular group of residents is mandatory for providing high-quality and evidence-based ...