Internal medicine

BACKGROUND: In dogs with a congenital extrahepatic portosystemic shunt (EHPSS), outcome after surgical attenuation is difficult to predict. OBJECTIVES: Develop a minimally invasive test to predict outcome after surgical EHPSS attenuation and establish risk factors for postattenuation seizures (PAS). ANIMALS: Eighty-five client-owned dogs referred for surgical attenuation of a single EHPSS. METHODS: mRNA expression of 8 genes was measured in preoperatively collected venous blood samples...

.High daily energy expenditure without compensatory increases in energy intake results in severe energy deficits during cold-weather military operations. The severity of energy deficits has been proportionally linked to declines in body mass, negative protein balance, suppression of androgen hormones, increases in systemic inflammation and degraded physical performance. Food availability does not appear to be the predominant factor causing energy deficits; providing additional rations or supplement snack bars does not reduce the severity of the energy deficits...

For decades, the Wind Chill Temperature Index (WCT) and its various iterations have been used to assess the risk of frostbite on unclothed body parts. This paper presents an innovative knowledge-based Cold Weather Ensemble Decision Aid (CoWEDA) that can be used to guide the selection of the most appropriate cold weather ensemble(s) relative to anticipated mission physical activities and environmental conditions. CoWEDA consists of a validated six-cylinder thermoregulatory model, a database of clothing properties, algorithms for calculating the whole ensemble properties from individual garments and a graphical user interface...

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 was spread worldwide, as a pandemic, from December 2019. Venous thromboembolism events can inflict patients with coronavirus disease 2019 during the hospitalization or convalescent period. Therefore, monitoring of these patients, in terms of venous thromboembolism events signs and symptoms, and timely management of antithrombotic agents are of great importance. CASE REPORT: A 45-year-old Iranian man, who is the first author of this case report, was infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and displayed the typical signs and symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019...

Recently introduced long-axial field-of-view (LAFOV) PET/CT systems represent one of the most significant advancements in nuclear medicine since the advent of multi-modality PET/CT imaging. The higher sensitivity exhibited by such systems allow for reductions in applied activity and short duration scans. However, we consider this to be just one small part of the story: Instead, the ability to image the body in its entirety in a single FOV affords insights which standard FOV systems cannot provide. For example, we now have the ability to capture a wider dynamic range of a tracer by imaging it over multiple half-lives without detrimental image noise, to leverage lower radiopharmaceutical doses by using dual-tracer techniques and with improved quantification...

PURPOSE: Knowledge about predictors of return to work (RTW) in people on sick leave with common mental disorders (CMDs) may inform the development of effective vocational rehabilitation interventions for this target group. In this study, we investigated predictors of RTW at 6 and 12 months in people on sick leave with depression, anxiety disorders or stress-related disorders. METHODS: We have performed a secondary analysis, utilizing data from two RCTs that evaluated the efficacy of an integrated health care and vocational rehabilitation intervention...

INTRODUCTION: Outpatient intensive care for people on home mechanical ventilation (HMV) is a complex area of care with high demands on the nurses specialised in this field. Internationally, academic qualification as an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) has become established in these fields of specialised care. Despite the large number of further training opportunities, there is no university qualification for home mechanical ventilation in Germany. Based on a demand- and curriculum analysis, this study therefore defines the role of an APN for home mechanical ventilation (APN-HMV)...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: According to the recent European epidemiological studies, the degree of lipid control in patients with very high vascular risk is suboptimal. This study analyzes the epidemiological characteristics, cardiovascular risk factors, lipid profile, recurrence, and degree of achievement of long-term lipid targets, according to the ESC/EAS Guidelines, in a cohort of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in a real-world clinical practice setting. METHODS: This work is a retrospective cohort study of patients diagnosed with ACS admitted to the Coronary Unit of a tertiary hospital from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2015 and followed-up on until March 2022...

More than three years have passed since the first case of a new coronavirus infection (SARS-CoV-2) in the city of Wuhan (Hubei, China). The Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in that city in 1956 and the country's first biosafety level 4 laboratory opened within that center in 2015. The coincidence that the first cases of infection emerged in the city where the virology institute's headquarters is located, the failure to 100% identify the virus' RNA in any of the coronaviruses isolated in bats, and the lack of evidence on a possible intermediate animal host in the contagion's transmission make it so that at present, there are doubts about the real origin of SARS-CoV-2...

Identifying patient cohorts meeting the criteria of specific phenotypes is essential in biomedicine and particularly timely in precision medicine. Many research groups deliver pipelines that automatically retrieve and analyze data elements from one or more sources to automate this task and deliver high-performing computable phenotypes. We applied a systematic approach based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to conduct a thorough scoping review on computable clinical phenotyping...

Poly(L-glutamic acid)-g-methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)/Combretastatin A4 (CA4)/BLZ945 nanoparticles (CB-NPs) have shown great potential in synergistic cancer therapy. However, it is still unclear how the nanoparticles' formula, such as injection dose, active agent ratio, and drug loading content, affects the side effects and in vivo efficacy of CB-NPs. In this study, a series of CB-NPs with different BLZ945/CA4 (B/C) ratios and drug loading contents were synthesized and evaluated on a hepatoma (H22) tumor-bearing mice model...

The pattern of insect succession and the species composition on cadavers can be influenced by several parameters, one of which is concealment. It has been previously shown for cadavers inside containers (e.g. suitcases or vehicles) or various indoor situations, that concealment can lead to a delayed arrival, altered species composition and decreased number of taxa present at the cadaver. As no data is yet available for the specific environment of tents on these processes, we placed five pig cadavers inside closed two-person tents during the summer of 2021 in a mixed forest in Germany...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: MRI is considered the gold standard for diagnosing anterior disc displacement (ADD), the most common temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder. However, even highly trained clinicians find it difficult to integrate the dynamic nature of MRI with the complicated anatomical features of the TMJ. As the first validated study for MRI-based automatic TMJ ADD diagnosis, we propose a clinical decision support engine that diagnoses TMJ ADD using MR images and provides heat maps as the visualized rationale of diagnostic predictions using explainable artificial intelligence...

PURPOSE: Liver hepatic vessels segmentation is a crucial step for the diagnosis process in patients with hepatic diseases. Segmentation of liver vessels helps to study the liver internal segmental anatomy that helps in the preoperative planning of surgical treatment. METHODS: Recently, the convolutional neural networks (CNN) have been proved to be efficient for the task of medical image segmentation. The paper proposes an automatic deep learning-based system for liver hepatic vessels segmentation of Computed Tomography (CT) datasets from different sources...

Pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences embrace a series of different disciplines. Pharmacy practice has been defined as 'the scientific discipline that studies the different aspects of the practice of pharmacy and its impact on health care systems, medicine use, and patient care'. Thus, pharmacy practice studies embrace both clinical pharmacy and social pharmacy elements. Like any other scientific discipline, clinical and social pharmacy practice disseminates research findings using scientific journals. Clinical pharmacy and social pharmacy journal editors have a role in promoting the discipline by enhancing the quality of the articles published...

Cadmium (Cd) is one of the dangerous factors that have negative impacts on plants and human health. Recently, many researchers have been looking for biostimulants to use as bioprotectants that can help or ameliorate plants' tolerance against abiotic stress, including Cd. To test the dangerousness of Cd accumulated in the soil, 200 µM of the latter was applied to sorghum seeds at germination and maturation stages. At the same time, Atriplex halimus water extract (0.1%, 0.25%, 0.5%) was applied to test its efficacy on Cd alleviation in sorghum plants...

Mentha arvensis Linné var. piperascens Malinvaud is an original plant species for "Mentha Herb (Hakka, ハッカ)" and "Mentha Oil (Hakka-yu, ハッカ)" listed in the Japanese Pharmacopoeia, whereas Mentha canadensis L. is that of "Mint oil, partly dementholised" listed in the European Pharmacopoeia. Although these two species are thought to be taxonomically identical, there are no data on whether the source plants of the Mentha Herb products distributed in the Japanese market are actually M...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to investigate the role of [68 Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET radiomics for the prediction of post-surgical International Society of Urological Pathology (PS ISUP) grade in primary prostate cancer (PCa). METHODS: This retrospective study included 47 PCa patients who underwent [68 Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET at IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute before radical prostatectomy. The whole prostate was manually contoured on PET images and 103 image biomarker standardization initiative (IBSI)-compliant radiomic features (RFs) were extracted...

PURPOSE: The study aimed to examine the outcomes of posterior approach transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) in the treatment of degenerative lumbar scoliosis (DLS) based on the concept of intervertebral correction. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed on 76 surgical patients (36 males and 40 females) who underwent posterior TLIF and internal fixation based on the concept of intervertebral correction in Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital from February 2014 to March 2021...

Wilms tumour is the most common renal malignancy in children, with two-thirds of cases diagnosed before five years and 95 percent before 10 years of age. Over the last decade, the five-year survival rate has improved dramatically and now approaches 90 %. Tumour lysis syndrome, commonly seen in association with haematological malignancies, is rarely seen in Wilms tumour. We present two cases of Wilms tumour developing tumour lysis syndrome in the first week of initiation of chemotherapy. Both patients presented with huge abdominal masses causing mass effect on surrounding structures...