Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Staple-Line Reinforcement With a New Type of Polyglycolic Acid Felt

Although various materials have been used for reinforcement in lung-volume-reduction surgery to buttress pulmonary staple-line, absorbable materials are not available for use in thoracoscopic surgery. Moreover, even nonabsorbable types of reinforcements have been used only for lung volume reduction surgery. However, elderly patients with spontaneous pneumothorax secondary to emphysematous lung are well treated with staple-line reinforcement. The authors developed a new type of polyglycolic acid felt to buttress staple-line. This felt is absorbable, easier to cut with a stapler knife than is the conventional polyglycolic acid felt, and inexpensive enough to use for various types of thoracic surgeries for emphysematous lungs in Japan, and it can be attached to staplers with a small amount of fibrin glue. These strips were used to reinforce pulmonary staple lines for resection of emphysematous lungs in 14 patients: pulmonary emphysema (n = 1), bilateral giant bullae (n = 1), ipsilateral giant bullae (n = 6), spontaneous pneumothorax with multiple bullae in an emphysematous lung (n = 5), and lung cancer in a patient with pulmonary emphysema (n = 1). There were no air leaks during surgery. Air leaks were noted in three patients after surgery. In two patients, the air leaks stopped within 2 weeks. In one patient, the air leak was found to originate from an untouched lobe during reoperation. No infection or allergic reaction developed in a patient during a mean follow-up of 12 months (range, 1 to 24 months).
Pharmacotherapy for Patients with Obesity.

BACKGROUND Although pharmacotherapy is not the cornerstone of obesity treatment, it is a valuable tool that could be considered for patients who have not had adequate benefit from lifestyle interventions or who have difficulty maintaining initial weight loss over longer periods. CONTENT This review focuses on the role of antiobesity drugs, the mechanisms by which the drugs work, potential pharmacological targets in the neural control of food intake and regulation of body weight, the history of antiobesity drugs, a summary of efficacy and safety data from clinical trials, and the clinical application of pharmacotherapy. Currently, 5 approved drug therapies are available in the US for long-term weight management, with only 2 of these meeting the stronger Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criteria of 5% weight loss relative to a placebo after 1 year and others receiving approval based on the categorical criterion of the proportions of patients achieving 5% weight loss. Interpretation of the results of clinical trials conducted before regulatory agency approval is limited by high dropout rates; thus, the results might not be replicable in clinical practice settings. Many patients who are suitable candidates for pharmacotherapy are not using the new drugs due to lack of insurance coverage and high out-of-pocket costs. SUMMARY With the availability of 4 new drugs since 2012, clinicians in the US now have more tools for long-term weight management. The quality of pharmacotherapy clinical investigations needs considerable improvement. Future research should focus on examining the mediators and moderators of response.
Cellular therapies supplement: the peritoneum as an ectopic site of hematopoiesis following in utero transplantation

BACKGROUND: In utero transplantation (IUT) has the potential to treat birth defects early before full development of the immune system. Relatively small grafts, which are not matched for major histocompatibility antigens, can be delivered even before onset of disease symptoms. IUT of hematopoietic stem cells is usually performed via intraperitoneal injection, yet the fate of donor cells in the peritoneal cavity is not fully understood. We review our recent work and present new data demonstrating that the peritoneum can be a site of ectopic hematopoiesis with implications for IUT and immune tolerance induction.
Alternative promoters and polyadenylation regulate tissue‐specific expression of Hemogen isoforms during hematopoiesis and spermatogenesis

Hemogen is a nuclear protein encoded by HEMGN (also known as hemogen in mouse, EDAG in human and RP59 in rat). It is considered to be a hematopoiesis‐specific gene that is expressed during the ontogeny of hematopoiesis. Herein, we characterize two distinct splicing variants of HEMGN mRNA with restricted expression to hematopoietic cells and to round spermatids in the testis, respectively. Expression of the testis‐specific HEMGN mRNA (HEMGN‐t) is developmentally regulated and is concurrent with the first wave of meiosis in prepuberal mice. Sequence analysis reveals that HEMGN‐t and the hematopoietic HEMGN mRNA (HEMGN‐h) share a common coding sequence with distinct 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions and that these two isoforms are transcribed from the same gene locus, HEMGN, through the use of alternative promoters and polyadenylation sites. Thus, HEMGN expression exemplifies a developmental regulatory mechanism by which the diversification of gene expression is achieved through using distinct regulatory sequences in different cell types. Moreover, the existence of a testis‐specific isoform of HEMGN suggests a role in spermatogenesis. Finally, fluorescence in situ hybridization demonstrates that HEMGN is localized to chromosome 4 A5‐B2 in mouse and to chromosome 9q22 in human, which is a region known to harbor a cluster of leukemia breakpoints. Developmental Dynamics 228:606–616, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Corneal Cell Density Measurement in vivo by Scanning Slit Confocal Microscopy: Method and Validation

Purpose: Method and validation of a technique to quantify cell density in vivo in 6 corneal layers with a scanning slit confocal microscope (SSCM). Method: A confocal image of a small volume in a corneal layer is registered on videotape. Cells or nuclei according to a layer classification are counted manually using an unbiased frame. Surface cell density is calculated from an image on the screen, and volumetric density is obtained using stereological methods. Results: Image distortion on the screen is less than 3%. The classification of a cell layer is verified by determining the position of the measurement volume in the cornea. Validation of density measurements is performed by comparing confocal results with those obtained by histology. The difference between the two methods varies from –24.1% (posterior stroma) to +16.4% (basal layer). Intersession and intrasession repeatability are 8.3 and 5.8%, respectively. The cell density (mean ± SD) in 20 healthy controls in the superficial, basal and endothelial layers was 759 ± 162, 5,817 ± 632 and 2,743 ± 285 cells·mm–2 (surface), and in the anterior, mid and posterior stroma 28,616 ± 3,081, 19,578 ± 4,421 and 26,073 ± 5,962 cells·mm–3 (volumetric). These results are in accordance with those of other investigators. Conclusions: The SSCM can produce repeatable quantitative measurements of corneal cell density in conscious humans.
Morbidity and Survival Probability in Burn Patients in Modern Burn Care*

Objective:Characterizing burn sizes that are associated with an increased risk of mortality and morbidity is critical because it would allow identifying patients who might derive the greatest benefit from individualized, experimental, or innovative therapies. Although scores have been established to predict mortality, few data addressing other outcomes exist. The objective of this study was to determine burn sizes that are associated with increased mortality and morbidity after burn. Design and Patients:Burn patients were prospectively enrolled as part of the multicenter prospective cohort study, Inflammation and the Host Response to Injury Glue Grant, with the following inclusion criteria: 0–99 years old, admission within 96 hours after injury, and more than 20% total body surface area burns requiring at least one surgical intervention. Setting:Six major burn centers in North America. Measurements and Main Results:Burn size cutoff values were determined for mortality, burn wound infection (at least two infections), sepsis (as defined by American Burn Association sepsis criteria), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and multiple organ failure (Denver 2 score > 3) for both children (< 16 yr) and adults (16–65 yr). Five hundred seventy-three patients were enrolled, of which 226 patients were children. Twenty-three patients were older than 65 years and were excluded from the cutoff analysis. In children, the cutoff burn size for mortality, sepsis, infection, and multiple organ failure was approximately 60% total body surface area burned. In adults, the cutoff for these outcomes was lower, at approximately 40% total body surface area burned. Conclusions:In the modern burn care setting, adults with over 40% total body surface area burned and children with over 60% total body surface area burned are at high risk for morbidity and mortality, even in highly specialized centers.
Modelo de Interoperabilidad Basado en Metadatos (MIBM)

Un objetivo fundamental de las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (IDE) es dotar de interoperabilidad a los sistemas que han de intercambiar datos geograficos. La interoperabilidad es, en si misma, un objetivo, asi como lo es el analisis y la medida del grado de interoperabilidad entre dos sistemas. Tanto en el campo de los Sistemas de Informacion Geografica (SIG) [1] como en el de la ingenieria del software [2] o el de las organizaciones, se ha estudiado la interoperabilidad y se han propuesto modelos de la misma para los sistemas, las organizaciones y los sistemas de sistemas. En el contexto de las IDE no se ha desarrollado apenas investigacion relacionando la interoperabilidad y los metadatos de la Informacion Geografica. Los objetivos de este documento son: presentar un modelo de interoperabilidad de 7 niveles (tecnica, sintactica, semantica, pragmatica, dinamica, conceptual y organizacional) asi como los resultados de analizar las aportaciones, en terminos de interoperabilidad, de los items contenidos en ISO19115 [3] segun dicho modelo. Se concluye este trabajo enumerando una serie de conclusiones preliminares obtenidas de la validacion.
Recovery of FEV1 after histamine challenge in asthmatic children

Factors that influence the time necessary for complete recovery of FEV1 after inhaling histamine were analysed in forty‐five children with asthma. These included the initial bronchial obstruction (baseline FEV1), the provocation dose of histamine producing a 20% fall in FEV1 (PD20) and the fall in FEV1 after the histamine challenge. In addition it was also investigated whether a second challenge carried out after complete recovery of FEV1 would produce a reproducible PD20‐histamine value. The time for complete recovery varied widely from 15 to more than 75 min. The time needed for complete recovery of FEV1 after the histamine challenge seems to be mainly determined by the PD20 value. The other factors such as initial bronchial obstruction and the fall in FEV1 after the challenge showed no significant relationship with the recovery time. A second challenge with histamine resulted in a highly reproducible PD20 value. The clinical implication of this study is that other tests can only be performed when FEV1 has returned to 95% of baseline.
Ascidian embryonic development: An emerging model system for the study of cell fate specification in chordates

The ascidian tadpole larva represents the basic body plan of all chordates in a relatively small number of cells and tissue types. Although it had been considered that ascidians develop largely in a determinative way, whereas vertebrates develop in an inductive way, recent studies at the molecular and cellular levels have uncovered several similarities in the way developmental fates are specified. In this review, we describe ascidian embryogenesis and its cell lineages, introduce several characteristics of ascidian embryos, describe recent advances in understanding of the mechanisms of cell fate specification, and discuss them in the context of what is known in vertebrates and other organisms. Developmental Dynamics 236:1748–1757, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Recherche de nouveaux antipaludiques par bioinformatique structurale et chémoinformatique : application à deux cibles : PfAMA1 et PfCCT

Le paludisme est cause par cinq especes du genre Plasmodium, P. falciparum etant le plus mortel. Des resistances de certaines souches du parasite ont ete rapportees pour tous les medicaments mis sur le marche. Les moustiques vecteurs du parasite sont resistants aux insecticides et aucun vaccin n'est disponible. Cette maladie est un probleme economique et de sante publique pour les pays en voie de developpement. Mes travaux de theses visent a identifier de nouveaux traitements contre le paludisme, en ciblant deux nouvelles proteines. Les Apicomplexes ont developpe un mecanisme unique d'invasion, impliquant une interaction forte entre la cellule hote et la surface du parasite, appelee jonction mobile. La caracterisation structurale et fonctionnelle du complexe AMA1-RON2 a ouvert la voie a la decouverte de petites molecules capables d'empecher l'interaction AMA1-RON2 et de ce fait, l'invasion. Le parasite a aussi besoin de phospholipides pour construire sa membrane durant le cycle erythrocytaire. Il y a six fois plus de phospholipides dans les erythrocytes infectes que dans les erythrocytes sains. Notre strategie est d'inhiber la voie de synthese de novo Kennedy et plus precisement, son etape limitante catalysee par la PfCCT. Des filtres bases sur le ligand (LBVS) et sur la structure (SBVS) ont ete utilises pour tester virtuellement les chimiotheques commerciales que j'ai preparees. Pour chaque projet, des molecules ont ete selectionnees pour leurs scores de docking et les interactions qu'elles etablissent avec les residus cles de la proteine. En combinant la bioinformatique structurale et la chemoinformatique, nous avons identifie des inhibiteurs potentiels des deux cibles proteiques.
Increased Expression of Matrix Metalloproteinase-2, Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 and Matrix Metalloproteinase-13 in Lesional Skin of Bullous Pemphigoid

Background: Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13 can degrade type IV collagen which is the major component of the basement membrane zone (BMZ). In bullous pemphigoid (BP), the separation occurs within the BMZ. Objective: To evaluate the involvement of MMPs in the pathogenesis of BP, we examined the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13 in the lesional skin of BP patients. Methods: The expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, MMP-13, tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 and TIMP-2 was analyzed by immunohistochemistry in the lesional skin of BP patients in comparison with that in normal human skin. Next, the cellular sources of MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13 were analyzed by double immunohistochemistry. Finally, the levels of these MMPs in the serum and blister fluid of BP patients were measured by ELISA. Results: The number of cells expressing MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13 were significantly increased in the lesional skin of BP patients as compared to that in normal skin. Although the number of cells expressing TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 were also increased in the lesional skin of BP patients as compared to that in normal skin, the ratio of MMPs to TIMPs in the lesional skin of BP patients was high (2.4:1). T cells comprised the major source of MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13, while a proportion of mast cells and eosinophils also expressed these MMPs. Furthermore, marked expression of MMP-2 was detected in the epidermal keratinocytes. The levels of these MMPs in the blister fluid were significantly greater than those in the serum. Conclusion: These results suggest that MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-13 may be involved in the mechanism of blister formation in BP and that besides infiltrating inflammatory cells, structural cells like epidermal keratinocytes may also participate in the induction of blister formation in BP.
A unifying model for timing of walking onset in humans and other mammals

The onset of walking is a fundamental milestone in motor development of humans and other mammals, yet little is known about what factors determine its timing. Hoofed animals start walking within hours after birth, rodents and small carnivores require days or weeks, and nonhuman primates take months and humans approximately a year to achieve this locomotor skill. Here we show that a key to the explanation for these differences is that time to the onset of walking counts from conception and not from birth, indicating that mechanisms underlying motor development constitute a functional continuum from pre- to postnatal life. In a multiple-regression model encompassing 24 species representative of 11 extant orders of placental mammals that habitually walk on the ground, including humans, adult brain mass accounted for 94% of variance in time to walking onset postconception. A dichotomous variable reflecting species differences in functional limb anatomy accounted for another 3.8% of variance. The model predicted the timing of walking onset in humans with high accuracy, showing that this milestone in human motor development occurs no later than expected given the mass of the adult human brain, which in turn reflects the duration of its ontogenetic development. The timing of motor development appears to be highly conserved in mammalian evolution as the ancestors of some of the species in the sample presented here diverged in phylogenesis as long as 100 million years ago. Fundamental patterns of early human life history may therefore have evolved before the evolution of primates.
A Fault-Tolerant L1 Cache with Predictable Performance by Virtual Filter Cache

The Subblock-Disabling schemes have obviousadvantages on delays overhead and capacity loss. However, theexistence of cache line "holes" triggers abundant false hits andthe utilization of available cache capacity is low. A subblockdisablingbased no-collision set-level mending cache architectureVFCcache suited for low set-associative L1 cache is proposed. AnAdditional Tag Array is added and VFCcache is logically dividedinto two parts, MainCache and Virtual Filter Cache (VFC). Theno-collision set-level mending mechanism maybe causes thedivergence of practical associativity and faulty sets. VFC canmask these faulty sets, alleviate such divergence and make theperformance predictable. According to the experiments in Simics, the performance has an increase of 11.73% compared to theBuddy Cache for a 32KB 4-way L1 cache with a failureprobability of 0.004. The average miss rate of the L1-D has adecrease of 5.20% and that of the L1-I has a decrease of 5.02%for 29 benchmarks from SPEC CPU2000/2006 in comparisonwith Buddy Cache.
A randomized trial of early psychiatric intervention in residential care: impact on health outcomes

Background: The prevalence of psychological and behavioral disturbances among older adults living in residential care facilities is high, and it has been shown previously that people with such symptoms have poorer health outcomes. This study was designed to assess the efficacy of an early psychiatric intervention on the 12-month health outcomes of older adults admitted to residential care facilities in Perth, Western Australia. We hypothesized that subjects in the intervention group would have better mental and physical health outcomes than controls. Methods: The study was designed as a randomized, single-blinded, controlled trial. All subjects aged 65 years or over admitted to one of the 22/26 participating residential care facilities of the Inner City area of Perth were approached to join the study and were allocated randomly to the intervention or usual care group. Demographic and clinical information (including medications and use of physical restraint) was gathered systematically from all participants at baseline, and at 6 and 12 months. At each assessment, the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for older adults (HoNOS 65+), the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) were administered. Subjects in the intervention group who screened positive at the baseline assessment for psychiatric morbidity were reviewed within a 2-week period by the Inner City Mental Health Service of Older Adults (ICMHSOA). If clinically appropriate, mental health services were introduced without the involvement of the research team. Results: One hundred and six subjects and their next of kin consented to participate in the study (53 in each group). Mental health screening and early referral to a psychogeriatric service did not significantly change the average number of medical contacts, self-rated health, use of psychotropic or PRN medication, use of physical restraint, 12-month mortality, or mental health outcomes, as measured by the GDS-15, HoNOS 65+ and NPI (p>0.05 for all relevant outcomes). Conclusion: Systematic mental health screening of older adults admitted to residential care facilities and early clinical intervention does not change 12-month health outcomes. More effective interventions to improve the health outcomes of older adults with psychological and behavioral disturbances admitted to residential care facilities are needed.
Discontinuing or Switching Selective Serotonin-Reuptake Inhibitors

OBJECTIVE: To describe reasons for discontinuing or switching selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) at 3 and 6 months after starting treatment, and to identify information provided to patients that may help prevent premature discontinuation of medication. METHODS: Telephone surveys were conducted at 3 and 6 months after patients (n = 672) were started on an SSRI for a new or recurrent case of depression. RESULTS: Significantly more patients discontinued or switched their SSRI because of an adverse effect within the first 3 months of starting (43%) compared with the second 3 months (27%; p = 0.023). The adverse effect most frequently reported as the reason for early discontinuation or switching was drowsiness/fatigue (10.2%), followed by anxiety, headache, and nausea — All at just over 5%. The odds ratio for discontinuation was 61% less in patients who recalled being told to take the medication for at least 6 months compared with those who did not (OR 0.39; p < 0.001). Patients who recalled being informed of potential adverse effects increased their reported incidence of mild to moderate adverse effects by 55% (OR 1.55; p < 0.05) without affecting rates of premature discontinuation (OR 1.06; p = 0.77). CONCLUSIONS: Adverse effects are the most frequent reason for discontinuing or switching SSRIs within the first 3 months of treatment. Patients are more likely to continue taking their antidepressant if they fully understand how long to take the medication. Informing patients of potential adverse effects does not appear to prevent premature discontinuation, but may increase the patient's awareness and reporting of mild to moderate adverse effects.