Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Complication rates following open reduction and internal fixation of ankle fractures.

BACKGROUND Ankle fractures are among the most common injuries treated by orthopaedic surgeons. The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the risks of complications after open reduction and internal fixation of ankle fractures in a large population-based study. METHODS With use of California's discharge database, we identified 57,183 patients who had undergone open reduction and internal fixation of a lateral malleolar, bimalleolar, or trimalleolar ankle fracture as inpatients in the years 1995 through 2005. Short-term complications were examined on the basis of the rates of readmission within ninety days after discharge. The intermediate-term rate of reoperation for ankle fusion or arthroplasty was also analyzed. Logistic regression and proportional hazard regression models were used to determine the strength of the relationships between the rates of complications and fracture type, patient demographics and comorbidities, and hospital characteristics. RESULTS The overall rate of short-term complications was low, including the rates of pulmonary embolism (0.34%), mortality (1.07%), wound infection (1.44%), amputation (0.16%), and revision open reduction and internal fixation (0.82%). The intermediate-term rates of reoperation were also low, with ankle fusion or ankle replacement being performed in 0.96% of the patients who were observed for five years. Open fractures, age, and medical comorbidities were significant predictors of short-term complications. The presence of complicated diabetes was a particularly strong predictor (odds ratio, 2.30; p < 0.001), as was peripheral vascular disease (odds ratio, 1.65; p < 0.001). The intermediate-term rate of reoperation for ankle fusion or replacement was higher in patients with trimalleolar fractures (hazard ratio, 2.07; p < 0.001) and open fractures (hazard ratio, 5.29; p < 0.001). Treatment at a low-volume hospital was not significantly associated with either the aggregate risk of short-term complications or the risk of intermediate-term reoperation. CONCLUSIONS By analyzing a large, diverse patient population, the present study clarifies the risks associated with open reduction and internal fixation of ankle fractures. Open injury, diabetes, and peripheral vascular disease were strong risk factors predicting a complicated short-term postoperative course. Fracture type was a strong predictor of reoperation for ankle fusion or replacement. Hospital volume did not play a significant role in the rates of short-term or intermediate-term complications.
NATURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL WEST NILE VIRUS INFECTION IN FIVE RAPTOR SPECIES

We studied the effects of natural and/or experimental infections of West Nile virus (WNV) in five raptor species from July 2002 to March 2004, including American kestrels (Falco sparverius), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), barn owls (Tyto alba), and great horned owls (Bubo virginianus). Birds were infected per mosquito bite, per os, or percutaneously by needle. Many experimentally infected birds developed mosquito-infectious levels of viremia (>105 WNV plaque forming units per ml serum) within5 days postinoculation (DPI), and/or shed virus per os or per cloaca. Infection of organs 15–27 days postinoculation was infrequently detected by virus isolation from spleen, kidney, skin, heart, brain, and eye in convalescent birds. Histopathologic findings varied among species and by method of infection. The most common histopathologic lesions were subacute myocarditis and encephalitis. Several birds had a more acute, severe disease condition represented by arteritis and associated with tissue degeneration and necrosis. This study demonstrates that raptor species vary in their response to WNV infection and that several modes of exposure (e.g., oral) may result in infection. Wildlife managers should recognize that, although many WNV infections are sublethal to raptors, subacute lesions could potentially reduce viability of populations. We recommend that raptor handlers consider raptors as a potential source of WNV contamination due to oral and cloacal shedding.
Pancreatitis induced by pentavalent antimonial agents during treatment of leishmaniasis.

Pentavalent antimony (Sbv), formulated as sodium stibogluconate or meglumine antimoniate, is the standard treatment for the leishmaniases. In 16 of 17 consecutive, prospectively observed patients in Washington D.C., serum levels of amylase and lipase rose to abnormal values after therapy with sodium stibogluconate was started; 12 of 17 had symptoms of pancreatitis. Sbv therapy was continued to completion in 7 of 17 patients and interrupted in 10 of 17. Pancreatitis improved in every patient after Sbv therapy was stopped. Sbv treatment was resumed after brief interruptions in 6 of 10 patients. All six of these patients had flares of pancreatitis, but each completed therapy. Subsequently, we measured amylase and lipase levels in stored sera from 32 patients treated in Peru with either sodium stibogluconate or meglumine antimoniate for mucosal leishmaniasis. In all 32 Peruvian patients, serum amylase and lipase rose to abnormal levels during Sbv therapy; 11 of 32 had symptoms of pancreatitis. Standard Sbv regimens induce pancreatitis in almost all patients, but continued therapy is often tolerated; pancreatitis subsides when therapy is stopped, and rechallenge may be tolerated after a brief halt in treatment.
Expression of myosin heavy chain isoforms in stimulated fast and slow rat muscles

The expression of 4 myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoforms was analyzed in the rat soleus (SOL) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles after denervation and chronic electric stimulation. The stimulation frequencies used were 20 and 150 Hz and the amount of stimulation was either large (20 Hz), intermediate (150 Hz), or small (150 Hz). These patterns resemble some features of normal motor unit activity in SOL and EDL of freely moving rats (Hennig and Lomo, 1985). The relative expression of each MHC isoform depended strongly on the stimulation pattern. Furthermore, for any particular stimulation pattern, fibers in SOL and EDL expressed different MHCs. Coexistence of different MHC types in the same fiber was frequently observed in stimulated muscles. 20-Hz stimulation preserved normal expression of type 1-MHC in SOL but failed to induce type 1-MHC in type 2 fibers of the EDL, where type 2A- and 2X-MHC expression dominated and type 2B-MHC expression was completely suppressed. 150-Hz low-amount stimulation preserved nearly normal 2B-MHC expression in many type 2 fibers of the EDL but failed to induce type 2B-MHC expression in the SOL, where 2X-MHC became predominant. 150-Hz high-amount stimulation differed from 150-Hz small amount stimulation by suppressing almost all type 2B-MHC expression in EDL and by inducing considerable type 2A-MHC expression in the SOL. Scattered fibers in EDL that were probably the original type 1 fibers responded differently from both type 2 fibers in the EDL and from type 1 fibers in the SOL to stimulation. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Dendritic morphology of visual callosal neurons in the golden hamster.

The visual callosal neurons and the connections between the two cerebral hemispheres in hamsters have been shown to be important for visual functions, but little is known about the detailed morphology of these neurons. In this study, we have used techniques based on retrograde transport of a fluorescent tracer, Granular Blue, and intracellular injection of Lucifer Yellow in fixed brain slices to identify the laminar distribution and dendritic morphology of the visual callosal neurons in the 17/18a border region of the adult golden hamster. The cells giving rise to the callosal projections were morphologically heterogeneous, although they were all spiny neurons. Most were pyramidal cells, but some were stellate cells. They were located in layers II-VI, with cells concentrating in three bands: (1) in the middle three fifths of layer II/III; (2) in layer IV, and (3) in the middle three fifths of layer V. In layer II/III and layer V, the great majority of the cells were pyramidal or star pyramidal neurons. In layer IV, about half were stellate neurons and the rest pyramidal or star pyramidal neurons. In layer VI, they consisted mostly of modified pyramidal cells. The soma areas of the pyramidal and star pyramidal neurons in all the layers ranged from 52 to 335 micron 2 with a mean of 148 micron 2 (n = 92; SD = 64.4). In general, these cells gave rise to 3-5 basal dendrites. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Telemedically Provided Stroke Expertise beyond Normal Working Hours

Background: State-of-the-art stroke management requires neurological expertise for the recognition of complex cerebrovascular syndromes or stroke-mimicking symptoms and initiation of proven acute therapies. Many community hospitals struggle to fulfill these premises particularly at evening/nighttimes or weekends. Telemedicine can improve that situation by offering rapid access to neurological expertise, but it has not been shown to what extent it is used beyond working times. Methods: The Telemedical Project for Integrated Stroke Care is a telemedical network of 2 stroke centers and 12 regional general hospitals with newly established stroke wards in Bavaria. This analysis comprises all teleconsultations from 1st February 2003 to 15th December 2006. The consultations were prospectively documented and categorized according to predefined indications and direct impact on clinical decisions. The teleconsultations were analyzed concerning whether they were requested during regular working time or during off-time (at evening/nighttimes or weekends). Results: A total of 10,239 teleconsultations were carried out in 8,326 patients. The 6,679 patients with cerebrovascular diagnosis comprised 51% of all admitted stroke cases between 2003 and 2006. During off-time 6,306 consultations (62%) were requested; 1,598 teleconsultations yielded nonstroke diagnoses, with 68% beyond working hours. Of all presented stroke patients 567 (8.5%) received systemic thrombolysis, with 58% off-time. Interhospital transports were initiated in 1,050 patients (10.5% of all), mainly for specific diagnostic workup or interventional treatments. Sixty percent of these transfers were launched off-time. Conclusions: The majority of teleconsultations were requested beyond normal working times and a significant proportion had an immediate impact on clinical decisions.
Epidemiology of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized and the developing countries. During 1997, COPD has been estimated to be the number four cause of death after cardiovascular diseases, tumors and cerebrovascular diseases in the United States. In 2020 COPD will probably become the third leading cause of death all over the world, following the trend of increasing prevalence of lung cancer. The impact of this respiratory disease worldwide is expected to increase with a heavy economic burden on individuals and society. In the United States direct and indirect costs of COPD were estimated at about USD24 billion in 1993. Unfortunately, there are few data on health-care utilization despite the great interest in COPD among researchers. As all chronic diseases, the prevalence of COPD is strongly associated with age. Data collected in a general population sample (living in Italy) showed a progressive increase of the prevalence of chronic bronchitis and emphysema with age, both in males and in females. COPD is determined by the action of a number of various risk factors either singly or interacting among themselves in a synergistic way. Among these, the most important is cigarette smoking, ranking at the first level for developing chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Also air pollution and some occupational exposures represent risks for developing COPD. Many epidemiological studies have indicated an association between the prevalence of chronic bronchitis and a low socioeconomic status. Furthermore, in the etiology of COPD we must consider endogenous risk factors such as gender, genetic features, presence of respiratory troubles in childhood, and family history. To date, epidemiologic studies have been of great importance for the characterization of the disease at a population level, indicating possible causes and assessing its impact on the individual and on society as a whole. Unfortunately, international standards for the diagnosis of COPD are lacking, which complicates the organization of appropriate epidemiological surveys.
The antiapoptotic effects of blood constituents in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Objective: Clonal B‐lymphocytes of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B‐CLL) are characterized by decreased sensitivity to programmed cell death and, therefore, they accumulate in vivo. However, these malignant cells die rapidly in vitro. In the current study we concentrated on the contribution of autologous serum (AS) and lymphocyte subsets to the survival of the malignant cells in vitro.
Torsion ultrasonic sensor for tissue mechanical characterization

A sensor based on torsional waves is proposed, designed and validated to quantify elastic constants of soft tissue. The proposed transducer design is able to deploy a shear wave elastography technique that accurately quantifies the shear viscoelastic moduli of the tissue, which, as opposed to compression waves, are strongly dependent on the stroma architecture, thus serving as a new biomarker.
Evaluation of a rapid-format antibody test and the tuberculin skin test for diagnosis of tuberculosis in two contrasting endemic settings.

OBJECTIVE AND SETTING We evaluated a rapid-format antibody card test and the tuberculin skin test for diagnosis of active tuberculosis (TB) in high (Cairo, Egypt) and low (St. Louis, USA) prevalence areas. DESIGN Prospective study of hospitalized TB patients and controls with other chest diseases. RESULTS Test performance varied significantly in the two study sites. The antibody test detected 87% of 71 smear-positive pulmonary TB cases (86% of smear-negative pulmonary cases and 48% of TB meningitis cases) in Egypt; specificity was 82%. The tuberculin test was highly sensitive in Egypt in subjects with pulmonary TB (100%) but not in those with meningitis (23%); specificity was 70%. The sensitivity and specificity of the antibody test in St. Louis were 29% and 79%, respectively; 50% of St. Louis TB cases and 15% of controls had positive tuberculin tests. CONCLUSIONS This convenient antibody card test may have value for diagnosis of patients suspected of having TB in high prevalence areas like Egypt. However, the specificity of the test is too low for it to be useful as a screening test. Our results suggest that neither the antibody test nor the tuberculin test have much diagnostic utility in low prevalence settings like St. Louis.
Compartmentalization of polysomes into free, cytoskeletal-bound and membrane-bound populations.

Introduction A knowledge of transcriptional and post-transcriptional control mechanisms is essential for the full understanding of cell growth, cellular responses to hormonal stimulation and cell transformation. Such control involves the activation of transcription of specific mRNAs, as well as the initiation of translation of specific proteins, some of which may have a very short lifespan, such as the nuclear regulatory proteins. How proteins are directed to their final sites of location in membranes has been investigated in great detail but little is known about the targeting of the bulk of cellular proteins. Study of the compartmentalization of mRNAs between different populations of polysomes may provide one approach for elucidating the mechanisms governing sorting of cellular proteins and investigating how various stimuli influence the response of the cell in the translation of specific mKNA species.
Protein communities detection optimization through an improved Parallel Newman-Girvan algorithm

Proteins and the networks they determine, called interactome networks, have received attention at an important degree during the last years, because they have been discovered to have an influence on some complex biological phenomena, such as problematic disorders like cancer. This paper presents a contribution that aims to optimize the Newman-Girvan community detection algorithm through a parallel implementation that is based on the MPI C programming environment. The optimization involves a double improvement of the original Newman-Girvan algorithm, which is accomplished both at the algorithmic and programming level. The resulting parallel implementation's performance was carefully tested on real biological data and the results acknowledge the relevant speedup that the optimization determines. Moreover, the results are in line with the previous findings that our current research produced, as it reveals and confirms the existence of some important properties of those proteins that participate in the carcinogenesis process. Apart from being particularly useful for research purposes, the novel technique also speeds up the proteomic databases analysis process, as compared to some of the sequential community detection approaches, and also to the original sequential Newman-Girvan algorithm.
The Relationship between Surface Temperature, Tissue Temperature, Microbubble Formation, and Steam Pops

Background: It has been proposed that microbubble (MB) monitoring can be used to safely titrate radiofrequency (RF) power. However, MB formation has been found to be an insensitive indicator of tissue temperature during RF delivery. We hypothesized that MB formation corresponds to surface—not tissue—temperature, and therefore would be an insensitive predictor of steam pops.
Geometrical Recombination Operators for Real-Coded Evolutionary MCMCs

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are sampling methods for intractable distributions. In this paper, we propose and investigate algorithms that improve the sampling process from multi-dimensional real-coded spaces. We present MCMC algorithms that run a population of samples and apply recombination operators in order to exchange useful information and preserve commonalities in highly probable individual states. We call this class of algorithms Evolutionary MCMCs (EMCMCs). We introduce and analyze various recombination operators which generate new samples by use of linear transformations, for instance, by translation or rotation. These recombination methods discover specific structures in the search space and adapt the population samples to the proposal distribution. We investigate how to integrate recombination in the MCMC framework to sample from a desired distribution. The recombination operators generate individuals with a computational effort that scales linearly in the number of dimensions and the number of parents. We present results from experiments conducted on a mixture of multivariate normal distributions. These results show that the recombinative EMCMCs outperform the standard MCMCs for target distributions that have a nontrivial structural relationship between the dimensions.
Voyageur de commerce et problemes stochastiques associes

Dans le probleme du voyageur de commerce, il faut trouver la longueur de la tournee la plus courte qui visite des villes donnees. Nous traitons la version stochastique du probleme, ou les emplacements des villes et les distances entre elles sont des variables aleatoires, tirees dans un ensemble. Nous considerons d'abord l'ensemble ou les villes sont placees dans l'espace euclidien. Nous etudions la loi d'echelle pour la longueur de la tournee optimale, en fonction du nombre de villes et de la dimension spatiale. Nous examinons ensuite la theorie analytique pour decrire l'ensemble a liens aleatoires, ou les distances entre les villes sont des variables aleatoires independantes. Enfin, nous regardons un probleme geometrique associe concernant les distances entre proches voisins et trouvons des universalites remarquables.
Evaluation of a Novel Automated Chemiluminescent Assay System for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing

ABSTRACT The newly developed Rapid Lumi Eiken/IS60 (RL/IS60) system automatically determines MICs by detecting chemiluminescence produced in the reaction of a chemiluminescent probe and oxygen metabolites from living microorganisms. The present study evaluated this system for accuracy in antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Chemiluminescence intensities after 4 h of cultivation of clinically important strains were plotted against various concentrations of antimicrobial agents, which resulted in curves reflecting the levels of susceptibility. Sixty-percent inhibitory concentrations based on the susceptibility curves agreed with MICs determined by the reference microdilution method. When the MICs of antimicrobial agents for four quality control (QC) strains (Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) were determined by the RL/IS60 system, most (91.1%) of them were within the QC limits proposed by the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards. The system was further assessed for a total of 162 clinical isolates, including E. coli, Citrobacter freundii, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Serratia marcescens, Proteus mirabilis, Morganella morganii, P. aeruginosa, Haemophilus influenzae, S. aureus, coagulase-negative staphylococci, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Overall, there was 90.6% agreement between the RL/IS60 system and the reference microdilution method. Our results suggest that the RL/IS60 system provides rapid and reliable MICs of a variety of antimicrobial agents for clinical isolates as well as QC strains.
Quantified Histopathology of the Keratoconic Cornea

Purpose. This study systematically investigated and quantified histopathological changes in a series of keratoconic (Kc) corneas using a physiologically formulated fixative to not further distort the already distorted diseased corneas. Methods. Twelve surgically removed Kc corneal buttons were immediately preserved and processed for light and transmission electron microscopy using an established corneal protocol. Measurements were taken from the central cone and peripheral regions of the host button. The sample size examined ranged in length from 390 to 2608 &mgr;m centrally and 439 to 2242 &mgr;m peripherally. Results. The average corneal thickness was 437 &mgr;m centrally and 559 &mgr;m peripherally. Epithelial thickness varied centrally from 14 to 92 &mgr;m and peripherally from 30 to 91 &mgr;m. A marked thickening of the epithelial basement membrane was noted in 58% of corneas. Centrally, anterior limiting lamina (ALL) was thinned or lost over 60% of the area examined, whereas peripheral cornea was also affected but to a lesser extent. Histopathologically, posterior cornea remained undisturbed by the disease. Anteriorly in the stroma, an increased number of cells and tissue debris were encountered, and some of these cells were clearly not keratocytes. Conclusions. It is concluded that Kc pathology, at least initially, has a distinct anterior focus involving the epithelium, ALL, and anterior stroma. The epithelium had lost its cellular uniformity and was compromised by the loss or damage to the ALL. The activity of the hitherto unreported recruited stromal cells may be to break down and remove ALL and anterior stromal lamellae, leading to the overall thinning that accompanies this disease.