tbuckley/cabot-search huggingface dataset:
Conjunctivitis
Authors: Amir A. Azari, Neal P. Barney
Journal: JAMA (2013)

Conjunctivitis is a common problem.To examine the diagnosis, management, and treatment of conjunctivitis, including various antibiotics and alternatives to antibiotic use in infectious conjunctivitis and use of antihistamines and mast cell stabilizers in allergic conjunctivitis.A search of the literature published through March 2013, using PubMed, the ISI Web of Knowledge database, and the Cochrane Library was performed. Eligible articles were selected after review of titles, abstracts, and references.Viral conjunctivitis is the most common overall cause of infectious conjunctivitis and usually does not require treatment; the signs and symptoms at presentation are variable. Bacterial conjunctivitis is the second most common cause of infectious conjunctivitis, with most uncomplicated cases resolving in 1 to 2 weeks. Mattering and adherence of the eyelids on waking, lack of itching, and absence of a history of conjunctivitis are the strongest factors associated with bacterial conjunctivitis. Topical antibiotics decrease the duration of bacterial conjunctivitis and allow earlier return to school or work. Conjunctivitis secondary to sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhea requires systemic treatment in addition to topical antibiotic therapy. Allergic conjunctivitis is encountered in up to 40% of the population, but only a small proportion of these individuals seek medical help; itching is the most consistent sign in allergic conjunctivitis, and treatment consists of topical antihistamines and mast cell inhibitors.The majority of cases in bacterial conjunctivitis are self-limiting and no treatment is necessary in uncomplicated cases. However, conjunctivitis caused by gonorrhea or chlamydia and conjunctivitis in contact lens wearers should be treated with antibiotics. Treatment for viral conjunctivitis is supportive. Treatment with antihistamines and mast cell stabilizers alleviates the symptoms of allergic conjunctivitis.
MHCII-independent CD4+ T cells protect injured CNS neurons via IL-4
Authors: James T. Walsh, Sven Hendrix, Francesco Boato, Igor Smirnov, Jingjing Zheng, John R. Lukens, Sachin Gadani, Daniel Hechler, Greta Gölz, Karen Rosenberger, Thomas Kammertöns, Johannes Vogt, Christina Vogelaar, Volker Siffrin, Ali Radjavi, Anthony Fernandez-Castaneda, Alban Gaultier, Ralf Gold, Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, Robert Nitsch, Frauke Zipp, Jonathan Kipnis
Journal: Journal of Clinical Investigation (2015)

A body of experimental evidence suggests that T cells mediate neuroprotection following CNS injury; however, the antigen specificity of these T cells and how they mediate neuroprotection are unknown. Here, we have provided evidence that T cell–mediated neuroprotection after CNS injury can occur independently of major histocompatibility class II (MHCII) signaling to T cell receptors (TCRs). Using two murine models of CNS injury, we determined that damage-associated molecular mediators that originate from injured CNS tissue induce a population of neuroprotective, IL-4–producing T cells in an antigen-independent fashion. Compared with wild-type mice, IL-4–deficient animals had decreased functional recovery following CNS injury; however, transfer of CD4+ T cells from wild-type mice, but not from IL-4–deficient mice, enhanced neuronal survival. Using a culture-based system, we determined that T cell–derived IL-4 protects and induces recovery of injured neurons by activation of neuronal IL-4 receptors, which potentiated neurotrophin signaling via the AKT and MAPK pathways. Together, these findings demonstrate that damage-associated molecules from the injured CNS induce a neuroprotective T cell response that is independent of MHCII/TCR interactions and is MyD88 dependent. Moreover, our results indicate that IL-4 mediates neuroprotection and recovery of the injured CNS and suggest that strategies to enhance IL-4–producing CD4+ T cells have potential to attenuate axonal damage in the course of CNS injury in trauma, inflammation, or neurodegeneration.
A Novel Approach for Reducing Ischemic Mitral Regurgitation by Injection of a Polymer to Reverse Remodel and Reposition Displaced Papillary Muscles
Authors: Judy Hung, Jorge Solis, J. Luis Guerrero, Gavin J.C. Braithwaite, Orhun K. Muratoglu, Miguel Chaput, Leticia Fernandez-Friera, Mark D. Handschumacher, Van J. Wedeen, Stuart Houser, Gus J. Vlahakes, Robert A. Levine
Journal: Circulation (2008)

Background— Ischemic mitral regurgitation (MR) relates to displacement of the papillary muscles from ischemic ventricular distortion. We tested the hypothesis that repositioning of the papillary muscles can be achieved by injection of polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) polymer, a biologically inert biomaterial that has been specially formulated to produce an encapsulated, stable, resilient gel once injected into the myocardium. The purpose is to materially support the infarcted myocardium while at the same time repositioning the papillary muscles that become apically tethered in MR. Methods and Results— Nine sheep underwent ligation of circumflex branches to produce acute ischemic MR. PVA polymer was then injected by echo guidance into the myocardium underlying the infarcted papillary muscle. Hemodynamic data, left ventricular ejection fraction, elastance, tau (relaxation constant), left ventricular stiffness coefficient, and 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional echocardiograms were obtained post-MR and post-PVA injection. One animal died after coronary ligation and 2 did not develop MR. In the remaining 6, moderate MR developed. With PVA injection, the MR decreased significantly from moderate to trace-mild (vena contracta: 5±0.4 mm versus 2±0.7 mm, post-MR versus post-PVA injection; P &lt;0.0001). This was associated with a decrease in infarcted papillary muscle-to-mitral annulus tethering distance (27±4 to 24±4 mm, post-MR versus post-PVA, P &lt;0.001). Importantly, PVA injection was not associated with significant decreases in left ventricular ejection fraction (43±6% versus 37±4%, post-MR versus post-PVA, P =nonsignificant), elastance (3.5±1.4 versus 2.9±1.3; post-MR versus post-PVA injection, P =nonsignificant). Measures of left ventricular diastolic function, tau (100±51 ms to 84±37 ms, post-MR versus post-PVA; P =nonsignificant), and left ventricular stiffness coefficient (0.18±0.12 versus 0.14±0.08, post-MR versus post-PVA; P =nonsignificant) did not increase post-PVA. Conclusions— PVA polymer injection resulted in acute reverse remodeling of the ventricle with papillary muscle repositioning to decrease MR. This was not associated with an adverse effect on left ventricular systolic and diastolic function. This new approach to alter pathological anatomy after infarction may offer an alternative strategy for relieving ischemic MR by correcting the position of the affected papillary muscle, thus relieving apical tethering.
GENETIC CONTROL OF RESPONSES TO BACTERIAL LIPOPOLYSACCHARIDES IN MICE
Authors: James Watson, Roy Riblet
Journal: The Journal of Experimental Medicine (1974)

In vivo immune responses and in vitro mitogenic responses to bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) have been compared in strains of C3H mice. C3H/HeJ spleen cultures did not support mitogenic responses to LPS and in vivo these mice produce low IgM responses to LPS. On the basis of these two responses, C3H/HeJ mice have been termed low LPS responders. All other strains of C3H mice tested (C3HeB/FeJ, C3H/DiSn, C3H/Str, CWB, CSW, and C3H/Sf and its H-2 congenics) are high LPS responders supporting large in vitro mitogenic and in vivo immune responses to LPS. The immune response difference between low and high LPS responders is a quantitative one. IgM responses are observed in C3H/HeJ mice in the range of 1.0-10 microg LPS. At lower and higher LPS concentrations, immune responses are not observed. In contrast, high LPS responders elicit LPS immune responses over a much wider dose range (0.1-200 microg). The ability to respond well to LPS is dominant as shown by the response of F(1) hybrid mice of low responder and high responder strains. The linkage relationships of mitogenic and immune responsiveness to LPS have been investigated in backcross (C3H/HeJ x CWB)F(1) x CWB mice. All mice that gave in vivo immune responses to LPS also supported mitogenic responses to LPS. The defect in C3H/HeJ mice that limits mitogenic and immune responsiveness to be due to a single autosomal gene which is not linked to the H-2 histocompatibility or heavy-chain allotype loci.
Health effects of passive smoking. 1. Parental smoking and lower respiratory illness in infancy and early childhood.
Authors: D P Strachan, D G Cook
Journal: Thorax (1997)

BACKGROUND: A systematic quantitative review was conducted of evidence relating parental smoking to acute lower respiratory illness in the first three years of life. METHODS: Fifty relevant publications were identified after consideration of 692 articles selected by electronic search of the Embase and Medline databases using keywords relevant to passive smoking in children. The search, completed in April 1997, identified 24 studies ascertaining illnesses in a community setting, including five surveys of schoolchildren with retrospective ascertainment of early chest illness, and 17 studies of admissions to hospital for lower respiratory illness in early life. Thirty eight studies were included in a quantitative overview using random effects modelling to derive pooled odds ratios. RESULTS: The results of community and hospital studies are broadly consistent, with only one publication reporting a reduced risk among children of smokers. The pooled odds ratios were 1.57 (95% CI 1.42 to 1.74) for smoking by either parent and 1.72 (95% CI 1.55 to 1.91) for maternal smoking. There is a significantly increased risk of early chest illness associated with smoking by other household members in families where the mother does not smoke (1.29, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.44). The associations with parental smoking are robust to adjustment for confounding factors, and show evidence of a dose-response relationship in most studies in which this has been investigated. CONCLUSIONS: The relationship between parental smoking and acute lower respiratory illness in infancy is very likely to be causal. Although it is impossible to distinguish the independent contributions of prenatal and postnatal maternal smoking, the increased risk associated with smoking by other household members suggests that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke after birth is a cause of acute chest illness in young children.
Breast Cancer Risk in Opposite-Sexed Twins: Influence of Birth Weight and Co-Twin Birth Weight
Authors: Mohammadhossein Hajiebrahimi, Shahram Bahmanyar, Sara Öberg, Anastasia Nyman Iliadou, Sven Cnattingius
Journal: JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2013)

Most, but not all, studies report a positive association between birth weight, as an indirect marker of prenatal hormone exposure, and offspring breast cancer risk, particularly premenopausal breast cancer. Females from opposite-sexed twin pairs may also be prenatally exposed to androgens from their twin brothers. A Swedish study of opposite-sexed twins with a small sample size found a very strong positive association between female birth weight and breast cancer risk. In this case-control study, nested within a cohort of female opposite-sexed twins, we included 543 breast cancer case subjects diagnosed in the period from 1972 to 2008 and 2715 matched control subjects. Conditional logistic regression estimated the breast cancer risk associated with birth weight and other birth characteristics, including gestational age and co-twin birth weight. All statistical tests were two-sided. There was no association between birth weight (odds ratio = 1.01; 95% confidence interval = 0.70 to 1.46) or twin brother's birth weight and risk of breast cancer, which suggests the previously reported strong positive association may have been a chance finding.
TCT-425 Innervation Patterns in the Renal Artery Ostium May Limit the Efficacy of Endovascular Radiofrequency Ablation
Authors: Abraham R. Tzafriri, Felix Mahfoud, John Keating, Peter Markham, Anna-Maria Spognardi, Gee Wong, Kristine Fuimaono, Elazer Edelman
Journal: Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2014)
Relapsing polychondritis: bone marrow and circular fibrous nodules in the aorta.
Authors: G E Wilson, P S Hasleton, J J Manns, J S Marks
Journal: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (1990)

<b>Background:</b> Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major public health problem in Pakistan, one of the most common forms of Extra pulmonary TB is Tuberculous pleural effusion. It is pauci-bacillary in nature as the effusion is due to delayed hypersensitivity reaction to mycobacterial antigens. So microbiological analysis are mostly negative, hence the need for invasive procedures like pleural biopsy. <b>Objectives:</b> To assess the diagnostic yield of sputum AFB smear, gene xpert &amp; sputum culture of MTB in biopsy proven Pleural Tuberculosis. <b>Methods:</b> It is a prospective cross sectional study, carried out in JPMC Karachi in the department of pulmonology from April 2016 to April 2017. All consecutive pts 18 years or older with clinical &amp; radiological findings consistent with TB pleurisy, and with normal lung parenchyma radiologically were included in the study. <b>Results:</b> We included a total of 62 patients, out of which a histopathologic examination of pleura was suggestive of TB in 55% patients. In these cases, sputum smear was positive in 3.2%, sputum AFB culture in 9.67% and sputum gene Xpert in 12.90% of patients. Rest of the patients (45%) had non-specific disease or malignancy. <b>Conclusions:</b> This study conclude that sputum analysis should be done in all patients with suspected tuberculous pleural effusion. Another complication of this study is that unlike other forms of Extra pulmonary TB, pleural TB might be infectious, so proper precautions must be taken.
Erasing Errors due to Alignment Ambiguity When Estimating Positive Selection
Authors: Benjamin Redelings
Journal: Molecular Biology and Evolution (2014)

Current estimates of diversifying positive selection rely on first having an accurate multiple sequence alignment. Simulation studies have shown that under biologically plausible conditions, relying on a single estimate of the alignment from commonly used alignment software can lead to unacceptably high false-positive rates in detecting diversifying positive selection. We present a novel statistical method that eliminates excess false positives resulting from alignment error by jointly estimating the degree of positive selection and the alignment under an evolutionary model. Our model treats both substitutions and insertions/deletions as sequence changes on a tree and allows site heterogeneity in the substitution process. We conduct inference starting from unaligned sequence data by integrating over all alignments. This approach naturally accounts for ambiguous alignments without requiring ambiguously aligned sites to be identified and removed prior to analysis. We take a Bayesian approach and conduct inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo to integrate over all alignments on a fixed evolutionary tree topology. We introduce a Bayesian version of the branch-site test and assess the evidence for positive selection using Bayes factors. We compare two models of differing dimensionality using a simple alternative to reversible-jump methods. We also describe a more accurate method of estimating the Bayes factor using Rao-Blackwellization. We then show using simulated data that jointly estimating the alignment and the presence of positive selection solves the problem with excessive false positives from erroneous alignments and has nearly the same power to detect positive selection as when the true alignment is known. We also show that samples taken from the posterior alignment distribution using the software BAli-Phy have substantially lower alignment error compared with MUSCLE, MAFFT, PRANK, and FSA alignments.
The anterior cruciate ligament injury controversy: is “valgus collapse” a sex-specific mechanism?
Authors: C E Quatman, T E Hewett
Journal: British Journal of Sports Medicine (2009)

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a devastating injury that puts an athlete at high risk of future osteoarthritis. Identification of risk factors and development of ACL prevention programmes likely decrease injury risk. Although studies indicate that sagittal plane biomechanical factors contribute to ACL loading mechanisms, it is unlikely that non-contact ACL injuries occur solely in a sagittal plane. Some authors attempt to ascribe the solely sagittal plane injury mechanism to both female and male ACL injuries and rebuff the concept that knee “valgus” is associated with isolated ACL injury. Prospective studies that utilise coupled biomechanical and epidemiological approaches demonstrated that frontal knee motions and torques are strong predictors of future non-contact ACL injury risk in female athletes. Video analysis studies also indicate a frontal plane “valgus collapse” mechanism of injury in women. As load sharing between knee ligaments is complex, frontal as well as sagittal and transverse plane loading mechanisms likely contribute to non-contact ACL injury. The purpose of this review is to summarise existing evidence regarding ACL injury mechanisms and to propose that sex-specific mechanisms of ACL injury may occur, with women sustaining injuries by a predominantly “valgus collapse” mechanism. Conclusion: Prevention programmes and interventions that only target high-risk sagittal plane landing mechanics, especially in the female athlete, are likely to be less effective in ameliorating important frontal and transverse plane contributions to ACL injury mechanisms and could seriously hamper ACL injury prevention efforts. Programmes that target the reduction of high-risk valgus and sagittal plane movements will probably prove to be superior for ACL injury prevention.
Aneurysmal Bone Cyst: A Review of 150 Patients
Authors: Henry J. Mankin, Francis J. Hornicek, Eduardo Ortiz-Cruz, Jorge Villafuerte, Mark C. Gebhardt
Journal: Journal of Clinical Oncology (2005)

We have reviewed a series of 150 aneurysmal bone cysts treated over the last 20 years.The lesions were principally located in the tibia, femur, pelvis, humerus, and spine and, in most cases, presented the imaging appearance originally described by Jaffe and Lichtenstein as a blowout with thin cortices.Only one of the patients was believed to have an osteoblastoma of the spine with secondary development of an aneurysmal bone cyst, and none of the patients developed additional lesions. The patients were treated primarily with curettage and implantation of allograft chips or polymethylmethacrylate, but some patients were treated with insertion of autografts or allografts. The local recurrence rate was 20%, which is consistent with that reported by other centers.Aneurysmal bone cysts are enigmatic lesions of unknown cause and presentation and are difficult to distinguish from other lesions. Overall, the treatment is satisfactory, but it is possible that newer approaches, such as improved magnetic resonance imaging studies, may help diagnose the lesions and allow the physicians to plan for more effective treatment protocols.
Acid-Suppressive Medication Use and the Risk for Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia
Authors: Shoshana J. Herzig
Journal: JAMA (2009)

The use of acid-suppressive medication has been steadily increasing, particularly in the inpatient setting, despite lack of an accepted indication in the majority of these patients.To examine the association between acid-suppressive medication and hospital-acquired pneumonia.Prospective pharmacoepidemiologic cohort study. All patients who were admitted to a large, urban, academic medical center in Boston, Massachusetts, from January 2004 through December 2007; at least 18 years of age; and hospitalized for 3 or more days were eligible for inclusion. Admissions with time spent in the intensive care unit were excluded. Acid-suppressive medication use was defined as any order for a proton-pump inhibitor or histamine(2) receptor antagonist. Traditional and propensity-matched multivariable logistic regression were used to control for confounders.Incidence of hospital-acquired pneumonia, defined via codes from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM), in patients exposed and unexposed to acid-suppressive medication.The final cohort comprised 63 878 admissions. Acid-suppressive medication was ordered in 52% of admissions and hospital-acquired pneumonia occurred in 2219 admissions (3.5%). The unadjusted incidence of hospital-acquired pneumonia was higher in the group exposed to acid-suppressive medication than in the unexposed group (4.9% vs 2.0%; odds ratio [OR], 2.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.3-2.8). Using multivariable logistic regression, the adjusted OR of hospital-acquired pneumonia in the group exposed to acid-suppressive medication was 1.3 (95% CI, 1.1-1.4). The matched propensity-score analyses yielded identical results. The association was significant for proton-pump inhibitors (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.4) but not for histamine(2) receptor antagonists (OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 0.98-1.4).In this large, hospital-based pharmacoepidemiologic cohort, acid-suppressive medication use was associated with 30% increased odds of hospital-acquired pneumonia. In subset analyses, statistically significant risk was demonstrated only for proton-pump inhibitor use.