Comparative medicine

The objective of this study was to evaluate the anthelmintic, antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of Chenopodium album against gastrointestinal nematodes of sheep and some pathogenic microbes. A worm motility inhibition assay was used for in vitro study, and a faecal egg count reduction assay was used for an in vivo study. Various concentrations ranging from 100 to 500 μg/ml of the extract were subjected to antimicrobial screening by disc diffusion method against four selected bacterial (Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas multocida and Escherichia coli) and two fungal (Aspergillus flavus and Candida albicans) strains in order to estimate the medicinal potential of the herb...

AIMS: Emergency medicine is a 'high risk' specialty. Some diseases develop suddenly and progress rapidly, and sudden unexpected deaths in the emergency department (ED) may cause medical disputes. We aimed to assess discrepancies between antemortem clinical diagnoses and postmortem autopsy findings concerning emergency medicine dispute cases and to figure out the most common major missed diagnoses. METHODS: Clinical files and autopsy reports were retrospectively analysed and interpreted...

BACKGROUND: In cardiomyocytes from patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, mechanical dysfunction and arrhythmogenicity are caused by mutation-driven changes in myofilament function combined with excitation-contraction (E-C) coupling abnormalities related to adverse remodeling. Whether myofilament or E-C coupling alterations are more relevant in disease development is unknown. Here, we aim to investigate whether the relative roles of myofilament dysfunction and E-C coupling remodeling in determining the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy phenotype are mutation specific...

BACKGROUND: It is unclear whether the presence of scapular dyskinesis increases the risk of developing shoulder pain in asymptomatic athletes. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether the presence of scapular dyskinesis in asymptomatic athletes increases the risk of developing shoulder pain by systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted in the Cochrane Library, Embase, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database and SPORTDiscus...

BACKGROUND: For patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and multiple brain metastases, whole-brain irradiation (WBI) is a standard-of-care treatment, but its effects on neurocognition are complex and concerning. We compared the efficacy of an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), icotinib, versus WBI with or without chemotherapy in a phase 3 trial of patients with EGFR-mutant NSCLC and multiple brain metastases. METHODS: We did a multicentre, open-label, parallel randomised controlled trial (BRAIN) at 17 hospitals in China...

INTRODUCTION: Postoperative ileus occurs in different degrees, in the majority of patients undergoing radical cystectomy, which may increase the length of hospital stay. The use of chewing gum has demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing time-to-bowel function and the length of hospital stay in several surgical procedures. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the benefit of post-operative chewing gum use in patients undergoing radical cystectomy through a systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis...

To rapidly identify novel PPARγ ligands, a robust binding assay amenable to high-efficiency screening toward PPARγ would be desirable. In this study, a new PPARγ assembled on DNA origami (PPARγ/DNA origami) biochromatography drug screening model was constructed and evaluated. The method was used to screen active ingredients acted on PPARγ from the total ginsenosides. The total ginsenosides were handled on this biochromatography column by HPLC. The collected retention fraction from the biochromatography column was analyzed by HPLC and HPLC/MS...

Circulating tumor exosomes harbor plenty of cancer biological information, which have emerged as promising targets for cancer early detection and diagnosis. Human serum and saliva are unique diagnostic body fluids, which contain numerous circulating exosomes. It is necessary to establish standardized isolation method and compare their proteome profiling for translational medicine. High abundant proteins in these body fluids were removed before exosomes isolation and obtained exosomes were further confirmed by morphology analysis and surface biomarker test...

Multi-energy calibration (MEC) is a novel strategy that explores the capacity of several analytes of generating analytical signals at many different wavelengths (transition energies). Contrasting with traditional methods, which employ a fixed transition energy and different analyte concentrations to build a calibration plot, MEC uses a fixed analyte concentration and multiple transition energies for calibration. Only two calibration solutions are required in combination with the MEC method. Solution 1 is composed of 50% v v(-1) sample and 50% v v(-1) of a standard solution containing the analytes...

The evaluation of extraction protocols for untargeted and targeted metabolomics was implemented for root and aerial organs of Astragalus spinosus in this work. The efficiency and complementarity of commonly used extraction solvents, namely petroleum ether, methylene chloride, ethyl acetate and n-butanol were considered for method evaluation using chemometric techniques in conjunction with new, simple, and fast high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) method for fingerprint analysis by extracting information from a digitalized HPTLC plate using ImageJ software...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the importance of strain-correcting stimulated echo acquisition mode echo-planar imaging cardiac diffusion tensor imaging. METHODS: Healthy pigs (n = 11) were successfully scanned with a 3D cine displacement-encoded imaging with stimulated echoes and a monopolar-stimulated echo-planar imaging diffusion tensor imaging sequence at 3 T during diastasis, peak systole, and strain sweet spots in a midventricular short-axis slice. The same diffusion tensor imaging sequence was repeated ex vivo after arresting the hearts in either a relaxed (KCl-induced) or contracted (BaCl2 -induced) state...

PURPOSE: To describe and evaluate a new fully automated musculoskeletal tissue segmentation method using deep convolutional neural network (CNN) and three-dimensional (3D) simplex deformable modeling to improve the accuracy and efficiency of cartilage and bone segmentation within the knee joint. METHODS: A fully automated segmentation pipeline was built by combining a semantic segmentation CNN and 3D simplex deformable modeling. A CNN technique called SegNet was applied as the core of the segmentation method to perform high resolution pixel-wise multi-class tissue classification...

This study is focusing on a novel approach to screen a large number of medicinal plants from Kenya regarding their contents and availability of selected metals potentially relevant for treatment of diabetes patients. For this purpose, total levels of zinc, chromium, manganese, and copper were determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry as well as BCR sequential extraction to fractionate the elemental species in anti-diabetic medicinal plants collected from five natural locations in two sub counties in Nyamira County, Kenya...

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Not all people with type 2 diabetes who undergo bariatric surgery achieve diabetes remission. Thus it is critical to develop methods for predicting outcomes that are applicable for clinical practice. The DiaRem score is relevant for predicting diabetes remission post-Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), but it is not accurate for all individuals across the entire spectrum of scores. We aimed to develop an improved scoring system for predicting diabetes remission following RYGB (the Advanced-DiaRem [Ad-DiaRem])...

BACKGROUND: This study evaluated the safety and efficacy of onabotulinumtoxinA in Japanese subjects with crow's feet lines (CFL). METHODS: This phase 3, multicenter, double-blind, randomized study included 2 treatment periods: 6-month placebo-controlled period followed by a 7-month open-label period. In period 1, subjects with moderate to severe CFL received onabotulinumtoxinA 24 U (n = 104) or 12 U (n = 99), or placebo (n = 97). In period 2, placebo subjects switched to onabotulinumtoxinA 24 U or 12 U (double-blind dose)...

This single institutional feasibility study prospectively characterized genomic alterations in recurrent or refractory solid tumors of pediatric patients in order to select a targeted therapy.<br /><br />Experimental Design: Following treatment failure patients with signed consent and aged above 6 months, underwent tumor biopsy or surgical resection of primary or metastatic tumor site.  These newly acquired samples were analyzed by comparative genomic hybridization array, next generation sequencing for 75 target genes, whole exome and RNA sequencing...

HbA1c is a valuable metric for comparing treatment groups in a randomized trial, for assessing glycemic trends in a population over time, or for cross-sectional comparisons of glycemic control in different populations. However, what is not widely appreciated is that HbA1c may not be a good indicator of an individual patient's glycemic control because of the wide range of mean glucose concentrations and glucose profiles that can be associated with a given HbA1c level. To illustrate this point, we plotted mean glucose measured with continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) versus central laboratory-measured HbA1c in 387 participants in three randomized trials, showing that not infrequently HbA1c may underestimate or overestimate mean glucose, sometimes substantially...

Background -The inability of the adult mammalian heart to regenerate following injury represents a major barrier in cardiovascular medicine. In contrast, the neonatal mammalian heart retains a transient capacity for regeneration, which is lost shortly after birth. Defining the molecular mechanisms that govern regenerative capacity in the neonatal period remains a central goal in cardiac biology. Here, we assemble a transcriptomic framework of multiple cardiac cell populations during postnatal development and following injury, which enables comparative analyses of the regenerative (neonatal) versus non-regenerative (adult) state for the first time...

BACKGROUND: Specific travel-related recommendations exist for the prevention or self-treatment of infectious diseases contracted by travellers to the tropics. In the current study, we assessed the medical preparedness per these recommendations, focusing on utilization of antidiarrheal and antimalarial medication and stratified by type of pre-travel advice. METHODS: We surveyed travellers departing from Hamburg International Airport to South or Southeast Asia, using a questionnaire on demographic, medical and travel characteristics...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Nasal delivery systems have a significant role in Persian traditional medicine. Most of them were utilized for central nervous system (CNS)-related disorders. In modern medicine, nasal drug delivery systems for brain delivery are highly regarded. AIM OF THE STUDY: Despite recent advances in drug delivery to the (CNS), delivery of therapeutics to the brain remains a major challenge because of the blood brain barrier (BBB). There are several mechanisms which regulate the drug transfer across the BBB...