Hairball

Within all cattle production systems, veal calves are the most severely affected by abomasal damage, with current prevalence at slaughter ranging from 70 to 93% of all animals affected. Although most damage is found in the pyloric region of the abomasum, fundic lesions are also found. Despite past research into the etiology of abomasal damage and the many risk factors that have been proposed, consensus on the causal factors of abomasal damage in veal calves has not yet been reached. The aim of this review was to integrate and analyze available information on the etiology of, and possible risk factors for, abomasal damage in veal calves...

CASE SERIES SUMMARY: Mediastinal cysts were diagnosed as incidental findings in six cats evaluated for non-thoracic disease, including staging for historical bladder leiomyosarcoma, flea dermatitis and hairballs, and hyperthyroidism. Radiographically, the cysts appeared as soft tissue opacities cranial to the heart. Ultrasound revealed the masses to be thin-walled, single lumen, anechoic, fluid-filled structures. One cat also had thoracic and abdominal CT performed for cancer staging; the CT revealed a well-defined, fluid-attenuating mass without peripheral contrast enhancement in the cranial mediastinum...

Microbial networks are an increasingly popular tool to investigate microbial community structure, as they integrate multiple types of information and may represent systems-level behaviour. Interpreting these networks is not straightforward, and the biological implications of network properties are unclear. Analysis of microbial networks allows researchers to predict hub species and species interactions. Additionally, such analyses can help identify alternative community states and niches. Here, we review factors that can result in spurious predictions and address emergent properties that may be meaningful in the context of the microbiome...

Introduction: Foreign body in urinary bladder has always been a topic of interest amongst the urologists and surgeon. Foreign body in lower urinary tract is not an unusual finding. Different types of foreign bodies has been retrieved from the lower urinary tract like for example, electric wire, safety pin, hairclip, intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD), gauze pieces, battery, leech, hairballs and so on.This article presents an unusual case report of the presence of kidney beans in the bladder, self-inflicted by the patient in the middle of the night for the purpose of sexual gratification or autoerotism...

Biological networks play increasingly important roles in omics data integration and systems biology. Over the past decade, many excellent tools have been developed to support creation, analysis and visualization of biological networks. However, important limitations remain: most tools are standalone programs, the majority of them focus on protein-protein interaction (PPI) or metabolic networks, and visualizations often suffer from 'hairball' effects when networks become large. To help address these limitations, we developed OmicsNet - a novel web-based tool that allows users to easily create different types of molecular interaction networks and visually explore them in a three-dimensional (3D) space...

BACKGROUND: One common problem in visualizing real-life networks, including biological pathways, is the large size of these networks. Often times, users find themselves facing slow, non-scaling operations due to network size, if not a "hairball" network, hindering effective analysis. One extremely useful method for reducing complexity of large networks is the use of hierarchical clustering and nesting, and applying expand-collapse operations on demand during analysis. Another such method is hiding currently unnecessary details, to later gradually reveal on demand...

A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the occurrence of indigestible foreign bodies (IFB) in cattle slaughtered at Morogoro Municipal Slaughterhouse, Tanzania. A total of 387 slaughter cattle were examined for presence of IFB. Out of 387 examined cattle, 93 (24.03%) had IFB in their forestomachs. The observed IFB were plastic bags, fruit seeds, clothing materials, ropes, hairballs, leather materials, stones, metallic nails, and wire. Plastic bags were the most frequently (50.5%) observed IFB followed by fruit seeds (18...

INTRODUCTION: Rapunzel syndrome is a rare condition predominantly found in trichophagic females that occurs when gastric trichobezoar extends beyond the pylorus and into duodenum, jejunum, ileum or even to colon. There are only five cases reported in literature. This case report has been reported in line with the SCARE criteria. PRESENTATION OF CASE: A 19 year old female, with a history of trichotillomania with trichophagia, who presented with epigastric pain and vomiting for 12 months...

Complex mathematical models of interaction networks are routinely used for prediction in systems biology. However, it is difficult to reconcile network complexities with a formal understanding of their behavior. Here, we propose a simple procedure (called ϕ¯) to reduce biological models to functional submodules, using statistical mechanics of complex systems combined with a fitness-based approach inspired by in silico evolution. The ϕ¯ algorithm works by putting parameters or combination of parameters to some asymptotic limit, while keeping (or slightly improving) the model performance, and requires parameter symmetry breaking for more complex models...

Hairball formation may induce vomiting and intestinal obstruction in predisposed cats. Some insoluble fibres as sugarcane fibre and cellulose can prevent hairball formation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of beet pulp consumption, a moderate soluble and fermentable fibre source, on faecal trichobezoars excretion in adult shorthaired cats fed kibble diets. Eighteen mixed-breed shorthaired cats and three extruded diets were used as follows: a basal diet without added fibre source (PB0-8.8% dietary fibre); BP8-8% inclusion of beet pulp (17...

Trichobezoar is a rare condition whereby a hairball is found in the human stomach or gastrointestinal tract, most frequently in young women, mainly in association with a psychiatric disorder. Trichobezoar cases have also been reported in the bladder and represent a rare complication of foreign bodies, called "hair nidus or hair ball," in patients with chronic catheter. Approximately 10% to 15% of patients on long-term urethral catheter or clean intermittent self-catheterization develop urinary tract stones...

RATIONALE: Trichophytobezoars, which are composed of hair and plant fibers, are usually located in the stomach. They are often associated with trichophagia and trichotillomania. The most commonly reported methods of trichophytobezoar treatment are open surgery and laparoscopic retrieval; there are few reports of endoscopic removal of trichophytobezoars. PATIENT CONCERNS AND DIAGNOSES: Twelve-year-old girl presented with a 3-day history of increasing upper abdominal pain, anorexia, and postprandial emesis...

Trichobezoars are hairballs or hair-like fibers formed by chewing and swallowing hair or any other indigestible materials. Trichobezoars usually form in the gastric body and are thus prepyloric. However, trichobezoars may rarely pass through the pylorus into the duodenum, jejunum, ileum, and even the colon, in a condition referred to as Rapunzel syndrome. Here, we present a case of a 13-year-old girl with this rare syndrome and discuss the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

Rapunzel syndrome is an extremely rare condition associated with trichophagia (hair eating disorder) secondary to a psychiatric illness called trichotillomania (hair-pulling behaviour). It is most commonly seen in children and adolescents. Untreated cases can lead to a number of complications. We present a case of a middle-aged woman with sudden intractable vomiting and constipation associated with bilateral pedal oedema and significant weight loss. Laboratory investigations revealed low serum protein levels...

Trichotillomania and trichotillophagia can cause the formation of enormous intragastric hairballs. We report the case of a 13-year-old girl who was brought to the emergency service for evaluation of an acute abdomen. Abdominal CT scanner showed a giant gastric trichobezoar which had to be removed by susombilical laparotomy and transverse gastrotomy. This case illustrates the fairly uncommon perforation risk of these gastric bezoars.

Biological systems are complex. In particular, the interactions between molecular components often form dense networks that, more often than not, are criticized for being inscrutable 'hairballs'. We argue that one way of untangling these hairballs is through cross-disciplinary network comparison-leveraging advances in other disciplines to obtain new biological insights. In some cases, such comparisons enable the direct transfer of mathematical formalism between disciplines, precisely describing the abstract associations between entities and allowing us to apply a variety of sophisticated formalisms to biology...

Small-world networks have characteristically low pairwise shortest-path distances, causing distance-based layout methods to generate hairball drawings. Recent approaches thus aim at finding a sparser representation of the graph to amplify variations in pairwise distances. Since the effect of sparsification on the layout is difficult to describe analytically, the incorporated filtering parameters of these approaches typically have to be selected manually and individually for each input instance. We here propose the use of graph invariants to determine suitable parameters automatically...

Empirical networks of weighted dyadic relations often contain "noisy" edges that alter the global characteristics of the network and obfuscate the most important structures therein. Graph pruning is the process of identifying the most significant edges according to a generative null model and extracting the subgraph consisting of those edges. Here, we focus on integer-weighted graphs commonly arising when weights count the occurrences of an "event" relating the nodes. We introduce a simple and intuitive null model related to the configuration model of network generation and derive two significance filters from it: the marginal likelihood filter (MLF) and the global likelihood filter (GLF)...

MOTIVATION: The increasing diversity of data available to the biomedical scientist holds promise for better understanding of diseases and discovery of new treatments for patients. In order to provide a complete picture of a biomedical question, data from many different origins needs to be combined into a unified representation. During this data integration process, inevitable errors and ambiguities present in the initial sources compromise the quality of the resulting data warehouse, and greatly diminish the scientific value of the content...

Objectives. (1) Report the case of a 5-year-old female with trichotillomania and trichophagia that suffered airway compromise during esophagogastroduodenoscopy for removal of a trichobezoar. (2) Provide management recommendations for an unusual foreign body causing extubation and partial airway obstruction. Methods. Case report of a rare situation of airway compromise caused by a trichobezoar. Results. A 5-year-old patient underwent endoscopic retrieval of a gastric trichobezoar (hairball) by the gastroenterology service under general endotracheal anesthesia in a sedation unit...