Abstract A 50-year-old woman of south Asian descent presented with a 4-year history of hair loss, itching and follicular prominence at her frontal hairline, in association with increasingly sparse ...eyebrows and loss of body hair. She was otherwise well and on no medication. Clinical examination revealed typical features of frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA), with associated papules on the forehead. In addition, striking hyperpigmentation was evident over the forehead, face and neck. This was felt to be in keeping with FFA-associated dyspigmentation–lichen planus (LP) pigmentosus. Initial management was lymecycline 408 mg once daily, tacrolimus 0.1% ointment twice daily plus mometasone furoate 0.1% two times weekly to the neck, and pimecrolimus cream twice a day to the face, as well as a sun protection factor 50 sunscreen. Hydroxychloroquine was avoided initially due to the potential side-effect of altered skin pigmentation with this drug. While the hairline recession remained unchanged, the pigmentary changes worsened despite treatment and affected areas became increasingly itchy. Lymecycline was stopped and hydroxychloroquine 200 mg once daily was started. After 12 months, the cutaneous pigmentation continued to worsen and was extending onto the arms and torso. A trial of low-dose isotretinoin (20 mg once daily) was considered as this has been reported to be of benefit in LP pigmentosus. However, after 6 months, there was no improvement. A trial of mycophenolate mofetil 500 mg twice daily was then commenced. After 3 months of treatment, skin itching had settled and no new areas of hyperpigmentation were noted. After 9 months, there had been a significant improvement in skin pigmentation, which has been maintained. The extent of frontal hairline recession has remained stable. While FFA was initially described exclusively in postmenopausal White women, it has since been reported in Hispanic, African, Afro-Caribbean and Asian individuals, premenopausal women, and men. Dyspigmentation associated with FFA has largely been a feature observed in patients with darker skin types, and it is not clear whether this pigmentation is part of the spectrum of FFA in individuals with darker skin or whether LP pigmentosus is occurring coincidently with FFA in patients with darker skin types. Low-dose isotretinoin has been reported as being of benefit in LP pigmentosus but was ineffective in this case. Mycophenolate mofetil is also reported to be of benefit in the management of LP pigmentosus, and led to a significant improvement in both pigmentation and itch in this case. This case highlights the therapeutic benefit of mycophenolate mofetil in in LP pigmentosus associated with FFA.
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species in particular
are increasingly reported as causative agents of bacteraemia, urinary tract infection, sepsis, and endocarditis. We sought to establish the epidemiology of
in Glasgow hospitals ...and whether the presence of the organism in clinical isolates could be an indicator of undiagnosed urinary tract pathology.
The knowledge gap among clinical staffs on
species as emerging pathogens can be filled by understanding its epidemiology and clinical importance.
Describe the epidemiology and clinical importance of
.
We reviewed positive blood cultures with
species (2017-2021) and urinary isolates (2021) in Glasgow hospitals. Data were collected from clinical and laboratory database systems.
All 22 positive blood cultures were
and sensitive to amoxicillin, vancomycin, and ciprofloxacin. The median age was 80.5; the majority was male (18). In total, 15/22 (68 %) were diagnosed with urinary tract infection. Thirteen were treated with amoxicillin. No cases of infective endocarditis were noted. One patient was subsequently diagnosed with bladder carcinoma. All 83 positive urinary isolates in 72 patients were
. One was resistant to amoxicillin; two to ciprofloxacin; all sensitive to nitrofurantoin and vancomycin. The majority was female (43/83), the median age was 80. The commonest risk factors were underlying malignancy including bladder cancer (5/18), chronic kidney disease (17) and diabetes (16). Clinical data was unavailable in 24 episodes. Of these, 41/59 (69.5 %) were diagnosed with urinary tract infection. One patient was subsequently diagnosed with metastatic renal cancer while bladder wall lesions were identified in three patients, two of whom were waiting for an urology review at the time of study. Thirteen patients (18 %) had 1 year recurrent bacteriuria and three were not treated on initial episode.
are emerging pathogens and are likely to become more common due to advances in laboratory technologies and an ageing population. Clinical teams should be aware of their urological pathogenic potential and not dismiss them as contaminants. Whether
infection is a potential indicator for undiagnosed urinary tract malignancy warrants further studies.
(Hetero)aryl sulfones possess wide biological activities and serve as important structural motifs in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Sulfinates are important radical precursors, via oxidation, for ...sulfonylation, but suffer from strong oxidative conditions as well as instability of sulfonyl radical intermediates. Herein, we find that sulfinates can serve as closed-shell radical acceptors instead of radical precursors for the subsequent sulfonylation, enabling the sulfonylation under reductive conditions rather than oxidative conditions. A photochemical sulfonylation was developed by coupling aryl halides with aryl/alkyl sulfinates in a redox-neutral manner. This newly developed sulfonylation method provides a versatile platform for the synthesis of diverse (hetero)aryl sulfones under mild conditions and shows broad substrate scope and synthetically important functional-group tolerance.
The era of the Internet of Things (IoT) is very rapidly developing with millions of devices that are useful in the smart home, smart city, and many other smart systems for education, organization and ...so on. On the other side, attackers are mostly targeting these devices. After infecting the malware attacks on these devices, they become bots that are controlled by attackers, and these will be targeted to the organizations not only for stealing important information but also for breaking down the network. Although some security mechanisms have developed to protect against cyber-attacks, most such systems are rule-based systems, like public IDS systems. And also, the formal rule-based detection could be circumvented by the malware attackers' knowledge. Therefore, the machine learning-based detection scheme is the replacement for the lack of previous detection techniques. The proposed detection architecture is based on machine learning methodology, like the CART algorithm and public IDS dataset, named N-BaIoT. The experimental results indicate that the detection accuracy of the selected classifier, CART is significantly better than that of the Naïve Bayes classifier, and the overall detection rate using CART is reached up to 99%.
•This study presents evidence of women empowerment from Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.•Women have equal access to productive resources and a greater control over household income ...than men.•Women play an active role in agricultural groups in Thailand and in the Philippines but not in Indonesia and Myanmar.•Country specific gender intervention framework is necessary for effectively addressing gender gaps in agriculture.
Women’s empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps. Although the status of women in agriculture has received extensive attention in the literature in recent decades, a research gap persists regarding the state of gender inequity in Southeast Asian agriculture. The current paper contributes to the geographical scope of the literature by presenting empirical evidence of gender inequity from four Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Using the framework recommended by the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), 37 focus group discussions were conducted with 290 women farmers in the above mentioned countries. The results reveal trends that contradict the conventional narratives of gender inequity in agriculture in certain domains of empowerment. In all four countries, women appear to have equal access to productive resources such as land and inputs, and greater control over household income than men. Important intra-regional heterogeneity is observed in terms of community-level empowerment. While women play an active role in agricultural groups in Thailand and in the Philippines, this is predominantly men’s territory in Indonesia and Myanmar. These findings imply that country-specific gender intervention frameworks are necessary to overcome gender gaps in agriculture.
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A Foreign Body Response‐on‐a‐Chip Platform Sharifi, Fatemeh; Htwe, Su Su; Righi, Martina ...
Advanced healthcare materials,
02/2019, Volume:
8, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Understanding the foreign body response (FBR) and desiging strategies to modulate such a response represent a grand challenge for implant devices and biomaterials. Here, the development of a ...microfluidic platform is reported, i.e., the FBR‐on‐a‐chip (FBROC) for modeling the cascade of events during immune cell response to implants. The platform models the native implant microenvironment where the implants are interfaced directly with surrounding tissues, as well as vasculature with circulating immune cells. The study demonstrates that the release of cytokines such as monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP‐1) from the extracellular matrix (ECM)‐like hydrogels in the bottom tissue chamber induces trans‐endothelial migration of circulating monocytes in the vascular channel toward the hydrogels, thus mimicking implant‐induced inflammation. Data using patient‐derived peripheral blood mononuclear cells further reveal inter‐patient differences in FBR, highlighting the potential of this platform for monitoring FBR in a personalized manner. The prototype FBROC platform provides an enabling strategy to interrogate FBR on various implants, including biomaterials and engineered tissue constructs, in a physiologically relevant and individual‐specific manner.
The foreign body response‐on‐a‐chip (FBROC) platform, consisting of a tissue chamber, an endothelial barrier, and a vascular channel, is developed to model the cascade of events during immune cell reactions to medical implants. The prototype FBROC platform provides an enabling strategy to interrogate foreign body response on various implants, including biomaterials and engineered tissue constructs, in a physiologically relevant manner.
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Walnut anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides is a deleterious disease that severely affects the production of walnut (Juglans regia L.). The aim of this study was to assess the ...antifungal and growth promotion activities of Bacillus velezensis CE 100 as an alternative to chemical use in walnut production. The crude enzyme from B. velezensis CE 100 exhibited chitinase, protease, and β-l,3-glucanase activity and degraded the cell wall of C. gloeosporioides, causing the inhibition of spore germination and mycelial growth by 99.3% and 33.6% at 100 µL/mL, respectively. The field application of B. velezensis CE 100 culture broth resulted in a 1.3-fold and 6.9-fold decrease in anthracnose disease severity compared to the conventional and control groups, respectively. Moreover, B. velezensis CE 100 produced indole-3-acetic acid (up to 1.4 µg/mL) and exhibited the potential for ammonium production and phosphate solubilization to enhance the availability of essential nutrients. Thus, field inoculation of B. velezensis CE 100 improved walnut root development, increased nutrient uptake, enhanced chlorophyll content, and consequently improved total biomass by 1.5-fold and 2.0-fold compared to the conventional and control groups, respectively. These results demonstrate that B. velezensis CE 100 is an effective biocontrol agent against anthracnose disease and a potential plant growth-promoting bacteria in walnut tree production.
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Fibrosis is a major cause of progressive organ dysfunction in several chronic pulmonary diseases. Rho-associated coiled-coil forming kinase (ROCK) has been shown to be involved in myofibroblast ...differentiation driven by altered matrix stiffness in a fibrotic state. There are two known ROCK isoforms in humans, ROCK1 and ROCK2, but the specific role of each isoform in myofibroblast differentiation in lung fibrosis remains unknown. To study this, we developed a gelatin methacryloyl hydrogel-based culture system with different stiffness levels relevant to healthy and fibrotic lungs. We have shown that stiff matrix, but not soft matrix, can induce myofibroblast differentiation with high smooth muscle actin isoform (αSMA) expression. Furthermore, our data confirmed that the inhibition of ROCK signaling by a pharmacological inhibitor (i.e., Y27632) attenuates stiffness-induced αSMA expression and fiber assembly in myofibroblasts. To assess the role of ROCK isoforms in this process, we used short interfering RNA to knock down the expression of each isoform. Our data showed that knocking down either ROCK1 or ROCK2 did not result in a reduction in αSMA expression in myofibroblasts on stiff matrix, as opposed to soft matrix, where αSMA expression was reduced significantly. Paradoxically, on stiff matrix, the absence of one isoform (particularly ROCK2) exaggerated αSMA expression and led to thick fiber assembly. Moreover, complete loss of αSMA fiber assembly was seen only in the absence of both ROCK isoforms, suggesting that both isoforms are implicated in this process. Overall, our results indicate the differential role of ROCK isoforms in myofibroblast differentiation on soft and stiff matrices.
Leaf blight disease caused by
lead to deleterious losses in the quality of forest container seedlings. The use of plant growth-promoting bacteria provides a promising strategy to simultaneously ...control diseases and enhance forest seedling production. This study investigated the biocontrol of leaf blight disease and growth promotion potential of
CE 100 in
Carruth seedlings.
CE 100 produced cell wall degrading enzymes, such as chitinase, β-l,3-glucanase, and protease, which caused cell wall lysis and hyphae deformation of
, leading to mycelial growth inhibition by 54.94%. Inoculation of
CE 100 suppressed
infection and increased seedling survival rate by 1.6-fold and 1.3-fold compared to chemical fertilizer and control, respectively. In addition,
.
CE 100 produced indole-3-acetic acid, which improved root development and nutrient uptake compared to chemical fertilizer and control. Especially, inoculation with
CE 100 increased the total nitrogen content of
seedlings, improved the chlorophyll index in the leaves, and increased seedling biomass by 1.3-fold and 2.2-fold compared to chemical fertilizer and control, respectively. Thus,
CE 100 could be applied in the eco-friendly production of high-quality forest seedlings.
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