Agenesis/atresia ofvena cava inferior is a rare congenital anomaly, caused by an aberrance of embryonal venous system development. This is in most cases asymptomatic, because of well developed ...collateral venous circulation. However, in some cases, it can be manifested with occurence of deep thrombosis in area of pelvis and lower limbs. In this case report, we repon a 21 year old male with painful swelling of both lower limbs. Ultrasonographic examination revealed a bilateral thrombosis in deep venous system of lower limbs and pelvis. Subsequent CT angiography showed atresia ofinfrarenal segment ofvena cava inferior. According to the CT image thrombotic proces affected also collateral venous system, that joined mostly to vena azygos and hemiazygos. Examination of coagulation system didn't reveal a procuring cause ofthrombotic occurrence. We realized a systemic trombolysis with streptokinase during 5 days. Starting from the fifth day we administered a low molecular weight heparin in anticoagulant dose. This treatment showed a good clinical effect. Pacient was discharged with a long-term oral warfarin therapy in combination with acetylsalicylic acid. In next four months of taking recommended therapy no relapse of thrombotic process nor evolvement of bleeding complication was observed.
Rickettsial diseases (typhus and spotted fever group rickettsioses, scrub typhus and Q fever) may pose a serious public health problem, namely when they are non-diagnosed or misdiagnosed. Although ...rickettsiae can be isolated from or detected in clinical specimens, serological tests still remain an indispensable tool in the diagnosis of rickettsial diseases. The complement fixation test widely used in the past is being replaced by other tests which make differentiation of immunoglobulin classes possible. Of these tests microimmunofluorescence is considered the test of choice followed by the latex agglutination, indirect hemagglutination, immunoperoxidase assay, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The last one is also suitable for seroepidemiological studies. Immunoblot analysis can be used to confirm the results of other tests. The use of the low-specific and low-sensitive Weil-Felix test should be reserved only for situations in which other serologic tests are not available.
Background
Visceral pain is initiated by activation of primary afferent neurons among which the capsaicin-sensitive (TRPV1-positive) neurons play an important role. The stomach is a common source of ...visceral pain. Similar to other organs, the stomach receives dual spinal and vagal afferent innervation. Developmentally, spinal dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and vagal jugular neurons originate from embryonic neural crest and vagal nodose neurons originate from placodes. In thoracic organs the neural crest- and placodes-derived TRPV1-positive neurons have distinct phenotypes differing in activation profile, neurotrophic regulation and reflex responses. It is unknown to whether such distinction exists in the stomach.
Aims
We hypothesized that gastric neural crest- and placodes-derived TRPV1-positive neurons express phenotypic markers indicative of placodes and neural crest phenotypes.
Methods
Gastric DRG and vagal neurons were retrogradely traced by DiI injected into the rat stomach wall. Single-cell RT-PCR was performed on traced gastric neurons.
Results
Retrograde tracing demonstrated that vagal gastric neurons locate exclusively into the nodose portion of the rat jugular/petrosal/nodose complex. Gastric DRG TRPV1-positive neurons preferentially expressed markers PPT-A, TrkA and GFRα
3
typical for neural crest-derived TRPV1-positive visceral neurons. In contrast, gastric nodose TRPV1-positive neurons preferentially expressed markers P2X
2
and TrkB typical for placodes-derived TRPV1-positive visceral neurons. Differential expression of neural crest and placodes markers was less pronounced in TRPV1-negative DRG and nodose populations.
Conclusions
There are phenotypic distinctions between the neural crest-derived DRG and placodes-derived vagal nodose TRPV1-positive neurons innervating the rat stomach that are similar to those described in thoracic organs.
Chlamydophila pneumoniae, one of the most prevalent human pathogens worldwide, is not only a significant cause of pneumonia, but may also be associated with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) as suggested ...by multiple studies. A total of 228 sera from CVD patients with hypertension, ischemic heart disease or previous reconstructive vascular surgery were screened for the presence of anti-C. pneumoniae IgG and IgA antibodies by ELISA. Out of 150 positive serum samples, 80 with similar IgG and IgA levels were investigated by immunoblot (IB). IgG antibodies were directed predominantly against the 35 kDa and 39 kDa proteins as well as 50-54 and 56-60 kDa proteins of C. pneumoniae. IgA antibodies reacted most frequently with the 50-54 and 56-60 kDa proteins.
Coxiella burnetii is a strict intracellular bacterium with potential as a bioterrorism agent. To characterize different isolates of C. burnetii at the molecular level, we performed multispacer ...sequence typing (MST). MST is based on intergenic region sequencing. These regions are potentially variable since they are subject to lower selection pressure than the adjacent genes. We screened 68 spacers in 14 isolates and selected the 10 that exhibited the most variation. These spacers were then tested in 159 additional isolates obtained from different geographic areas or different hosts or were implicated in different manifestations of human disease caused by C. burnetii. The sequence analysis yielded 30 different allelic combinations. Phylogenic analysis showed 3 major clusters. MST allows easy comparison and exchange of results obtained in different laboratories and could be a useful tool for identifying bacterial strains.
In this paper we have aimed at the detectors based on the high-quality 4H-SiC epitaxial layer operated at increased temperature. The 4H-SiC is a wide-band-gap semiconductor material with favourable ...properties for radiation detectors like radiation tolerance and chemical stability. The prepared detectors had an active thickness of 50 µm. The active area was defined by the prepared Ni/Au Schottky contact with a circular shape and a 3.0 mm diameter. The current-voltage characteristics of prepared detectors were measured up to 300 V at different temperatures to determine the operating voltage region. The precise temperature stabilization system was developed to realize detector measurements at different temperatures. Prepared detector structures were tested with a-particles generated by a 238 Pu 239 Pu 2448 Cm radioisotopes. The 4H-SiC detector shows high-energy resolution at room and even elevated temperatures and is able to resolve two close energies generated by an alpha particle radiation source.
Disorders of haemostasis and haemocoagulation are often seen in patients with cancer as a part of paraneoplastic syndrome. Thrombotic and/or haemorrhagic complications are the second most common ...cause of mortality in patients with cancer. The evaluation of the haemostatic parameters of 67 patients with gastric cancer have indicated tendency to thrombophilia and activation of intravascular coagulation, of which 31.3% showed tendency to hypercoagulation and 47.8% disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Only 7.5% of subjects have yielded normal laboratory findings while 5.9% of patients had DIC with remarkable hypocoagulation. Thrombocytosis, platelet hyperaggregability and elevation of beta-thromboglobulin are the indicators of changes in primary haemostasis and elevation of thrombomodulin indicates vascular wall damage. Lower antithrombin III levels, C-protein and S-protein in plasma have indicated lower antithrombotic potential in patients with gastric cancer. It can be concluded that patients suffering from gastric cancer are at higher risk of thromboembolism as for haemorrhagic diathesis (20.1% thromboembolism, 11.94% fatal thromboembolic events vs 5.9 % haemorrhagic diathesis) (Tab. 5, Ref. 22). Full Text (Free, PDF) www.bmj.sk.
In this paper we investigate the spectrometric deterioration of semi-insulating GaAs detectors degraded by high doses of 5 MeV electrons, beyond the previously set limit of their operation ability of ...MGy. The spectrometric characterization is made by measuring the 59.5 keV y--rays from 241Am, evaluating their charge collection efficiency (CCL). The accumulative dose has deteriorated the CCΣ of detectors, at 200 V reverse biasing, from initial 74% down to 15% at 2 MGy, independently of the dose rate in the range from 20 to 80 MGy/h. The 75% of tested detectors were able to operate with 24% CCΣ after 1 kGy degradation. On the other hand, only 33% of them sustain operable after next dose step of 1.25 MGy. The highest applied degradation-dose withstand operable only one detector of all twelve samples, demanding the noise subtraction to achieve the observable signalfrom registered photons.
In the spring of 1993, an outbreak of respiratory infection affected 113 persons (103 males) in Jedl'ové Kostol'any, a village located in a hilly area of western Slovakia. Q fever, manifested as a ...flu-like illness with atypical pneumonia and hepatic involvement, was diagnosed using four serological tests (microimmunofluorescence, microagglutination, complement fixation, and enzyme immunoassay). Aborting goats were proven as a source of infection. During a 4-year follow-up study, no chronic form of Q fever could be demonstrated, either clinically or by tests to detect phase I Coxiella burnetii antibodies.
