Objectives
The objective of this paper was to evaluate correlations between kidney biopsy indexes (activity and chronicity) and urinary sediment findings; the secondary objective was to find which ...components of urinary sediment can discriminate proliferative from other classes of lupus nephritis.
Methods
Lupus nephritis patients scheduled for a kidney biopsy were included in our study. The morning before the kidney biopsy, we took urine samples from each patient. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to determine the area under the curve (AUC) of each test for detecting proliferative lupus nephritis; a classification tree was calculated to select a set of values that best-predicted lupus nephritis classes.
Results
We included 51 patients, 36 of whom were women (70.6%). Correlations of lupus nephritis activity index with the counts in the urinary sediment of erythrocytes (isomorphic and dysmorphic), acanthocytes, and leukocytes were 0.65 (p < 0.0001) 0.62 (p < 0.0001) and 0.22 (p = 0.1228), respectively. Correlations of lupus nephritis chronicity index with the counts of erythrocytes, acanthocytes, and leukocytes were 0.60 (p ≤ 0.0001), 0.52 (p = 0.0001) and 0.17 (p = 0.2300), respectively. Our classification tree had an accuracy of 84.3%.
Conclusions
Evaluation of urine sediment reflects lupus nephritis histology.
Abstract Optimization and enhancement of rotor blade design are critical to improving the productivity of the wind energy industry. Airfoil geometry is a key factor that makes airfoil design and ...optimization a common task for aerodynamicists. Ensuring proper airfoil parametrization is essential. It serves as the first step in aerodynamic optimization, where the efficiency is directly related to the geometric complexity. This research presents a cost-effective and robust method for fitting airfoils using B-splines. We take into account factors such as computational cost, resource requirements, and accuracy. In this work, we present a method for minimizing the geometric distances between target points and a B-spline curve. We streamline the fitting process, create a computational Python package, and explore different approaches, objective functions, algorithms, and error tolerance settings. The work concludes that it is highly recommended to use an iterative fitting process, to adequately represent common airfoils with B-splines. Moreover, the accuracy and the computational cost can be managed subject to the minimization algorithm used, and the technique utilized for the objective cost calculation. The fitting procedure we develop in this study gives the smallest number of variables capable of accurately representing a desired airfoil.
Resumen Carcinoma renal de istmo en riñón en herradura. a propósito de un caso el riñón en herradura ( rh) es la más común de las anomalías por fusión. la incidencia de carcinoma renal en rh suele ...ser similar a la del riñón normal. dadas sus características anatómicas especiales, se deben tener en cuenta para su abordaje quirúrgico, así como para la realización de una posible cirugía conservadora. Presentamos un caso de carcinoma renal en istmo de rh en el que se realizó cirugía conservadora de ambas unidades renales.
Introduction:
Hypercellular regions surrounding necrotic areas in glioblastoma (GBM), named pseudopalisades, are characteristic of these tumors and have been hypothesized to be waves of migrating GBM ...cells. These structures are thought to be induced by oxygen depletion caused by the accumulation of cells far from nutrient supplies (chronic hypoxia) and/or tumor-induced blood vessel occlusion (acute hypoxia). The universal appearance of these structures in GBM suggests that they may play an instrumental role in their spreading and invasion. However the validation of the mechanisms of pseudopalisade formation has remained challenging.
Materials and methods:
A mathematical model was developed incorporating the main mechanisms of pseudopalisade formation. Oxygen coming from straight vessels drives phenotype changes. A third phenotype was included accounting for hypoxic cells switching back to a more proliferative phenotype in regions of normoxia. Experiments were done by embedding different densities of U-251 MG cells within a collagen hydrogel in a custom-designed microfluidic device. By controlling the medium flow through lateral microchannels, we mimic and control blood-vessel obstruction events associated with this disease.
Results:
Nutrient and oxygen starvation triggered a strong migratory process leading to pseudopalisade generation in silico and in vitro. Also, cells at greatest distance from oxygen supply became hypoxic after a critical point in tumor growth was reached (due to increased metabolism) forming pseudopalisades both in silico and in vitro. All the elements included in the mathematical model were necessary to describe both types of phenomena pointing out to the insufficiency of the go-or-grow hypothesis to describe pseudopalisade formation on-chip.
Conclusions:
Using a combination of computational and experimental techniques, we proved the feasibility of the two hypotheses of pseudopalisade formation, driven by either acute or chronic hypoxia. Additionally, we verified the potential of microfluidic devices as advanced artificial systems capable of experimentally modeling nutrient and oxygen gradients during tumor evolution.
FUNDING: National Research Program, Spain (BIO2016-79092-R, DPI2015-65401-C3-1-R, MTM2012-31073, bes-2012-059940, PI12/00775, PI13/01258 and RD12/0036/0027); FEDER Spain MTM2015-71200-R. Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain PEII-2014-031-P. James S. Mc. Donnell Foundation, USA (220020420 and 220020450).
Horseshoe kidney is the most frequent fusion abnormality of the kidney. The incidence of renal carcinoma in patients with horseshoe kidney is similar to those with normal anatomy. Its special ...anatomical features must be borne in mind for both surgical approach and conservative surgery. We present a horseshoe kidney isthmus carcinoma case report in which we performed conservative surgery of both renal units.
Porcine enzootic pneumonia (PEP), with Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae as the primary agent, is a chronic respiratory disease that causes major economic losses to the pig industry worldwide. The aim of this ...work was to analyse 18 field strains of M. hyopneumoniae isolated in Gran Canaria (Spain) and the reference M. hyopneumoniae strain by SDS-PAGE and immunoblot. A monoclonal antibody (MAb) against the membrane protein p46 reacted with all the strains in this study. In contrast, a purified polyclonal antibody (PAb) against the cytoplasmic protein p36 reacted with this protein in only 10 strains. A MAb against the adhesin protein p97 stained multiple proteins of different sizes and with different intensities. Different antigenic patterns in the same M. hyopneumoniae strains were also observed after different numbers of passages in culture medium. Furthermore, variability in the staining of the 36 kDa protein was observed, depending on whether the p36 PAb or the antiserum against M. hyopneumoniae reference strain was used. It is concluded that local M. hyopneumoniae field isolates in Gran Canaria are characterized by protein diversity.
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