This study examined the aspect of the regulation of velum movement in the transition from the oral to pharyngeal phases of swallowing in relation to changes in the swallowing volume and viscosity by means of measurment of levator veli palatini muscle activity. The subjects were nine normal adults, ranging in age from 24 to 30 years. The swallowing volume was set at 1/4, 1/2 and 1 volume of the optimum volume of green tea for swallowing determined in each subject, and the viscosity was adjusted to 0, 2·0 and 4·6 Pa·s by mixing with thickener. Nine test foods were prepared in total. The electromyographic activity of the levator veli palatini muscle was monitored using bipolar hooked wire electrodes. The levator veli palatini muscle activity was defined as the integrated electromyographic wave. The mean in swallowing each test food was determined in each subject. The levator veli palatini muscle activity increased with the swallowing volume for all subjects (P < 0·05) and decreased inversely with the viscosity for six subjects (P < 0·05), but no change with the increase in the viscosity was noted for three subjects. This study clarified the aspect of the regulation of velar movement with regard to the involvement of the levator veli palatini muscle in swallowing activity with changes in the swallowing volume and viscosity.

Objectives.

To document the feasibility of nephron-sparing surgery (NSS) for the surgical treatment of renal masses measuring larger than 7 cm (cT2) on preoperative imaging. Methods. A total of 139 patients have undergone NSS between 2001 and 2012 by a single surgeon in our clinic. Of these, we identified 17 patients whose tumors were measuring greater than 7 cm on preoperative imaging studies and were limited to the kidney. Their charts were retrospectively reviewed.

Results.

Mean age of the study population was 49.8 ± 11.3 years. Thirteen patients were managed by open NSS, while 4 patients have undergone robot-assisted NSS. Mean diameter and mean R.E.N.A.L. score of the tumors that were enucleoresected were 8.2 cm and 8.5, respectively. A total of 5 Clavien grade 2 and higher complications were recorded within 30 days of surgery. Histopathologic examination revealed benign histology in almost 1/4 of the cases. After a median followup of 33 months, all of our patients were alive. Only one patient (5.8%) experienced local recurrence.

Conclusions.

NSS is a feasible and safe option for large (>7 cm) renal masses. It may be considered not only for imperative conditions but also for highly selected cases with a normal contralateral kidney.

Blood samples were collected from 65 free-ranging birds from six species in the southern North Island of New Zealand. Sera from the birds were tested for the presence of avipoxvirus (APV) antibodies by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and blood cells from 55 birds were also tested for Plasmodium spp. by PCR. Forty-five birds (69.2%) tested seropositive to APV. Song thrushes (Turdus philomelos) presented the highest seroprevalence at 100% (4/4), followed by Eurasian blackbirds (Turdus merula) (96.86%, 31/32), chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) (54.55%, 6/11), starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) (25%, 3/12), greenfinches (Carduelis chloris) (25%, 1/4), and European goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) (0%, 0/2). Plasmodium spp. DNA was detected in 15/55 birds (27.3%), including 11 Eurasian blackbirds, one song thrush, and three starlings. Eight Eurasian blackbird isolates (73%) grouped within the subgenus Novyella. Two Eurasian blackbird isolates and the song thrush isolate clustered within a different group with previously reported lineages LINN1 and AFTRU5. In addition, all three starling isolates clustered within the well-characterized lineage Plasmodium (Huffia) elongatum GRW06. All Plasmodium-positive Eurasian blackbirds and the song thrush were seropositive to APV, whereas only 67% of Plasmodium-positive starlings showed evidence of previous exposure to APV. A significant relationship between birds seropositive to APV and birds infected by Plasmodium spp. was observed (chi2 = 5.69, df = 1, P = 0.0086). To the authors' knowledge this is the first report describing the seroprevalence of APV and its association with Plasmodium spp. infection in introduced bird species in New Zealand.

Complacency is the surgeons worst enemy and analysing results is mandatory in order not to succumb to it. Radical prostatectomy, the matter in question, is a procedure that combines removal and reconstruction surgery and, remains a challenge for the urological community. The study should be understood in that context. Authors from "Laparoscopic radical prostatectomy: impact of the learning curve on positive surgical margins" show very interesting results that warrant further discussion. In their study, the authors use a known surrogate endpoint, the rate of positive margins (R1 ) (1/4 ). They demonstrate that the rate of R1 goes down with surgical experience, allowing us to conclude that the greater the experience of the surgeon, the better quality the surgery. Nevertheless, the presence of R1 is not only related to surgical skill, but with pathological stage and intraoperative strategy (3 ). Secin et al. (1 ) showed that it is necessary to perform 200 procedures until a plateu of 20% R1 rate is achieved, with a lineal improvement only resulting after 700 procedures. Intensive fellowship programs and initial sample selection could advance this plateau. Over time however the surgeon will face more advanced tumors and a higher rate of nerve sparing procedures for low risk patients. As a result, It is feasible that a higher rate of positive margins could appear, though the surgeon should not be dismayed by such results, as previous studies have shown that experience combined with a correct preoperative strategy are powerful resources to achieve excellence (4 ).

OBJECTIVES:

Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) is a technique that delivers therapeutic agents directly and effectively into the brain parenchyma. Application of CED is now under investigation as a new treatment for various diseases. Diffuse brainstem glioma is one of the important candidates that could betargeted with CED. Especially when targeting brainstem lesions, prediction of drug distribution prior to CED will be necessary. This study evaluated the computational simulation of CED in the primate brainstem usinga simplified model.

METHODS:

Three in vivo experiments infusing gadolinium solution into the non-human primate brainstem were analyzed. T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images were acquired during infusion of a total of300 μl gadolinium solution. Computational simulation reconstructed the surface geometry of the brainstemfrom the MR images. The volume of the whole structure was meshed by grid generating software. Under the assumptions that the brainstem surface was rigid and the interior was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, the equations of continuity and Darcy’s law were solved within a computational fluid dynamics package using afinite volume method. The results of computational simulations were compared with those of the in vivo experiments.

RESULTS:

The distribution volume (Vd) in the simulations corresponded well with the in vivo experiments. Under the condition without massive â€~catheter back flow’, computational simulations predicted almost 70% of the Vd of the in vivo experiments.

CONCLUSIONS:

The simplified computational simulations were consistent with the experiments in vivo. The methodology used in this study can be applied to predict convective drug distribution in the primatebrainstem.

Distance based phylogenetic methods attempt to reconstruct an accurate phylogenetic tree from an estimated matrix of pair-wise distances between taxa. This paper examines two distance based algorithms (GreedyBME and FastME) which are based on the principle of minimising the balanced minimum evolution score of the output tree in relation to the given estimated distance matrix. This is also the principle that underlies the Neighbour-Joining (NJ) algorithm. We show that GreedyBME and FastME both reconstruct the entire correct tree if the input data is quartet consistent, and also that if the maximum error of any distance estimate is &#x03B5;, then both algorithms output trees containing all sufficiently long edges of the true tree: those having length at least 3&#x03B5;. That is to say, the algorithms have edge safety radius 1/3. In contrast, quartet consistency of the data is not sufficient to guarantee the NJ algorithm reconstructs the correct tree and, moreover, the NJ algorithm has edge safety radius of 1/4: only edges of the true tree of length at least 4&#x03B5; can be guaranteed to appear in the output. These results give further theoretical support to the experimental evidence suggesting FastME is a more suitable distance based phylogeny reconstruction method than the NJ algorithm.

Nanoparticle-assisted drug delivery has been emerging as an active research area recently, in which achieving high drug loading is only one facet of the drug delivery issues, and it is also important to investigate the effect of surface charge distribution on self-assembly of nanoparticle on cellular membranes. By considering the electrostatic distribution of patterned nanoparticles, we used dissipative particle dynamics simulation to investigate the self-assembly of patterned charged nanoparticles, where five surface charged patterns were adopted. It is found that both surface charged pattern and nanoparticle size affect the self-assembly of nanoparticles on the cellular membranes significantly. Results indicate that 1/2 pattern charged small nanoparticles can self-assemble into a dendritic structure, while 1/4 pattern one self-assembles into a cluster. As the nanoparticle size increases, 1/2 pattern charged medium nanoparticles can self-assemble into a linear structure, while 1/4 pattern one self-assembles into a cluster. For very large nanoparticle, both 1/2 pattern and 1/4 pattern charged nanoparticles self-assemble into the flakiness structures with different connections. By considering the effects of surface charged pattern and size of the nanoparticle on the self-assembly, we found that nanoparticle self-assembly needs a minimum effective charged area. When the local charged area of nanoparticles is less than the threshold, its surface charge cannot induce the nanoparticle self-assembly, i.e., the surface charged pattern of a nanoparticle would determine effectively the self-assembly structure. It is expected that this work would provide guidance for the nanoparticle-assisted drug delivery.

Background.

The efficacy and tolerability of peginterferon α -2a and peginterferon α -2b in chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients remain controversial. Methods. PubMed, Ovid, and Cochrane libraries were electronically searched until August 30, 2012. Studies that met the inclusion criteria were systematically evaluated by two reviewers independently.

Results.

The overall sustained virologic response (SVR) rate of the peginterferon α -2a group was significantly higher than that of the peginterferon α -2b group (46.7% versus 42.4%, P value = 0.01). The same tendency was observed for naïve, genotype 1/4, and genotype 2/3 patients. The early virologic response (EVR) and end-of-treatment response (ETR) rates were significantly higher in the peginterferon α -2a group than in the peginterferon α -2b group (56.1% versus 49.8%, P < 0.0001; 67.9% versus 56.6%, P < 0.00001, resp.). Peginterferon α -2a had a significantly lower discontinuation rate than peginterferon α -2b (27.9% versus 33.9%, P < 0.0001) in naïve patients. In both naïve CHC and hepatitis C virus genotype 1 patients, peginterferon α -2a had a higher relapse rate than peginterferon α -2b.

Conclusions.

Peginterferon α -2a has superior efficacy with higher EVR, ETR, and SVR than peginterferon α -2b for CHC patients, both plus ribavirin. Peginterferon α -2a might obtain a similar or even lower discontinuation rate than peginterferon α -2b. However, peginterferon α -2a had a higher relapse rate than peginterferon α -2b.

This study aimed to establish an allometric scaling relationship between the frequency of intestinal contractions and body mass of different mammalian species. The frequency of intestinal contractions of rabbit, guinea pig, rat and mouse were measured using an isolated organ system. The isolated rings were prepared from proximal segments of jejunums and the frequency of contractions was recorded by an isometric force procedure. The coefficients of the obtained allometric equation were ascertained by computation of least squares after logarithmic transformation of both body mass and frequency. Significant differences (p less than 0.001) were shown in the frequency of contractions between different species. The highest frequency that corresponded to the mice was 57.7 min-1 and the 95 percent confidence interval (CI) ranged from 45.4 to 70, while rabbits showed the lowest frequency (12.71 min-1, CI: 8.6-16.8). Logarithms of frequency were statistically proportional to logarithms of body mass (r00.99; p less than 0.001). The data fitted an equation F 1/4 18:51B 0:31 and the 95 percent confidence interval of the exponent ranged from -0.30 to -0.32. The results of this study suggest that it is probably possible to extrapolate the intestinal contraction frequency of other mammalian species by the means of allometry scaling.

BACKGROUND:

Liver stiffness has been suggested as a parameter of fibrosis progression/regression in hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients.

AIM:

To evaluate stiffness before and after peginterferon-ribavirin treatment.

METHODS:

Stiffness was prospectively measured in 74 HCV patients, 32 genotypes 1/4 (43.25%) and 42 genotypes 2/3 (56.75%), before, at end of treatment, and after 3 years of follow-up (49 patients). On the same study day, 21 patients underwent liver biopsy.

RESULTS:

In 55 patients with sustained virological response (74.32%), liver stiffness decreased significantly at end of therapy (6.8±4.9kPa) vs. baseline (9.5±6.9kPa, p=0.04). The decrease vs. baseline was maintained in 30 sustained virological response patients after 3 years follow-up (6.8±4.6kPa vs. 10.8±8.5kPa, p=0.0141). No difference was found at end of treatment vs. baseline (10.1±4.7kPa vs. 9.7±4.2kPa, p=0.825) and after 3 years of follow-up vs. baseline (10.2±3.4kPa vs. 9.7±4.2kPa, p=0.765) in null responders. Similar results were found in relapsers at end of treatment vs. baseline (13.7±7.7kPa vs. 15.2±8.2kPa, p=0.74), and after 3 years of follow-up vs. baseline (16.9±10.0kPa vs. 15.2±8.2kPa, p=0.734). Pre-treatment stiffness >12kPa was significantly associated with no SVR (p<0.025), RR=2.44 (95%C.I. 1.17-5.07).

CONCLUSION:

Liver stiffness may be useful to assess long-term antiviral treatment response.