Is manioc a diabetogenic factor? Apropos of a case of diabetes mellitus with a large consumption of crude manioc

The case of a 24 year-old Comorian male patient consuming large amounts of cooked and uncooked cassava and suffering of malnutrition since his boyhood is reported. The patient presented a diabetes mellitus by chronic calcific pancreatitis with retinopathy and neuropathy. The protein deficiency associated with eating uncooked cassava may be recognised as a factor of calcific pancreatitis diabetes. Other factors might be associated such as the environment as well as immunological and genetic characteristics.     

Microbiological diagnosis of bacteremia from a catheter: a simple method? Results of a retrospective study

Diagnosing catheter-related bloodstream infections is important but not always easy and a failure to make the diagnosis may have serious consequences. A high rate of unnecessary catheter removal is noted. We retrospectively compared the clinical and usual methods of microbiological diagnoses of catheter-related sepsis to the speed of detection of the catheter versus peripheral blood cultures using the Bact-Alert system. We analyzed 50 files of patients with central indwelling devices: 16 single lumen catheters and 34 implanted ports. Twenty-one catheters were classified as infected, and we observed an earlier positivity of catheter versus peripheral blood in all cases, but significant for 19 patients. According to standard diagnosis methods, 29 catheters were estimated non-infected, a more rapid detection of peripheral culture was reported for 17 specimens and, for another eight patients, the time of detection was equal to blood culture drawn from the catheter. In this group, four discrepancies were recorded with a differential time in favor of sepsis related to catheters ranging from 0.5 to 2 hours. Because of its simplicity and low cost, we believed that this method could be the first step of a diagnosis of catheter-related sepsis and could, therefore, avoid unjustified removal, in particular for the implanted ports for which the diagnostic methods are less codified than for catheters. A prospective study is ongoing; the design of the study focuses only on implanted ports.     

Generalization properties of a “saccadic-like” hand-reaching adaptation along a single degree of freedom

Visuomotor-adaptation experiments devoted to the study of plasticity are also used to indirectly test hypotheses about how the brain encodes the spatio-temporal characteristics of arm movement directed at a visual target. A current major theory, the vectorial coding hypothesis, postulates that arm movements are processed differentially for direction and amplitude. This approach, at first developed in an extrinsic Cartesian frame of references, has been also adopted in an intrinsic joint space. In the present paper, we report an experiment that corroborates this last point of view. Subjects performed pointing movements in a one degree of freedom condition, while systematic self-attributed endpoint errors were introduced. Through an observation of motor behavior in a battery of pre- and post-tests, we suggested that adaptation consisted in an increase in the motor gain in the adapted direction, with a perfect transfer to all starting points in the experimental reaching space. We explained the results by the absence of intersensory conflict and of correlative sensory adaptive component. As this paradigm was adapted from the saccadic adaptation paradigm, we eventually compared the two paradigms and highlighted that both induced mostly motor effects.     

Neural modeling of a visual perceptual task—a case study

A model connecting psychophysical findings with their putative neurobiological substrate is examined: the attempt to relate the perception of the orientation of a line in visual space to the excitation pattern of orientation-selective neurons in the mammalian visual cortex. The specific problem is whether it is possible to derive the phenomenon of ‘simultaneous orientation contrast’, also known as the tilt illusion, from neurophysiological data by comparing the responses to similar visual patterns obtained from human observers and from visual cortical neurons in anesthetized cats. It was hoped that straight-forward concepts such as lateral inhibition in the domain of line-orientation would lead to a satisfactory model. The neurophysiological findings, however, turn out to be much more complex, particularly as contextual stimulation (non-classical receptive fields) of cortical neurons produces some hitherto unsuspected effects. When constructing neural models of visual psychophysical responses, we clearly need to consider not only non-classical receptive fields but also the fact that neural ‘filtering’ is likely to be active rather than passive.     

Complete nucleotide sequence of a Chinese isolate of Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 reveals a 5′ UTR of 802 nucleotides

Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 (GLRaV-3) is widely spread in China. Here we report, for the first time, the complete nucleotide sequence of the Chinese isolate (LN) of GLRaV-3. The 18,563-nt genomic RNA is the largest of the GLRaV-3 genomes reported to date, with a 5′ untranslated region of 802 nt. Its sequence shares 87.99–98.15 % identity with those of previously reported isolates, and phylogenetic analysis suggested placing isolate LN in group 3, together with another fully sequenced isolate, PL-20.     

International naming of viruses — a digest of recent developments

Archives of Virology -     

Evolution of a discipline—The changing face of anatomy

This special issue is unlike any other special issue published in this journal's history. You will not find the types of original research in anatomy and evolutionary biology that you are accustomed to seeing adorning the pages of The Anatomical Record. Instead, the articles included cover the past and future of the discipline of anatomy broadly and of the American Association for Anatomy (AAA) more narrowly, and through two specific rhetorical frames: ethics; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The articles in this issue are divided into two sections. The first section traces the history of anatomy and addresses many of the ethical dilemmas we face as a result of that history. The second section sets the stage for how the discipline and the AAA move forward to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future for students, teachers, colleagues, and everyone else we touch through our work as anatomists. While this is only the beginning of our reconciliation with our past, the future certainly looks bright.     

Is living in a border region a risk for a high prevalence of resistance?

This study assessed the antimicrobial resistance and population structure of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from general practice (GP) patients and nursing home (NH) residents in the province of Limburg (near the border with Germany and Belgium) in comparison with those obtained in the remaining provinces of the Netherlands. A total of 617 and 418 S. aureus isolates were isolated from 2,691 to 1,351 nasal swabs from GP patients and NH residents, respectively. Quantitative antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed using a microbroth dilution method. Putative methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolates were tested for the presence of the mecA gene and spa typing was performed on all S. aureus isolates. No significant differences in the prevalence of resistance were found between the two groups of GP isolates, but the isolates from the NH residents showed a lower resistance for trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole (p = 0.003) in Limburg province compared with the remaining provinces in the Netherlands. Among the isolates from NH residents in Limburg province, the prevalence of spa-CC 084 was higher (p = 0.003) and that of spa-CC 002 was lower (p = 0.01) compared with isolates from NHs in the remaining provinces of the Netherlands. We observed no differences in resistance and population structure between S. aureus isolates from GP patients in Limburg and the remaining provinces of the Netherlands, and only a few differences were observed between the NH populations. There was no higher prevalence of resistance among the GP and NH isolates from Limburg compared with the remaining provinces.     

Concordance of auriculo-cardiovascular-skeletal malformations: a new malformation complex in an infant of a diabetic mother?

The incidence of malformations among infants of diabetic mothers (IDM) is known to be higher than in the general population. These malformations usually involve several organ systems and in the past few years there has been an attempt to group them into distinct "syndromes." The present report concerns a child with a specific constellation of findings not yet reported in the infant of a diabetic mother, and we urge our colleagues to look for other associations existing in these infants, rather than just listing series of individual malformations.     

The Characteristics of a Spiral Blood Pump

INTRODUCTIONK　　 It is very importantfor a blood pump to damage the blood when it is used as aleft ventricular assistant device.In the last few years,the miniature implantablepumps were developed.They are centrifuge blood pump,axial flow blood pump andspiral blood pump.The axial flow blood pump became more developmentthan cen-trifuge blood pump because it could get a more little volume and higher efficiency.After1 995the spiral pump started to be reported asa leftventricular assistantde…     

Is rhinosinusitis a cause of asthma?

There is a great deal of evidence of an association between rhinosinusitis and asthma. However, it is less clear whether rhinosinusitis is a direct trigger for asthma or the two conditions are simply manifestations of a common underlying process. Evidence for a role for rhinosinusitis as a trigger for asthma includes many examples of improvement in asthma once concomitant rhinosinusitis is treated medically or surgically. Possible mechanisms for this relationship include naso-pharyngo-bronchial reflexes, postnasal drip, abnormal breathing, and the local production of inflammatory mediators that trigger pulmonary inflammation via the bone marrow. On the other hand, evidence exists that rhinosinusitis and asthma are manifestations of a common process. For example, there are similarities between the histopathological changes in the epithelium in chronicrhinosinusitis and asthma. The bone marrow may provide the link between the upper and lower airways in creating a common disease. A second possible mechanism for a common disease is response to staphylococcal enterotoxins. Although evidence exists to suggest that rhinosinusitis either triggers asthma or represents a local manifestation of a shared disorder, the key to reconciling this apparent controversy is to consider that rhinosinusitis is not just a single, uniform disease. Current evidence suggests that rhinosinusitis with neither polyps nor eosinophilic inflammation acts as a direct trigger for asthma, whereas rhinosinusitis with both polyps and eosinophilic inflammation shares underlying mechanisms with asthma. Clearly, however, there is considerable overlap between the different, complex mechanisms that link rhinosinusitis to asthma.     

Prevalence of hypertension in a hemodialysis population

INTRODUCTION　　 Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases remain the lead cause of death indialysis patients.Most studies have shown that hypertension has a close relationwith morbidity and mortality in hemodialysis population.There are a few papers de…     

Is autoimmunity a matter of sex?

Autoimmune diseases include several conditions that cumulatively are estimated to affect over 5% of the US population with a striking female predominance reported for most of them. The cause and mechanisms of this sex bias remains unknown despite multiple proposed hypotheses. Indeed, it is well established in several experimental settings that the human immune system exhibits sexual dimorphism with basic immune responses differing between females and males. Among candidate factors to explain these differences we note that particular attention has been primarily devoted to sex hormones, yet data have been inconclusive or have not been confirmed. The same seems to apply to the hypothesis of fetal microchimerism. Most recently, sex chromosome abnormalities and skewed X chromosome inactivation have been suggested as novel players, particularly in later-onset diseases. We review herein the most recent data on the mechanisms proposed for the female predominance. We also attempt to determine whether observed sex ratios are in fact the result of sex-biased awareness in case-finding studies.     

Is osteoporosis a matter of over-adaptation?

The stiffness and strength of cancellous bone depends on the amount of bone mineral (BMD) and on the three-dimensional distribution of the mineral (architecture). The relationship between mechanical properties and architecture, excluding confounding effects due to BMD can be studied using computer models of cancellous bone. It was shown that adaptation to mechanical deformation energy leads to an architecture which is an optimal or semi-optimal configuration with respect to maximal stiffness and minimal mass. Thus, the stiffness of the cancellous bone relative to the amount of bone (the bone density) can be considered as an optimality criterion. Based on these findings we assumed that the status of osteoporosis - or better fracture risk - could be related to how close this optimality criterion was met. In other words, we assumed that a higher fracture risk is simply related to a less optimal structure. This was tested for cancellous bone samples taken from post mortem vertebral bodies from two groups of subjects: one group with high fracture incidence during their lives and one group of "healthy" controls. It was found that the specimen from the high fracture incidence group had an architecture leading to a slightly stiffer structure relative to the BMD value. The conclusion is therefore that vertebral bone specimen from subjects with high fracture incidence are better optimized which was contradictory to what we expected. This finding indicates that bone specimen from the "healthy" control subjects had bone matrix at locations which are relatively unloaded. This tissue can be considered as not mechanically efficient or functional. A possible explanation of the present findings is that bone from subjects with increased fracture incidence is better adapted to mechanical stress, because it needs all bone material to carry the load. This stronger adaptation might be related to a compromised safety factor against bone loss, or diminished intrinsic matrix properties (e.g., microdamage).