Correction to: “Living with COVID”—implications for immunosuppressed and immunocompromised

Clinical Rheumatology -     

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in the FADS Gene Cluster but not the ELOVL2 Gene are Associated with Serum Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Composition and Development of Allergy (in a Swedish Birth Cohort)

Exposure to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) influences immune function and may affect the risk of allergy development. Long chain PUFAs are produced from dietary precursors catalyzed by desaturases and elongases encoded by FADS and ELOVL genes. In 211 subjects, we investigated whether polymorphisms in the FADS gene cluster and the ELOVL2 gene were associated with allergy or PUFA composition in serum phospholipids in a Swedish birth-cohort sampled at birth and at 13 years of age; allergy was diagnosed at 13 years of age. Minor allele carriers of rs102275 and rs174448 (FADS gene cluster) had decreased proportions of 20:4 n-6 in cord and adolescent serum and increased proportions of 20:3 n-6 in cord serum as well as a nominally reduced risk of developing atopic eczema, but not respiratory allergy, at 13 years of age. Minor allele carriers of rs17606561 in the ELOVL2 gene had nominally decreased proportions of 20:4 n-6 in cord serum but ELOVL polymorphisms (rs2236212 and rs17606561) were not associated with allergy development. Thus, reduced capacity to desaturase n-6 PUFAs due to FADS polymorphisms was nominally associated with reduced risk for eczema development, which could indicate a pathogenic role for long-chain PUFAs in allergy development.     

Application of Morphological Bit Planes in Retinal Blood Vessel Extraction

The appearance of the retinal blood vessels is an important diagnostic indicator of various clinical disorders of the eye and the body. Retinal blood vessels have been shown to provide evidence in terms of change in diameter, branching angles, or tortuosity, as a result of ophthalmic disease. This paper reports the development for an automated method for segmentation of blood vessels in retinal images. A unique combination of methods for retinal blood vessel skeleton detection and multidirectional morphological bit plane slicing is presented to extract the blood vessels from the color retinal images. The skeleton of main vessels is extracted by the application of directional differential operators and then evaluation of combination of derivative signs and average derivative values. Mathematical morphology has been materialized as a proficient technique for quantifying the retinal vasculature in ocular fundus images. A multidirectional top-hat operator with rotating structuring elements is used to emphasize the vessels in a particular direction, and information is extracted using bit plane slicing. An iterative region growing method is applied to integrate the main skeleton and the images resulting from bit plane slicing of vessel direction-dependent morphological filters. The approach is tested on two publicly available databases DRIVE and STARE. Average accuracy achieved by the proposed method is 0.9423 for both the databases with significant values of sensitivity and specificity also; the algorithm outperforms the second human observer in terms of precision of segmented vessel tree.     

Clinically lesser known entity in India: A Report of two cases of Melioidosis

Melioidosis is endemic in the South Asian regions, like Thailand, Singapore Malaysia and Australia. The disease is more pronounced in the southern part of the country. It is caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei which causes systemic involvement, morbidity and mortality associated with the disease is high. Due to highly varied clinical presentation, and low general awareness this infection is largely underdiagnosed and under reported in our country. Most laboratories in the country still rely on conventional culturing methods with their low sensitivity, adding to the under reporting. To enhance physician awareness we describe here two cases who presented to our institute after months of misdiagnosis.     

New Characterization Measures of Pore Shape and Connectivity Applied to Coatings used for Controlled Drug Release

Pore geometry characterization-methods are important tools for understanding how pore structure influences properties such as transport through a porous material. Bottlenecks can have a large influence on transport and related properties. However, existing methods only catch certain types of bottleneck effects caused by variations in pore size. We here introduce a new measure, geodesic channel strength, which captures a different type of bottleneck effect caused by many paths coinciding in the same pore. We further develop new variants of pore size measures and propose a new way of visualizing 3-D characterization results using layered images. The new measures together with existing measures were used to characterize and visualize properties of 3-D FIB-SEM images of three leached ethyl-cellulose/hydroxypropyl-cellulose films. All films were shown to be anisotropic, and the strongest anisotropy was found in the film with lowest porosity. This film had very tortuous paths and strong geodesic channel-bottlenecks, while the paths through the other two films were relatively straight with well-connected pore networks. The geodesic channel strength was shown to give important new visual and quantitative insights about connectivity, and the new pore size measures provided useful information about anisotropies and inhomogeneities in the pore structures. The methods have been implemented in the freely available software MIST.     

Suppression of Leaf Blight of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ocimum sanctum</Emphasis> L. Using Lactic Acid Bacteria as Novel Bio-control Agent

Fungal pathogens causing leaf blight of Ocimum sanctum L. have been isolated from the lateritic belt of Birbhum district of West Bengal, India and were identified as species of Alternaria. The pathogen not only destroys the mesophyll tissues of the leaves but also decreases the antibacterial potential and antioxidant activity of Ocimum plants. Two strains of Lactococcus lactis subsp. hordniae, viz., LABW1, LABW3 and a strain of Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis LABW4, isolated from high quality fermented milk product (homemade buttermilk), were able to produce significant zones of inhibition against the pathogen on dual culture overlay plates. A maximum of 4.5 ± 0.2 cm zone of inhibition was produced by LABW4. Cell free supernatant of LABW4 (50%) was also effective to inhibit more than 89% of conidial germination of Alternaria sp. VBOS17. Antifungal action of LABW4 was responsible for prominent mycelial deformations and breakages of pathogen as evident from scanning electron microscopic studies. During in vivo greenhouse experiment only 14.57 ± 1.99% leaf blight was noticed after 60 days of bacterial application even upon treatment with high concentration of Alternaria conidia (1.6 × 10⁴ conidia/ml), as compared to pathogen treated set (87.95 ± 2.14%). Efficacy of LABW4 to control the disease was also noticed during field experiment. In addition, LABW4 also increased the antibacterial and antioxidant potentials of the plant. L. lactis subsp. lactis LABW4 can be used as a prospective agent to control leaf blight disease of Ocimum plant and to increase its medicinal properties.     

Diffusion tensor imaging analysis of rheumatoid arthritis patients with neuropsychiatric features to determine the alteration of white matter integrity due to vascular events

Clinical Rheumatology - The pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric manifestations in rheumatoid arthritis is not well known. The magnetic resonance imaging of the brain in rheumatoid arthritis...     

Exchange transfusion in complicated pediatric malaria: A critical appraisal

Complicated falciparum malaria is a killer disease resulting in high mortality in spite of appropriate treatment. Some workers have reported improved survival when adjunct exchange blood transfusion is included in the treatment modality while others opine against it. This review is an effort to address and critically appraise current evidence for the treatment mode for severe malaria. The literature was searched with a specified search strategy to identify reports of children who underwent exchange transfusion for severe malaria. Total 23 children who underwent exchange transfusion for severe falciparum malaria published by 9 authors were identified. Age ranged from 5 months to 16 years with a mean age of 6.4 years. The average preprocedure parasite index (PI) was 41.4% (95confidence interval [CI]; 31.2-51.4). The average blood volume exchanged was 118.6% (95% CI; 94.7-143) of the circulating blood volume. The average postexchange reduction in PI was 34.1% (95% CI; 25.4-42.8). Three out of 23 children encountered some complications. All the children survived