Influenza and diabetes mellitus

Influenza is an infectious disease of present concern. The situation of influenza infection in diabetic patients is of interest and is hereby the main theme in this short article. Severity and mortality of diabetic patients with influenza is hereby discussed. Also, the influenza immunization for diabetic patients is also mentioned in this short paper.     

Periodic urinary protein creatinine ratio for predicting significant proteinuria in preeclampsia in different alternatives: time effectiveness analysis

Preeclampsia is a big problem in obstetrics. The diagnosis relies mainly on the detection of both hypertension and proteinuria. The gold standard for the determination of proteinuria is 24 h urinary protein creatinine ratio; however, this approach is inconvenient and it is a considerable time consuming process that might bring a delayed diagnosis which might result in delayed treatment. Although spot urine measurement can be done, it has very poor prediction. The use of periodic urinary protein creatinine ratio is proposed as a possible alternative to solve this problem. Here, the author tries to perform a time effectiveness analysis for reported models on periodical urinary protein creatinine ratio for predicting significant proteinuria in preeclampsia. Data from previously published reports on this topic are used for further analysis. It seems that the alternative, 4 h, gives the most effectiveness in the shortest period of turnaround time. Hence, this alternative is recommended for screening proteinuria.     

Prolactin and systemic lupus erythematosus

Immunologic Research -     

Feasibility of using papaya skin extract for digestion of swamp eel viscera for harvesting infective stage larva of Gnathostoma spp

In this study, we reported the feasibility of using papaya skin extract (Carica papaya L.) as an alternative to enzyme pepsin in harvesting Gnathostoma spinigerum third-stage larvae. From experimental digestion, we found that the different numbers of recovered larvae between papaya skin extract and pepsin were not statistically significant (p >0.05). When the derived larvae from pepsin and papaya skin extract digestion were cultivated in BME medium for 7 days, the survival rates were not significantly different either (p >0.05). Thus, papaya skin extract might be another choice for recovering Gnathostoma spinigerum third-stage larvae.     

A survey of metacercariae in cyprinoid fish in Nakhon Ratchasima,northeast Thailand

Metacercariae were recovered from freshwater fish taken from a stream in Lum Cha Muak, Nakhon Ratchasima Province, northeast Thailand during the year 2000. Seventy-nine cyprinoid fish comprising 3 species (52 Puntius leiacanthus, 22 Cyclocheilichthys armatus, and 5 Hampla dispar) were collected. The prevalence of infection with metacercariae was 51.9%. Only two genera of metacercariae were found: Haplochinae spp and Heterophyidae spp. Haplochinae metacercariae were found in all 3 species of fish, giving rates of infection of 95.5%, 20% and 1.9% for Puntius leiacanthus, Cyclocheilichthys armatus and Hampla dispar respectively. Heterophyidae metacercariae were found only in Puntius leiacanthus, whose infection rate was 30.77%. There were fish intected at the rate of 3.8% with unclassified metacercariae. Interestingly, no fish infected with Opisthorchis viverrini metacercariae were found, which is at odds with previous reports from Thailand in which a higher infection rate was given. This is the first report of fish infected with Haplorchinae spp in Thailand.