Inclusion body myositis in the rheumatology clinic

Inclusion body myositis is a rare sporadic inflammatory‐degenerative myopathy of the elderly. Despite being the commonest type of acquired myopathy after the age of 50, misdiagnosis is extremely common. The most frequent hurdle in identifying new cases is the wrong diagnosis of polymyositis or motor neuron disease. Novel insights into pathogenic mechanisms have heralded the quest for newer therapeutics as well as drug repurposing in this otherwise progressive disorder.     

Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in an immunocompetent patient with severe dengue fever

We report a case of a 65-year-old female diagnosed with sever dengue fever. She started showing recovery from dengue fever with medical management. On day 6 of admission, she had leukocytosis, altered mental sensorium, and hemoptysis. Chest tomography showed air space consolidation with multiple nodules in the left upper and middle lobe sputum and bronchoalveolar lavage cultures were positive for Aspergillus flavus. The patient showed improvement with voriconazole and therapy was continued for 6 weeks.     

Evaporation-induced cavitation in nanofluidic channels

Cavitation, known as the formation of vapor bubbles when liquids are under tension, is of great interest both in condensed matter science as well as in diverse applications such as botany, hydraulic engineering, and medicine. Although widely studied in bulk and microscale-confined liquids, cavitation in the nanoscale is generally believed to be energetically unfavorable and has never been experimentally demonstrated. Here we report evaporation-induced cavitation in water-filled hydrophilic nanochannels under enormous negative pressures up to -7 MPa. As opposed to receding menisci observed in microchannel evaporation, the menisci in nanochannels are pinned at the entrance while vapor bubbles form and expand inside. Evaporation in the channels is found to be aided by advective liquid transport, which leads to an evaporation rate that is an order of magnitude higher than that governed by Fickian vapor diffusion in macro- and microscale evaporation. The vapor bubbles also exhibit unusual motion as well as translational stability and symmetry, which occur because of a balance between two competing mass fluxes driven by thermocapillarity and evaporation. Our studies expand our understanding of cavitation and provide new insights for phase-change phenomena at the nanoscale.     

Thigh-length versus knee-length compression stockings for deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis in the inpatient setting

Deep vein thrombosis may be a complication of extended length hospital stays. Immobilized patients, such as patients in the postoperative period, are at particularly high risk of developing a deep vein thrombosis, which can be associated with high levels of morbidity and mortality. Due to this, prevention of deep vein thrombosis is of great importance in the inpatient setting. Compression stockings have proven to play an important role in prophylaxis and may be used in their knee-length or thigh-length variety. Although randomized trials have studied the efficacy of both varieties in prevention of deep vein thrombosis, selection is often made without regard to evidence. This meta-analysis pools the findings of current studies comparing knee-length and thigh-length compression stockings for deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis. A fixed effects model was used for this study with a two-sided α-error less than 0.05 considered to be statistically significant. When both varieties of compression stockings are compared, thigh-length stockings offer a risk reduction in deep vein thrombosis development when compared with knee-length (odds ratio 1.197, confidence interval 0.983-1.458). This, however, is an insignificant finding. This analysis concludes that current data does not favor either thigh-length or knee-length compression stockings when it comes to prophylaxis of deep vein thrombosis.