Covid-19 Pandemic: Resumption of Orthopedic Care and Medical Education

Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) first identified in Wuhan, China (December 2019). The disease rapidly crossed the barrier of countries, continents and spread globally. Non-pharmaceutical measures such as social distancing, face mask, frequent hand washing and use of sanitizer remained the best available option to prevent the spread of disease. OPD, IPD admissions, elective O. Ts were curtailed. Orthopedic care was only limited to emergency and semi-urgent procedures like necrotizing fasciitis, open fracture, and compartment syndrome. These measures were taken to preserve infrastructure and manpower to manage covid-19 pandemic. The children were thought to have a low susceptibility to covid-19 as compared to an adult. Deferring the patient during pandemic has led to high orthopedic disease burden, morbidity and disease-related sequelae, hence elective care must be resumed with modified hospital infrastructure. Resumption of elective/emergent orthopedic care should be slow, phasic and strategic, much similar to unlocking. Cases must be stratified depending on covid status and severity. Dedicated O.Ts with neutral/negative pressure and HEPA filter for covid positive and suspected patients are to be used. All symptomatic and suspected patients should be investigated for covid-19 by RT-PCR, blood counts and CT scan. Regional anaesthesia should be preferred to General anaesthesia. Power drill/saw/burr/pulse lavage should be minimized to avoid aerosol generation. Postoperatively continuous surveillance and monitoring to be done for covid related symptoms. Medical institutes rapidly shifted to the online mode of education. Blended learning (virtual & physical) and imparting skills have to be continued in post covid phase with equitable distribution of teaching hours to students of different years.     

Discovery and Validation of a Urinary Exosome mRNA Signature for the Diagnosis of Human Kidney Transplant Rejection

BackgroundDeveloping a noninvasive clinical test to accurately diagnose kidney allograft rejection is critical to improve allograft outcomes. Urinary exosomes, tiny vesicles released into the urine that carry parent cells’ proteins and nucleic acids, reflect the biologic function of the parent cells within the kidney, including immune cells. Their stability in urine makes them a potentially powerful tool for liquid biopsy and a noninvasive diagnostic biomarker for kidney-transplant rejection.MethodsUsing 192 of 220 urine samples with matched biopsy samples from 175 patients who underwent a clinically indicated kidney-transplant biopsy, we isolated urinary exosomal mRNAs and developed rejection signatures on the basis of differential gene expression. We used crossvalidation to assess the performance of the signatures on multiple data subsets.ResultsAn exosomal mRNA signature discriminated between biopsy samples from patients with all-cause rejection and those with no rejection, yielding an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.87 to 0.98), which is significantly better than the current standard of care (increase in eGFR AUC of 0.57; 95% CI, 0.49 to 0.65). The exosome-based signature’s negative predictive value was 93.3% and its positive predictive value was 86.2%. Using the same approach, we identified an additional gene signature that discriminated patients with T cell–mediated rejection from those with antibody-mediated rejection (with an AUC of 0.87; 95% CI, 0.76 to 0.97). This signature’s negative predictive value was 90.6% and its positive predictive value was 77.8%.ConclusionsOur findings show that mRNA signatures derived from urinary exosomes represent a powerful and noninvasive tool to screen for kidney allograft rejection. This finding has the potential to assist clinicians in therapeutic decision making.     

Comparison between small renal masses 0-2 cm vs. 2.1-4 cm in size: A population-based study

BackgroundThe NCCN guidelines recommend active surveillance (AS) as an option for the initial management of cT1a 0-2 cm renal lesions. However, data about comparison between renal cell carcinoma (RCC) 0-2 cm vs. 2.1-4 cm are scarce.MethodsWithin the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (2002–2016), 46,630 T1a N_anyM_any stage patients treated with nephrectomy were identified. Data were tabulated according to histological subtype, tumor grade (low [LG] vs. high [HG]), as well as age category and gender. Additionally, rates of synchronous metastases were quantified.ResultsOverall, 69.3 vs. 74.1% clear cell, 21.4 vs. 17.6% papillary, 6.9 vs. 6.8% chromophobe, 2.0 vs. 1.1% sarcomatoid dedifferentiation, 0.2 vs. 0.2% collecting duct histological subtype were identified for respectively 0-2 cm and 2.1-4 cm RCCs. In both groups, advanced age was associated with higher rate of HG clear cell and HG papillary histological subtype. In 0-2 cm vs. 2.1-4 cm RCCs, 13.8% vs. 20.2% individuals operated on harbored HG tumors and were more prevalent in males. Lower synchronous metastases rates were recorded in 0-2 cm RCC and ranged from 0 in respectively multilocular cystic to 0.9% in HG papillary histological subtype. The highest synchronous metastases rates were recorded in sarcomatoid dedifferentiation histological subtype (13.8% and 9.7%) in both groups.ConclusionsRelative to 2.1-4 cm RCCs, 0-2 cm RCCs harbored lower rates of HG tumors, lower rates of aggressive variant histology and lower rates of synchronous metastases. The indications and demographics of patients selected for AS may be expanded in the future to include younger and healthier patients.     

Effects of Co‐composting of Municipal Solid Waste and Pigeon Pea Biochar on Heavy Metal Mobility in Soil and Translocation to Leafy Vegetable Spinach

Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology - An experiment was conducted to study the effects of co-composted products of municipal solid waste (MSW) and pigeon pea biochar (PPB) on...     

Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies of carotid intima-media thickness

Common carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) is an index of subclinical atherosclerosis that is associated with ischemic stroke and coronary artery disease (CAD). We undertook a cross-sectional epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) of measures of cIMT in 6400 individuals. Mendelian randomization analysis was applied to investigate the potential causal role of DNA methylation in the link between atherosclerotic cardiovascular risk factors and cIMT or clinical cardiovascular disease. The CpG site cg05575921 was associated with cIMT (beta?=??0.0264, p value?=?3.5?×?10^–8) in the discovery panel and was replicated in replication panel (beta?=??0.07, p value?=?0.005). This CpG is located at chr5:81649347 in the intron 3 of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor repressor gene (AHRR). Our results indicate that DNA methylation at cg05575921 might be in the pathway between smoking, cIMT and stroke. Moreover, in a region-based analysis, 34 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were identified of which a DMR upstream of ALOX12 showed the strongest association with cIMT (p value?=?1.4?×?10^–13). In conclusion, our study suggests that DNA methylation may play a role in the link between cardiovascular risk factors, cIMT and clinical cardiovascular disease.

     

Immobilisation stress induced analgesia in diabetic rats

Stress is known to produce analgesia. The pain threshold is altered in diabetes. We studied the effect of 1 hr of immobilisation stress on pain threshold in male Wistar rats. The same effect was tested in streptozotocin induced diabetic rats. The pain threshold of tail flick, vocalisation and vocalisation after discharge increased in the control group after the stress procedure. Significant analgesia was also obtained in diabetic rats, for flick and after discharge pain threshold. However the vocalisation threshold was not altered, probably due to the antagonistic action of glucose on opiate receptor at the level of brain stem.