Low endometrial volume may predict early pregnancy loss in women undergoing in vitro fertilization

PURPOSE: To evaluate the role of 3-D US measurement of the endometrium during early IVF-pregnancy and before the appearance of gestational sac in the prediction of pregnancies outcome. METHODS: 60 pregnant women following IVF treatment were included in the study. The women underwent transvaginal 3D US measurements of endometrial volume and thickness on day 15-17 post ET. Patients were followed and classified according to pregnancy outcome into 2 further groups. The group with early pregnancy loss and the group with ongoing pregnancy. RESULTS: While no differences were observed between those who miscarried and those who did not in gestational age, endometrial thickness or volume, spontaneous early pregnancy loss was significantly higher in patients with endometrial volume <2 mL as compared to those with endometrial volume >2 mL. CONCLUSIONS: 3-D US measurement of endometrial volume of less than 2 mL during early IVF pregnancy and prior to the appearance of gestational sac is a powerful predictor of pregnancy loss.     

Enzymatic assay of total cholesterol in serum or plasma by amperometric measurement of rate of oxygen depletion following saponification.

A method for serum or plasma cholesterol assay involving amperometric measurement of the rate of oxygen depletion in the cholesterol oxidase-catalyzed oxidation of cholesterol is described. The hydrolysis of the serum cholesterol esters is accomplished by saponification of 50 mul of sample with 0.2 ml of ethanolic KOH (1.0 mol/1) containing 0.5% Triton X-100 for 5 min at 75 degrees C. The rate of oxygen consumption in a 25-mul aliquot of this is measured with a Clark electrode in a Beckman Glucose Analyzer and the assay takes about one minute after incubation; results are read digitally on the instrument. The analyzer cell contains 1 ml of 1 M phosphate buffer, pH 7.4, with 100 mg sodium cholate/100 ml and 0.1-0.2 U cholesterol oxidase.     

Mining Health Social Media with Sentiment Analysis

With the rapid development of the Internet, more and more users utilize health communities (known as forums) to find health-related information, share their medical stories and experiences, or interact with other people in the communities. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze the user-generated contents in a health community. The proposed framework contains three phases. First, we extract medical terms, including conditions, symptoms, treatments, effectiveness and side effects to form a virtual document for each question in the community. Next, we modify Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) by adding a weighted scheme, called conLDA, to cluster virtual documents with similar medical term distributions into a conditional topic (C-topic). Finally, we analyze the clustered C-topics by sentiment polarities, and physiological and psychological sentiment. The experiment results show that conLDA outperforms the original LDA, and can cluster relevant medical terms and relevant questions together. The C-topics clustered by conLDA are more thematic than those clustered by the original LDA. The results of sentiment analysis may provide a quick reference and valuable insights for patients, caregivers and doctors.     

Melatonin protects N2a against ischemia/reperfusion injury through autophagy enhancement

Researches have shown that melatonin is neuroprotectant in ischemia/reperfusion-mediated injury.Although melatonin is known as an effective antioxidant,the mechanism of the protection cannot be explained merely by antioxidation.This study was devoted to explore other existing mechanisms by investigating whether melatonin protects ischemia/reperfusion-injured neurons through elevating autophagy,since autophagy has been frequently suggested to play a crucial role in neuron survival.To find it out,an ischemia/...     

Experimental Study on the Antibacterial Effect of Origanum Volatile Oil on Dysentery Bacilli In Vivo and In Vitro

To observe the germistatic and germicidal effects of origanum volatile oil (OVI) on the dysentery bacteria, the abdominal cavity of mice was infected with Shigella sonne (Sh. sonnei) and Shigella flexneri (Sh. flexneri) F2a. After OVI was given to the mice via gastric lavage, the effects of OVI on the infected mice were observed. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) for dysentery bacteria were determined in vitro. The resuits showed that origanum volatile oil showed obvious protective effect on mice infected with Sh. sonnei and Sh. flexneri F2a. and it had germistatic and germicidal effects on dysentry bacteria. We are led to conclude that origanum volatile oil is an effective medicine against the infection of dysentery bacteria.