Applying Wells score to inconclusive perfusion only modified PIOPED II (Prospective Investigation of Pulmonary Embolism Diagnosis II) readings in order to optimize the lung scintigraphy diagnostic yield in acute pulmonary embolism detection

Annals of Nuclear Medicine - When using perfusion only modified PIOPED II criteria for PE detection, generated non-diagnostic scans are found to be the main diagnostic restriction. The objective of...     

Effect of purslane seed supplementation on inflammatory cytokines,oxidative stress and muscle damage in response to high-intensity intermittent exercise in national athlete runners

Sport Sciences for Health - Purslane supplementation has anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, skeletal muscle-relaxant activities. However, it is unknown if the ingestion of purslane will affect the...     

Blood bezoar causing obstruction after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass

INTRODUCTION

Bowel obstruction is a known complication after bariatric surgery especially Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. The known etiologies include internal hernia, jejunojejunostomy stricture, ileus, intussusceptions, superior mesenteric artery syndrome, incarcerated port site hernia, and adhesions. Blood bezoar is a rare cause of small intestinal obstruction after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

PRESENTATION OF CASE

We are going to present two cases of small bowel obstruction after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass due to blood bezoar.

DISCUSSION

Blood clot as the etiology of small bowel obstruction after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is an unusual event. In the presence of postoperative small intestinal obstruction an obstructive blood bezoar should be in differential diagnosis. As any other etiology of postoperative obstruction it should be treated immediately to prevent its adverse lethal complications.

CONCLUSION

The best way for prevention of blood bezoar is prevention of bleeding at staple line and doing hemostasis at stapler line.     

The development of an artificial neural network – genetic algorithm model (ANN-GA) for the adsorption and photocatalysis of methylene blue on a novel sulfur–nitrogen co-doped Fe2O3 nanostructure surface

In this study, a new sulfur–nitrogen co-doped Fe₂O₃ nanostructure was synthesized via a simple and efficient method and characterized via UV-Vis spectrophotometry, X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller surface area analysis. The as-synthesized nanoparticles showed high efficiency for the removal of methylene blue. The experimental conditions including the dose of the nanoparticle, the concentration of the dye, pH and the light dose were studied and optimized. The removal percentage was approximately 95% in a short time (5 min). A three-layer artificial neural network (ANN) model was proposed for predicting the efficiency of the dye removal. The network was trained using the obtained experimental data at optimum values. Some training functions were tested and their ability to predict different numbers of neurons was evaluated. The coefficient of determination (R-squared) and the mean squared error (MSE) were measured for comparison. In order to improve the accuracy of the prediction and to remove its dependency on the number of neurons, the ANN parameters were optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA). The final model results showed an acceptable agreement with experimental data. Furthermore, the relative importance of the dose of the nanoparticle, the concentration of the dye, and pH on the efficiency were obtained as 39%, 46%, and 15%, respectively. Moreover, interestingly, the obtained results showed that this newly synthesized nanoparticle has some photocatalytic properties with a band gap of 1.65 eV and therefore, it can be proposed as a low-cost visible light-driven photocatalyst for engineering applications.

In this research an S-N doped Fe₂O₃ nanostructure is synthesized and its adsorption ability and photocatalytic activity were evaluated. The optimum experimental conditions were obtained and an ANN-GA model was proposed for predicting experimental values.     

Rosmarinus plants: Key farm concepts towards food applications

Rosmarinus species are aromatic plants that mainly grow in the Mediterranean region. They are widely used in folk medicine, food, and flavor industries and represent a valuable source of biologically active compounds (e.g., terpenoids, flavonoids, and phenolic acids). The extraction of rosemary essential oil is being done using three main methods: carbon dioxide supercritical extraction, steam distillation, and hydrodistillation. Furthermore, interesting antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, antileishmanial, anthelmintic, anticancer, anti‐inflammatory, antidepressant, and antiamnesic effects have also been broadly recognized for rosemary plant extracts. Thus the present review summarized data on economically important Rosmarinus officinalis species, including isolation, extraction techniques, chemical composition, pharmaceutical, and food applications.     

A label-free electrochemical biosensor based on 3D cubic Eu3+/Cu2O nanostructures with clover-like faces for the determination of anticancer drug cytarabine

The present research utilized a simplified procedure for developing a novel electro-chemical DNA biosensor based on a carbon paste electrode (CPE) modified with three-dimensional (3D) cubic Eu³⁺/Cu₂O nanostructures with clover-like faces (Eu³⁺/Cu₂O CLFNs). The modified electrode was applied to monitor electro-chemical interactions between dsDNA and cytarabine for the first time. Then, the decreased oxidation signal of guanine following the interactions between cytarabine and dsDNA was utilized as an indicator for selectively determining cytarabine using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). According to the findings, the oxidation peak current of guanine was linearly proportionate with the cytarabine concentration in the range between 0.01 and 90 μM. Additionally, the limit of quantification (LOQ) and the limit of detection (LOD) respectively equaled 9.4 nM and 2.8 nM. In addition, the repeatability, applicability and reproducibility of this analysis to drug dosage forms and human serum samples were investigated. Furthermore, UV-vis spectroscopy, DPV, docking and viscosity measurements were applied to elucidate the interaction mechanism of dsDNA with cytarabine. It was found that this DNA biosensor may be utilized to sensitively, accurately and rapidly determine cytarabine.

Electrochemical biosensor based on three-dimensional (3D) cubic of Eu³⁺/Cu₂O with clover-like face nano-structures and ds-DNA modified carbon paste electrode for detecting cytarabine was fabricated.