Efficient and Quality-Optimized Metagenomic Pipeline Designed for Taxonomic Classification in Routine Microbiological Clinical Tests.

Metagenomics analysis is now routinely used for clinical diagnosis in several diseases, and we need confidence in interpreting metagenomics analysis of microbiota. Particularly from the side of clinical microbiology, we consider that it would be a major milestone to further advance microbiota studies with an innovative and significant approach consisting of processing steps and quality assessment for interpreting metagenomics data used for diagnosis. Here, we propose a methodology for taxon identification and abundance assessment of shotgun sequencing data of microbes that are well fitted for clinical setup.

IL-4, IL-17 and CD163 Immunoexpression and IL-6 Gene Polymorphism in Chronic Hepatitis C Patients and Associated Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Objective: To assess the expression of IL-4, IL-17 and CD-163 as well as study of IL6-572 C/G gene polymorphism in chronic HCV and HCC on top of HCV.

Methods: Sixty HCC specimens and 60 adjacent hepatic tissue with HCV of different grades of necro-inflammation and different stages of fibrosis. In addition to 55 HCV, 60 HCC and 50 healthy venous blood samples for evaluation of IL6-572 C/G gene polymorphism.

Improving Hepatobiliary Imaging as a Physiologic Test with Superior Clinical Outcomes.

This study aims at prospectively evaluating the difference in the effect of cholecystokinin (CCK) and half-and-half milk (HHM) administered in the same patient on gallbladder contractility and correlation with clinical outcomes. Upon gallbladder visualization during standard hepatobiliary imaging, 0.02 μg/kg of CCK was injected over 3 min, and additional 30 min of dynamic imaging was obtained.

Ultra-sensitive and rapid detection of nucleic acids and microorganisms in body fluids using single-molecule tethering.

Detection of microbial nucleic acids in body fluids has become the preferred method for rapid diagnosis of many infectious diseases. However, culture-based diagnostics that are time-consuming remain the gold standard approach in certain cases, such as sepsis. New culture-free methods are urgently needed.

Refractory seizures: Prediction of outcome of surgical intervention based on results from PET-CT, PET-MRI and electroencephaolography.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)-computed tomography (CT) and PET-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with scalp and intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) in predicting surgical outcomes in patients with refractory seizures.

Methods: Patients who underwent PET-CT and MRI fusion, scalp and intracranial EEG, and subsequent surgical intervention were retrospectively included. PET-CT were fused with MRI and interpreted by an experienced blinded reader.