Appraisal of the PathoDiscovery: an interactive web-based educational tool for teaching pathophysiology and histopathology.

Virtual pathology education has shown to enhance the students' learning experience. At the Radboud University, an E-learning platform-called the "PathoDiscovery"-was developed and first used in a course about neoplasm development amongst first year (bio)medical sciences students. The PathoDiscovery incorporates high-power microscopic images, histological annotations, interactive questions and pre-programmed feedback.

Intestinal involvement in amyloidosis is a sequential process.

Background: Gastrointestinal amyloidosis causes dysmotility. A comprehensive histological analysis to explain these symptoms is lacking. Therefore, we systematically examined histological features of intestinal dysmotility in patients with AL and AA amyloidosis, compared to controls.

The enteric nervous system and the musculature of the colon are altered in patients with spina bifida and spinal cord injury.

Neurogenic bowel dysfunction occurs in a large percentage of adult patients with spina bifida (SB) and spinal cord injury (SCI), significantly affecting their quality of life. Although bowel motility is autonomously regulated by the enteric nervous system (ENS), disruption of the modulation of the ENS by extrinsic innervation as present in many patients with SB and SCI might lead to motility disorders. In order to gain insight in the pathophysiology, we studied histological changes of the neuromuscular structures in the colon of SB and SCI patients.