Serum Neutrophil Biomarkers to Predict Crohn's Disease Progression and Infliximab Treatment Outcomes.

Background And Aims: Predicting the treatment outcomes of biological therapies is an unmet need in Crohn's Disease. In this study, we explored the potential of serum neutrophil-related biomarkers to predict infliximab therapeutic results and disease progression in Crohn's Disease patients, over a 2-year period, in a real-world setting.

Methods: The study included 100 asymptomatic Crohn's Disease patients in the IFX maintenance phase from the prospective, observational, multicenter DIRECT study.

Study on Sensing Urine Concentrations in Water Using a Microwave Sensor Based on Hilbert Structure.

In this study, a two-port network-based microwave sensor for liquid characterization is presented. The suggested sensor is built as a miniature microwave resonator using the third iteration of Hilbert's fractal architecture. The suggested structure is used with the T-resonator to raise the sensor quality factor.

The Influence of Subclinical Active Inflammation on IFX Pharmacokinetic Modeling and Disease Progression Assessment: Findings from a Prospective Real-World Study in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients.

Background And Aims: Effective management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) relies on a comprehensive understanding of infliximab (IFX) pharmacokinetics (PK). This study's primary goal was to develop a robust PK model, identifying key covariates influencing IFX clearance (CL), while concurrently evaluating the risk of disease progression during the maintenance phase of IBD treatment.

Methods: The multicenter, prospective, real-world DIRECT study was conducted in several care centers, which included 369 IBD patients in the maintenance phase of IFX therapy.

Disturbed by a sandfly: visceral leishmaniasis in ileal Crohn´s disease under combined immunosuppression.

This case reports illustrates a 44-year-old Caucasian male with ileal Crohn´s disease under combined immunosuppression that first presented with unspecific constitutional symptoms, newly pancytopenia and elevated inflammatory markers. The infectious screening was negative except for an ileal abscess that resolved with conservative antibiotic therapy. Due to concerns for lymphoproliferative disease in a patient under anti-TNF and azathioprine, a myelogram was performed that ruled out dysplastic changes.

Thiopurines have no impact on outcomes of Crohn's disease patients beyond 12 months of maintenance treatment with infliximab.

Background: The emergence of new treatments the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) raised questions regarding the role of older agents, namely thiopurines.

Aims: To clarify the benefits of combination treatment with thiopurines on Crohn's disease (CD) patients in the maintenance phase of infliximab.

Methods: In this analysis of the 2-year prospective multicentric DIRECT study, patients were assessed in terms of clinical activity, faecal calprotectin (FC), C-reactive protein (CRP), and infliximab pharmacokinetics.

Monitoring and Predicting Health Status in Neurological Patients: The ALAMEDA Data Collection Protocol.

(1) Objective: We explore the predictive power of a novel stream of patient data, combining wearable devices and patient reported outcomes (PROs), using an AI-first approach to classify the health status of Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple sclerosis (MS) and stroke patients (collectively named PMSS). (2) Background: Recent studies acknowledge the burden of neurological disorders on patients and on the healthcare systems managing them. To address this, effort is invested in the digital transformation of health provisioning for PMSS patients.

European Corn Borer ( Hbn.) Bioecology in Eastern Romania.

Between 2020 and 2021, we conducted research in eastern Romania to monitor the bioecology of the European corn borer ( Hbn.), an important pest of corn. The bioecology research established the pest stage duration (egg, larva, pupa, and moth), the flight curve, and the flight peak.

Shared Decision-Making to Improve Health-Related Outcomes for Adults with Stroke Disease.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability and death worldwide, a severe medical condition for which new solutions for prevention, monitoring, and adequate treatment are needed. This paper proposes a SDM framework for the development of innovative and effective solutions based on artificial intelligence in the rehabilitation of stroke patients by empowering patients to make decisions about the use of devices and applications developed in the European project ALAMEDA. To develop a predictive tool for improving disability in stroke patients, key aspects of stroke patient data collection journeys, monitored health parameters, and specific variables covering motor, physical, emotional, cognitive, and sleep status are presented.

How many biomarker measurements are needed to predict prognosis in Crohn's disease patients under infliximab?-A prospective study.

Background: Timely stratification of Crohn's disease (CD) is essential for patients' management. The use of noninvasive accurate biomarkers is key to monitor treatment and to pursue mucosal healing, the ultimate treatment endpoint in CD.

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the performance of readily available biomarkers and develop risk matrices to predict CD progression.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Local Cultural Tourism in the Buzău Carpathians and Subcarpathians (Romania).

The COVID-19 pandemic was and continues to be a major challenge for tourist activities worldwide. Cultural tourism was mostly hit because of the social distancing measures, travel restrictions and ban on people gatherings for cultural events. The current study is trying to provide an overall image of the challenges local cultural tourism has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic in a predominantly rural area of Romania-the Buzău Carpathians and Subcarpathians.

Clinical Nutrition in Portuguese Gastroenterology Departments: A Multicentric Study.

Background: Hospital nutrition is a major public health problem, as up to 50% of hospitalized patients suffer from undernutrition. Adequate nutritional support (NS) decreases morbidity/mortality, shortens the length of stay, and reduces costs. We aimed to evaluate the engagement of Portuguese gastroenterology departments in NS, especially in artificial nutrition (AN).

Teledentistry and oral health in older adults - aspects for implementation of the "Patient centric solution for smart and sustainable healthcare (ACESO)" project.

P u r p o s e: Oral health and diseases are significant components of general health. However, oral health-care remains at the lowest of older patients' priorities. The inability to obtain dental care can result in progression of dental disease, leading to a diminished quality of life and overall health.

Breaking CAPTCHA with Capsule Networks.

Convolutional Neural Networks have achieved state-of-the-art performance in image classification. Their lack of ability to recognise the spatial relationship between features, however, leads to misclassification of the variants of the same image. Capsule Networks were introduced to address this issue by incorporating the spatial information of image features into neural networks.

A Case of Spondylodiscitis Fistulating Into the Vagina 15 Years after Promontofixation.

Promontofixations can be a rare cause of spondylodiscitis due to the material used getting infected. We present here a case of a 75-year-old woman who underwent a subtotal hysterectomy, followed by a trachelectomy, and presented 15 years later with lumbago and fever. After thorough examination, haemocultures and imaging were performed.

A novel missense variant of SCN4A co-segregates with congenital essential tremor in a consanguineous Kurdish family.

Essential tremor (ET) is a neurological disorder characterized by bilateral and symmetric postural, isometric, and kinetic tremors of forelimbs produced during voluntary movements. To date, only a single SCN4A variant has been suggested to cause ET. In continuation of the previous report on the association between SCN4A and ET in a family from Spain, we validated the pathogenicity of a novel SCN4A variant and its involvement in ET in a second family affected by this disease.

Subclinical Persistent Inflammation as Risk Factor for Crohn's Disease Progression: Findings From a Prospective Real-World Study of 2 Years.

Background And Aims: Subclinical intestinal inflammation is common in Crohn's disease (CD). We aimed to explore its impact in the disease progression of infliximab-treated patients and the usefulness of fecal calprotectin (FC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) as surrogate minimally invasive biomarkers.

Methods: The registry-based, prospective, observational, multicenter DIRECT (study to investigate the correlation of fecal calprotectin with serum Drug levels and development of an antI-dRug antibodiEs among adult patients with inflammatory bowel disease reCeiving anti-TNF-alfa treatment or vedoluzimab treatment) study followed infliximab-treated CD patients for 2 years in a tertiary care setting.

Differential Microstrip Sensor for Complex Permittivity Characterization of Organic Fluid Mixtures.

A microstrip highly sensitive differential sensor for complex permittivity characterization of urine samples was designed, fabricated and tested. The sensing area contains two pairs of open-stub resonators, and the working frequency of the unloaded sensor is 1.25 GHz.

Multiple bezoars causing small bowel obstruction: a unique case of resolution with upper and low GI endoscopy.

Reports of obstructing foreign bodies in the small bowel are rare and the majority describe surgical resolution. We report a case of successful endoscopic treatment of a small bowel obstruction (SBO) caused by multiple bezoars. A 92-year-old female presented to the Emergency Department with a history of persistent vomiting.

Combining Supervised and Unsupervised Learning Algorithms for Human Activity Recognition.

Human activity recognition is an extensively researched topic in the last decade. Recent methods employ supervised and unsupervised deep learning techniques in which spatial and temporal dependency is modeled. This paper proposes a novel approach for human activity recognition using skeleton data.

COVID-19 in Gastroenterology Departments: The Impact of the First Wave.

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic that has severely affected health care systems around the world. During the emergency state declared in Portugal in the months of March and April 2020, there was a severe reduction in medical activity in order to reduce the pressure on health systems. This study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 in gastroenterology departments across Portugal and the strategies developed to overcome this challenge.

Digestive Oncology in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era.

Introduction: Since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been widespread concern regarding the possible delay in the diagnosis/treatment of cancer patients. We aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of patients with digestive cancer.

Methods: This was a retrospective study including patients with an inaugural digestive cancer diagnosis discussed for the first time at our center during the weekly digestive oncology reunion (DOR) meeting.

Image Segmentation Using Encoder-Decoder with Deformable Convolutions.

Image segmentation is an essential step in image analysis that brings meaning to the pixels in the image. Nevertheless, it is also a difficult task due to the lack of a general suited approach to this problem and the use of real-life pictures that can suffer from noise or object obstruction. This paper proposes an architecture for semantic segmentation using a convolutional neural network based on the Xception model, which was previously used for classification.