New diagnostic strategies to distinguish Crohn's disease and gastrointestinal tuberculosis.

Purpose Of Review: Despite advances in our radiological, histological and microbiological armamentarium, distinguishing between Crohn's disease (CD) and intestinal tuberculosis (ITB), especially in a TB endemic country, continues to be a challenging exercise in a significant number of patients. This review aims to summarize current available evidence on novel diagnostic techniques which have a potential to fill the gap in our knowledge of differentiating between ITB and CD.

Recent Findings: Both ITB and CD are associated with altered host immune responses, and detection of these altered innate and adaptive immune cells has potential to distinguish ITB from CD.

Incidence and Predictors of Liver-Related Events in Patients With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

Background: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the commonest type of liver disease worldwide. We aimed to assess the incidence and predictors of liver-related events (LREs) and mortality in NAFLD patients.

Methods: NAFLD patients (n = 957) evaluated between January 2000 and November 2021 were included.

Evaluation of Pre- and Post-loading Peri-implant Crestal Bone Levels Using Cone-beam Computed Tomography: An Study.

Aim: To evaluate the buccal, lingual, mesial, and distal crestal bone around implant using CBCT analysis having buccal crestal bone width of 1 mm after placement of implant and after 3 months of loading.

Materials And Methods: Twenty-five patients between 18 and 60 years of age with adequate bone width and height were selected for this study with single or multiple missing teeth. Surgical stent was fabricated for all of them by using self-cure acrylic resin for selection of implant according to the availability of bone, and gutta-percha was used as radio-opaque marker to locate the implant site.

Familial Touraine-Solente-Gole syndrome.

Touraine-Solente-Gole syndrome is a rare, autosomal dominant multisystem disorder arising from dysregulated prostaglandin synthesis due to underlying genetic defects. Early symptoms are related to skin and soft tissue involvement (coarse facial features, widening of wrists, etc) and may thus be overlooked unless a careful physical examination is carried out. Secondary causes of pachydermoperiosteitis must always be looked for in such patients.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Post-Graduate Medical Education and Training in India: Lessons Learned and Opportunities Offered.

Hands-on or practice-based learning is the foundational objective of postgraduate teaching and training. A skilled and competent postgraduate resident is critical to the country's health needs and is more relevant in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The postgraduate medical training in India is speciality-specific and based on a structured curriculum and syllabus to achieve precise educational goals and objectives.

Measuring nonhomologous end-joining, homologous recombination and alternative end-joining simultaneously at an endogenous locus in any transfectable human cell.

Double strand break (DSB) repair primarily occurs through 3 pathways: non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ), alternative end-joining (Alt-EJ), and homologous recombination (HR). Typical methods to measure pathway usage include integrated cassette reporter assays or visualization of DNA damage induced nuclear foci. It is now well understood that repair of Cas9-induced breaks also involves NHEJ, Alt-EJ, and HR pathways, providing a new format to measure pathway usage.

Pre-surgical Prediction of Ischemic Mitral Regurgitation Recurrence Using In Vivo Mitral Valve Leaflet Strains.

Ischemic mitral regurgitation (IMR) is a prevalent cardiac disease associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Contemporary surgical treatments continue to have limited long-term success, in part due to the complex and multi-factorial nature of IMR. There is thus a need to better understand IMR etiology to guide optimal patient specific treatments.

Individualized Characterization of the Distribution of Collagen Fibril Dispersion Using Optical Aberrations of the Cornea for Biomechanical Models.

Purpose: The spatial distribution of collagen fibril dispersion has a significant impact on both corneal biomechanical and optical behaviors. The goal of this study was to demonstrate a novel method to characterize collagen fibril dispersion using intraocular pressure (IOP)-induced changes in corneal optical aberrations for individualized finite-element (FE) modeling.

Methods: The method was tested through both numerical simulations and ex vivo experiments.

Human papillomavirus 16 promotes microhomology-mediated end-joining.

Squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) arising from aerodigestive or anogenital epithelium that are associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV) are far more readily cured with radiation therapy than HPV-negative SCCs. The mechanism behind this increased radiosensitivity has been proposed to be secondary to defects in DNA repair, although the specific repair pathways that are disrupted have not been elucidated. To gain insight into this important biomarker of radiosensitivity, we first examined genomic patterns reflective of defects in DNA double-strand break repair, comparing HPV-associated and HPV-negative head and neck cancers (HNSCC).

Undiagnosed Fever in a TB Contact Patient: An Unusual Cause.

IgG4-Related Disease(IgG4-RD) is a rare disease that can present with myriad clinical features. We report a tuberculosis contact case who presented with fever and constitutional complaints with imaging evidence of paravertebral and retroperitoneal soft tissue thickening. Further workup, including tissue biopsy ruled out tuberculosis and revealed diagnosis to be IgG4-related disease.

Atypical presentation of pyogenic iliopsoas abscess in two cases.

Iliopsoas abscess (IPA) is an uncommon diagnosis in medical wards. Herein, we present two unusual cases of IPA. First patient was an elderly diabetic patient who had gas-forming bilateral IPA caused by Escherichia coli.

Effect of proton and gamma irradiation on human lung carcinoma cells: Gene expression, cell cycle, cell death, epithelial-mesenchymal transition and cancer-stem cell trait as biological end points.

Proton beam therapy is a cutting edge modality over conventional gamma radiotherapy because of its physical dose deposition advantage. However, not much is known about its biological effects vis-a-vis gamma irradiation. Here we investigated the effect of proton- and gamma- irradiation on cell cycle, death, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and "stemness" in human non-small cell lung carcinoma cells (A549).

Closely related fungi employ diverse enzymatic strategies to degrade plant biomass.

Background: Plant biomass is the major substrate for the production of biofuels and biochemicals, as well as food, textiles and other products. It is also the major carbon source for many fungi and enzymes of these fungi are essential for the depolymerization of plant polysaccharides in industrial processes. This is a highly complex process that involves a large number of extracellular enzymes as well as non-hydrolytic proteins, whose production in fungi is controlled by a set of transcriptional regulators.

Arterio-venous malformations of uterus - diagnostic and management dilemmas.

Keeping in mind the life-threatening consequences of curettage in cases of undiagnosed uterine arterio-venous malformation (AVM), its possibility should be considered in patients presenting with abnormal heavy uterine bleeding and negative Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (β-hCG) values. We collected a series of cases in which the patients presented with abnormal heavy uterine bleeding, some not responding to conservative treatment. In the presence of declining or low serum β-hCG levels and ultrasound Doppler showing increased vascularity, patients were investigated to detect the possible presence of uterine AVM.

Similar is not the same: differences in the function of the (hemi-)cellulolytic regulator XlnR (Xlr1/Xyr1) in filamentous fungi.

The transcriptional activator XlnR (Xlr1/Xyr1) is a major regulator in fungal xylan and cellulose degradation as well as in the utilization of d-xylose via the pentose catabolic pathway. XlnR homologs are commonly found in filamentous ascomycetes and often assumed to have the same function in different fungi. However, a comparison of the saprobe Aspergillus niger and the plant pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae showed different phenotypes for deletion strains of XlnR.

Differential response of three cell types to dual stress of nitric oxide and radiation.

The perception of toxicity to nitric oxide (NO) and irradiation (IR) by three different cell types has been studied. The three cell types are the macrophage like RAW264.7 cells, EL4 lymphoma cells, and splenocytes, which represent the different components of a tumor.

Ionizing radiation induced signaling of DNA damage response molecules in RAW 264.7 and CD4⁺ T cells.

Ionizing radiation (IR) treatment results in activation of several DNA damage response molecules, such as ataxia telangiectasia, mutated (ATM), and DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNAPK) in mammals that are increasingly recognized for their potential roles in the sensing of DNA damage and initiating the subsequent protein kinase cascade. In vitro evidence indicates that both ATM and DNA-PK are responsible for efficient repair of DNA double strand breaks in response to IR exposure. To unravel the role of ATM and DNA-PK, we studied the mRNA and protein levels of ATM, DNA-PK and their downstream substrates in two different cell types after irradiation viz.

DNA damage response signaling in lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells following gamma and carbon beam irradiation.

Carbon beams (5.16MeV/u, LET=290keV/μm) are high linear energy transfer (LET) radiation characterized by higher relative biological effectiveness than low LET radiation. The aim of the current study was to determine the signaling differences between γ-rays and carbon ion-irradiation.

Activation of DNA damage response signaling in lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells following oxygen beam irradiation.

Oxygen beams are high linear energy transfer (LET) radiation characterized by higher relative biological effectiveness than low LET radiation. The aim of the current study was to determine the signaling differences between γ- and oxygen ion-irradiation. Activation of various signaling molecules was looked in A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells irradiated with 2Gy oxygen, 2Gy or 6Gy γ-radiation.

Differential activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases following high and low LET radiation in murine macrophage cell line.

Mitogen-activated protein kinases have been shown to respond to various stimuli including cytokines, mitogens and gamma irradiation, leading to cell proliferation, differentiation, or death. The duration of their activation determines the specificity of response to each stimulus in various cells. In this study, the crucial intracellular kinases, ERK, JNK, and p38 kinase involved in cell survival, death, or damage and repair were examined for their activity in RAW 264.