Cellular Distribution of Secreted Phospholipase A2 in Lungs of IPF Patients and Its Inhibition in Bleomycin-Induced Pulmonary Fibrosis in Mice.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic lung disease with a very poor prognosis as it has a 2.5 to 5 years mean survival after proper diagnosis. Even nintedanib and pirfenidone cannot halt the progression, though they slow the progression of IPF.

Sri Lanka's national assessment on innovation and intellectual property for access to medical products.

In 2008, the Global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property (GSPA-PHI) was launched by the World Health Organization, to stimulate fresh thinking on innovation in, and access to, medicines and to build sustainable research on diseases disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries. As part of the activities of the GSPA-PHI, Sri Lanka has been the first country to date to assess the national environment for medical technology and innovation. This year-long, multistakeholder, participative analysis facilitated identification of clear and implementable policy recommendations, for the government to increase its effectiveness in promoting innovation in health products through institutional development, investment and coordination among all areas relevant to public health.

Preduodenal portal vein in adult with polysplenia syndrome revisited with a case report.

Preduodenal portal vein (PDPV) is a rare developmental anomaly. In infants, this is often associated with duodenal obstruction or biliary atresia. It is generally asymptomatic in adults (Ooshima et al.

Strangulated Richter's Umbilical Hernia - A Case Report.

Richter's hernia is an abdominal hernia in which part of the circumference of bowel entrapped in the hernial sac. The segment of the entrapped bowel is nearly always the distal ileum but any part of gastrointestinal tract from the stomach to the colon may become incarcerated. The most common sites for Richter's hernia are the femoral ring (71%), deep inguinal ring (23%) and ventral or umbilical hernias (6%).

Application of a novel in silico high-throughput screen to identify selective inhibitors for protein-protein interactions.

Increasing numbers of target protein structures available for computational studies makes the structure-based screening paradigm more attractive for initial hit indentification. We have developed a novel in silico screening methodology incorporating Molecular Mechanics (MM)/implicit solvent methods to evaluate binding free energies and applied this technology to the identification of inhibitors of the TLR4/MD-2 interaction.

Evidence that tricyclic small molecules may possess toll-like receptor and myeloid differentiation protein 2 activity.

Opioids have been discovered to have Toll-like receptor (TLR) activity, beyond actions at classical opioid receptors. This raises the question whether other pharmacotherapies for pain control may also possess TLR activity, contributing to or opposing their clinical effects. We document that tricyclics can alter TLR4 and TLR2 signaling.

Evidence that opioids may have toll-like receptor 4 and MD-2 effects.

Opioid-induced proinflammatory glial activation modulates wide-ranging aspects of opioid pharmacology including: opposition of acute and chronic opioid analgesia, opioid analgesic tolerance, opioid-induced hyperalgesia, development of opioid dependence, opioid reward, and opioid respiratory depression. However, the mechanism(s) contributing to opioid-induced proinflammatory actions remains unresolved. The potential involvement of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) was examined using in vitro, in vivo, and in silico techniques.

A peptide antagonist of the TLR4-MD2 interaction.

Toll-like receptors are an integral part of innate immunity in the central nervous system (CNS); they orchestrate a robust defense in response to both exogenous and endogenous danger signals. Recently, toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) has emerged as a therapeutic target for the treatment of CNS-related diseases such as sepsis and chronic pain. We herein report a chemical biology approach by using a rationally designed peptide inhibitor to disrupt the TLR4-MD2 association, thereby blocking TLR4 signaling.

Non-stereoselective reversal of neuropathic pain by naloxone and naltrexone: involvement of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4).

Although activated spinal cord glia contribute importantly to neuropathic pain, how nerve injury activates glia remains controversial. It has recently been proposed, on the basis of genetic approaches, that toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) may be a key receptor for initiating microglial activation following L5 spinal nerve injury. The present studies extend this idea pharmacologically by showing that TLR4 is key for maintaining neuropathic pain following sciatic nerve chronic constriction injury (CCI).

Document registration using projective geometry.

A technique for extracting filled-in information in form documents is presented. The transformation that is required to convert a filled-in form to match the master (blank form) is derived using results from projective geometry. Experimental studies with several forms indicate the proposed technique to be accurate and robust.

Segmentation of handwritten interference marks using multiple directional stroke planes and reformalized morphological approach.

A new algorithm for the extraction of words from printed documents that have interference marks and other strokes, cutting across text, is presented. Morphological operations based on multiple direction projection planes and skeleton images are adopted here to prevent the "flooding water" effect of conventional morphological operations. Test results indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Analysis of ECG data, for data compression.

A number of papers on the subject of data reduction techniques applied to ECG Data have recently been published; however, the authors found that most of these articles did not consider quantization techniques, which can be effectively applied to ECG data without any complex parameter extraction procedures. In this paper the authors have looked at the effects of quantization on ECG data and techniques of reducing the amount of data needed to represent these signals. Basically, 3 data reduction techniques, linear prediction using differential pulse code modulation, spectral analysis and slope change detection are investigated and a relative assessment of their performance is presented.