Publications by authors named "Z Kwan"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the prevalence of the HLA-B*58:01 allele, which is linked to severe skin reactions from allopurinol, among gout patients in Malaysia's multiethnic population.
  • A total of 547 patients from Malay, Chinese, and Indian backgrounds were tested, revealing an overall allele prevalence of 16.8%, with the highest at 21.8% in Chinese patients.
  • Notably, despite having the HLA-B*58:01 allele, none of the patients who used allopurinol developed severe cutaneous reactions, indicating the need for a better predictive model for these reactions.
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Inflammatory markers such as neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and eosinophil count are known prognostic indicators for the severity of Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS)/toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). This study explores the correlation of systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and NLR with Severity-of-Illness Score for Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (SCORTEN) and patient outcomes. A retrospective audit of 34 patients with SJS/TEN (25 SJS, 3 SJS/TEN overlap, 6 TEN) was conducted from 2018 to 2022.

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In dermoscopic images, which allow visualization of surface skin structures not visible to the naked eye, lesion shape offers vital insights into skin diseases. In clinically practiced methods, asymmetric lesion shape is one of the criteria for diagnosing Melanoma. Initially, we labeled data for a non-annotated dataset with symmetrical information based on clinical assessments.

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Melanoma, one of the deadliest types of skin cancer, accounts for thousands of fatalities globally. The bluish, blue-whitish, or blue-white veil (BWV) is a critical feature for diagnosing melanoma, yet research into detecting BWV in dermatological images is limited. This study utilizes a non-annotated skin lesion dataset, which is converted into an annotated dataset using a proposed imaging algorithm (color threshold techniques) on lesion patches based on color palettes.

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Introduction: Allopurinol, the first-line treatment for chronic gout, is a common causative drug for severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR). HLA-B*58:01 allele was strongly associated with allopurinol-induced SCAR in Asian countries such as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia. HLA-B*58:01 screening before allopurinol initiation is conditionally recommended in the Southeast-Asian population, but the uptake of this screening is slow in primary care settings, including Malaysia.

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