Cardiovascular Pathologies Associated with Excessive Energy Drink Consumption: A Review.

Energy drink consumption has caused worldwide concern in the scientific community and the general public regarding the health effects of these products. Current studies offer data about consumption patterns in America and Europe, but more extensive research is needed to ascertain the potential effects of energy drink consumption, especially among young and healthy individuals. To examine the consequences and health risks of energy drink consumption, related studies were reviewed.

Caffeine: A Potential Protective Agent Against Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's Disease.

Over the past few decades, caffeine has been well recognized as a stimulant whose effects can be detected particularly in the central nervous system. A stimulating effect of caffeine has been found useful in treating patients with many neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD is reported to be a rapidly increasing public health problem with lack of a remedial treatment.

Plasmacytoid Urothelial Carcinoma of Ureter with Retroperitoneal Metastasis: A Case Report.

BACKGROUND Plasmacytoid is a rare histological variant of urothelial carcinoma (UC). Since the first reported case of plasmacytoid urothelial carcinoma (PUC), in 1991, only about 100 cases have since been reported, with most cases involving the bladder. Urothelial carcinomas of the upper urinary tract represent only 5% of urothelial cancers.

Evaluation of SNAP cPL, Spec cPL, VetScan cPL Rapid Test, and Precision PSL Assays for the Diagnosis of Clinical Pancreatitis in Dogs.

Background: The sensitivity, specificity, and agreement of 4 diagnostic assays (SNAP canine pancreatic lipase (cPL), specific cPL (Spec cPL), VetScan cPL Rapid Test, and Precision PSL) for pancreatitis in dogs have not been directly compared.

Hypothesis/objectives: To determine the level of agreement among each of the 4 assays and a clinical suspicion score, level of agreement among the assays, and sensitivity and specificity of each assay in a clinically relevant patient group.

Animals: Fifty client-owned dogs with clinical signs of gastrointestinal disease.

A Study of Selected Ethnic Affiliations in the Development of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Other Psychopathology After a Terrorist Bombing in Nairobi, Kenya.

Objectives: Despite the frequency of disasters in Africa, almost nothing is known about ethnic affiliations in relation to psychopathology after such incidents. This study examined the mental health outcomes of members of 7 major ethnic groups exposed to the 1998 terrorist bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Methods: Approximately 8 to 10 months after the disaster, 229 civilian employees, 99 locally engaged staff workers of the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and 64 workers of the Kenyan Red Cross Society (total N=392) were assessed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition).

Reduction in unnecessary ventricular pacing fails to affect hard clinical outcomes in patients with preserved left ventricular function: a meta-analysis.

Aims: Several pacing modalities across multiple manufacturers have been introduced to minimize unnecessary right ventricular pacing. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether ventricular pacing reduction modalities (VPRM) influence hard clinical outcomes in comparison to standard dual-chamber pacing (DDD).

Methods And Results: An electronic search was performed using Cochrane Central Register, PubMed, Embase, and Scopus.

Renal fluid overload diagnosed by retinal optical coherence tomography scanning.

Fluid overload is one of the major findings in patients with end-stage renal disease. Common findings in fluid overload include shortness of breath, pedal edema, ascites, and pericardial effusion. Rarely, vision loss can be associated with decompensated systemic fluid status.

Studies in using a universal exchange and inference language for evidence based medicine. Semi-automated learning and reasoning for PICO methodology, systematic review, and environmental epidemiology.

The Q-UEL language of XML-like tags and the associated software applications are providing a valuable toolkit for Evidence Based Medicine (EBM). In this paper the already existing applications, data bases, and tags are brought together with new ones. The particular Q-UEL embodiment used here is the BioIngine.

Studies of the role of a smart web for precision medicine supported by biobanking.

Both the extraction of medical knowledge from data mining many patient records and from authoritative natural language text on the Internet are important for clinical decision support and biomedical research. The samples in biobanks represent a further kind of information repository of recognized increasing importance, so mechanisms being developed for a smart web for medicine should take them into account. While this paper is primarily a review of Quantum Universal Exchange Language as an XML extension to enable a future smart web for healthcare and biomedicine, it is the first time that we have discussed the connection with biobanks and the design of Quantum Universal Exchange Language's XML-like tags to support their use.

Basic Shock Physiology and Critical Care.

Veterinarians practicing emergency medicine and/or working with exotic animals must be well versed in the pathophysiology of shock because many exotic pets present with an acute crisis or an acute manifestation of a chronic process causing poor organ perfusion. This article discusses the pathophysiology of shock and the systemic inflammatory response syndrome, which may lead to organ dysfunction, organ failure, sepsis, and death. The physiology of perfusion, perfusion measurements, categories of shock, and altered function of the immune system, gastrointestinal barrier, and coagulation system are discussed.

Data-mining to build a knowledge representation store for clinical decision support. Studies on curation and validation based on machine performance in multiple choice medical licensing examinations.

Extracting medical knowledge by structured data mining of many medical records and from unstructured data mining of natural language source text on the Internet will become increasingly important for clinical decision support. Output from these sources can be transformed into large numbers of elements of knowledge in a Knowledge Representation Store (KRS), here using the notation and to some extent the algebraic principles of the Q-UEL Web-based universal exchange and inference language described previously, rooted in Dirac notation from quantum mechanics and linguistic theory. In a KRS, semantic structures or statements about the world of interest to medicine are analogous to natural language sentences seen as formed from noun phrases separated by verbs, prepositions and other descriptions of relationships.

Implementation of a web based universal exchange and inference language for medicine: Sparse data, probabilities and inference in data mining of clinical data repositories.

We extend Q-UEL, our universal exchange language for interoperability and inference in healthcare and biomedicine, to the more traditional fields of public health surveys. These are the type associated with screening, epidemiological and cross-sectional studies, and cohort studies in some cases similar to clinical trials. There is the challenge that there is some degree of split between frequentist notions of probability as (a) classical measures based only on the idea of counting and proportion and on classical biostatistics as used in the above conservative disciplines, and (b) more subjectivist notions of uncertainty, belief, reliability, or confidence often used in automated inference and decision support systems.

POPPER, a simple programming language for probabilistic semantic inference in medicine.

Our previous reports described the use of the Hyperbolic Dirac Net (HDN) as a method for probabilistic inference from medical data, and a proposed probabilistic medical Semantic Web (SW) language Q-UEL to provide that data. Rather like a traditional Bayes Net, that HDN provided estimates of joint and conditional probabilities, and was static, with no need for evolution due to "reasoning". Use of the SW will require, however, (a) at least the semantic triple with more elaborate relations than conditional ones, as seen in use of most verbs and prepositions, and (b) rules for logical, grammatical, and definitional manipulation that can generate changes in the inference net.

Hyperbolic Dirac Nets for medical decision support. Theory, methods, and comparison with Bayes Nets.

We recently introduced the concept of a Hyperbolic Dirac Net (HDN) for medical inference on the grounds that, while the traditional Bayes Net (BN) is popular in medicine, it is not suited to that domain: there are many interdependencies such that any "node" can be ultimately conditional upon itself. A traditional BN is a directed acyclic graph by definition, while the HDN is a bidirectional general graph closer to a diffuse "field" of influence. Cycles require bidirectionality; the HDN uses a particular type of imaginary number from Dirac׳s quantum mechanics to encode it.

Suggestions for a Web based universal exchange and inference language for medicine.

Mining biomedical and pharmaceutical data generates huge numbers of interacting probabilistic statements for inference, which can be supported by mining Web text sources. This latter can also be probabilistic, in a sense described in this report. However, the diversity of tools for probabilistic inference is troublesome, suggesting a need for a unifying best practice.

Arthroscopic assessment for patellar injuries and novel suture repair of patellar fracture in a cat.

A 4 yr old spayed female domestic shorthair was evaluated for an acute, nonweight-bearing, left hind limb lameness. Following 2 wk of conservative management without clinical improvement, the patient was referred for further examination. The stifle was palpably enlarged with suspected periarticular fibrosis.

Impairment of executive cognitive control in type 2 diabetes, and its effects on health-related behavior and use of health services.

We evaluated whether, among persons with type 2 diabetes: (1) impaired executive cognitive functioning (ECF) is more common than among people without diabetes; (2) ECF is associated with the capacity to engage in instrumental health-related behaviors; and (3) worse ECF is associated with increased health services utilization. A population-based sample of 1,063 older people was interviewed regarding medical history and health services utilization; participants were administered the Mini Mental State Exam and the Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale, a measure of ECF. Participants with diabetes performed more poorly on cognitive measures than those without diabetes.

Surveys of avian practitioners and pet owners regarding common behavior problems in psittacine birds.

Avian veterinarians and pet bird owners were solicited to participate in online surveys to gather information about behavior problems in pet birds. A total of 84 avian veterinarians' and 203 psittacine bird owners' responses were analyzed. Behaviors with a high prevalence and a high level of owner concern, in descending order, were aggression, screaming, and feather picking.

Platynosomum fastosum-induced chronic intrahepatic cholangitis and Spirometra spp. infections in feral cats from Grand Cayman.

The occurrence of platynosomiasis and intestinal sparganosis is described in feral cats from Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Spirometra spp. was observed within the intestine of 18.

Diagnosis and management of ureteroceles in two female dogs.

Two intact female dogs were examined for refractory pollakiuria and stranguria. One of these two dogs also exhibited urinary incontinence. Ectopic ureteroceles were diagnosed via ultrasonography and cystoscopy in both dogs.

Neorickettsia helminthoeca and salmon poisoning disease: a review.

Neorickettsia helminthoeca is an obligate intra-cytoplasmic bacterium that causes salmon poisoning disease (SPD), an acute, febrile, fatal disease of dogs. The complex life-cycle of this pathogen involves stages in an intestinal fluke (Nanophyetus salmincola), a river snail (Oxytrema silicula), in fish, and in fish-eating mammals. This complexity has created confusion with respect to the various bacterial and parasitic infections associated with the disease and its significance in dogs in specific geographical locations has likely to have previously been under-estimated.