Metabolic and mechanistic studies on hydrazine hepatotoxicity in the rat

Hydrazine, a chemical with numerous applications in industry, is carcinogenic and acutely toxic to the central nervous system and liver. Metabolism and mechanisms of toxicity are not yet fully understood. Previous workers have observed increased acute hydrazine hepatotoxicity in cytochrome P4502E1-induced rats (isoniazid pretreated). In contrast apparent induction of this isoenzyme by pretreatment of rats with hydrazine protected against hydrazine-induced cytotoxicity in isolated hepatocytes but had little effect in vivo. These results may indicate that P4502E1 catalyses a detoxication pathway for hydrazine which plays only a minor role in vivo. Cytochromes P4501A1/2 and P4502B1/2 appear to catalyse detoxication pathways as a reduction in their activities correlates with increased hydrazine toxicity. A further study failed to clarify the induction of P4502E1 by hydrazine as, despite a dose dependent increase in p-nitrophenol hydroxylase activity, there was no apparent increase in enzyme protein, determined by immunohistochemical staining. This could explain the discrepancy between isoniazid and hydrazine pretreatments with regard to acute hydrazine toxicity. There is conflicting data regarding the effect of hydrazine on protein synthesis. Incorporation of 3H-leucine into protein in vitro in isolated rat hepatocytes was reduced 2 hours after exposure to 0.5mM hydrazine and 1 hour after higher concentrations. In vivo there was some evidence of protein synthesis inhibition 3 hours after 30 and 60mg/Kg hydrazine administration, followed by stimulation 24 hours post dose. The mechanism of action is currently unknown. Fatty liver is the major acute toxic manifestation in liver after exposure to hydrazine and appears to be unrelated to hydrazine metabolism. Microsomal phosphatidate phosphohydrolase activity and triglyceride content (NMR analysis) were raised 24 hours after hydrazine dosing, consistent with increased lipid synthesis. Raised serum triglycerides and control levels of phosphatidylcholine, required for VLDL synthesis, tend to suggest normal triglyceride secretion at this time, however there may have been a transient drop in VLDL production, due to decreased protein synthesis 3 hours post dose, which may have facilitated the accumulation of fat. Phosphatidylinositol was also raised but the reason for this is unknown

Analysis of an Evidence-based Pediatric Asthma Management Tool for Providers Confirms Linkages between Asthma and Known Risk Factors in a Vermont Practice

Introduction: Pediatric asthma is one of the largest targets for innovative programs in chronic care management due to its extensive and expanding health burden. A physician-directed asthma management, diagnostic and data tracking tool was implemented in a Vermont pediatric practice. Data were analyzed after one year to enable the Vermont Department of Health (VDH) and practice to describe program participants. Methods: A modified version of a validated pediatric asthma survey, Easy Breathing, was administered during office visits at a pediatric practice located in Burlington, VT. Fisher’s exact test was used to assess relationships between those with and without current asthma, and between those with intermittent versus persistent levels of asthma. Results: Of 206 patients, 150 had no asthma, 55 had a current asthma diagnosis and one (1) was listed as ‘unable to determine.’ Patients with current asthma were significantly more likely to be insured with Medicaid (p=.048), have a family history of asthma (p=.019) and be exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (p=.028). Within the asthma group, persistent asthma was associated with exposure to cat (p=.043). Conclusion: Participants in the Easy Breathing Program at this practice with and without current asthma diagnosis showed differences that reflect established asthma risk factors and related asthma triggers. Further efforts are needed to increase the reliability of the data

Exploration of Approaches to Arabic Named Entity Recognition

Abstract. The Named Entity Recognition (NER) task has attracted significant attention in Natural Language Processing (NLP) as it can enhance the performance of many NLP applications. In this paper, we compare English NER with Arabic NER in an experimental way to investigate the impact of using different classifiers and sets of features including language-independent and language-specific features. We explore the features and classifiers on five different datasets. We compare deep neural network architectures for NER with more traditional machine learning approaches to NER. We discover that most of the techniques and features used for English NER perform well on Arabic NER. Our results highlight the improvements achieved by using language-specific features in Arabic NER

Health and Housing in an Aging Population: Identifying Risk Factors of Seniors Living Independently

Background: Aging is associated with numerous risk factors for declining physical and mental health. As a result, many elder individuals are forced to relocate to nursing homes, assisted living centers or just closer to adequate medical facilities. Studies have shown: • Relocation of elders is associated with depression, anxiety, memory loss, and decreased social adjustment and life satisfaction • Persistently lonely people exhibit a 2-fold greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) than those who are not chronically lonely • Increased social interaction improves cognitive function in individuals with AD By helping seniors to age in place, many of the deleterious risks of relocation, such as social isolation, depression, and cognitive decline could be avoided. In addition to relocation, other risk factors that affect cognition have been identified: • Physical activity is associated with higher cognitive functioning in elders • Polypharmacy is a risk factor for impaired cognition Thus, simple modifications that allow seniors to age in place may reduce morbidity and enhance quality of life. Cathedral Square Corporation (CSC) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop, manage, and own housing that provides community services to promote the health and well-being of elders, low income persons, and persons with disabilities. Students from the University of Vermont College of Medicine (UVM) partnered with CSC in a project to promote aging in place via evaluation of seniors’ current needs and the development of a service model to meet these needs at home.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1010/thumbnail.jp

Interactive Learning Approach for Arabic Target-Based Sentiment Analysis

Recently, the majority of sentiment analysis researchers focus on target-based sentiment analysis because it delivers in-depth analysis with more accurate results as compared to traditional sentiment analysis. In this paper, we propose an interactive learning approach to tackle a target-based sentiment analysis task for the Arabic language. The proposed IALSTM model uses an interactive attentionbased mechanism to force the model to focus on different parts (targets) of a sentence. We investigate the ability to use targets, right and left contexts, and model them separately to learn their own representations via interactive modeling. We evaluated our model on two different datasets: Arabic hotel review and Arabic book review datasets. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of using this interactive modeling technique for the Arabic targetbased sentiment analysis task. The model obtained accuracy values of 83.10 compared to SOTA models such as AB-LSTM-PC which obtained 82.60 for the same dataset

Culture Positivity of CVCs Used for TPN: Investigation of an Association with Catheter-Related Infection and Comparison of Causative Organisms between ICU and Non-ICU CVCs

A relationship between central venous catheter (CVC) tip colonisation and catheter-related blood-stream infection (CRBSI) has been suggested. We examined culture positivity of CVC tips (colonised and infected CVCs) in a total parenteral nutrition (TPN) population. Our aims were to define the relationship between culture positivity and CRBSI, and to compare causative organisms between culture positive and CRBSI CVCS, and between ward and ICU CVCs. All patients receiving TPN via non-tunnelled CVCs during the study (1997-2009) were included. All CVC tips were analysed. Data were collated contemporaneously. A TPN audit committee determined whether CVC tip culture positivity reflected colonisation/CRBSI using CDC criteria. 1,392 patients received TPN via 2,565 CVCs over 15,397 CVC days. 25.4% of CVCs tips were culture positive, of these 32% developed CRBSI. There was a nonsignificant trend of higher Gram negative Bacilli isolation in ICU CVCs ( P = 0 . 1 ) , ward CVCs were associated with higher rates of staphylococcal isolation ( P = 0 . 0 1 ) . A similar pattern of organisms were cultured from CRBSI and culture positive CVCs. The consistent relationship between CRBSI and culture positive CVCs, and similar pattern of causative organisms further supports an aetiological relationship between culture positive CVC tips and CRBSI, supporting the contention that CVC culture-positivity may be a useful surrogate marker for CRBSI rates

SPRINT qualitative findings

APHCRI Conversations was a regular program of presentations held at the Department of Health to facilitate exchange between APHCRI Network researchers and Department policymakers. Topics are developed jointly with the Department of Health and involve a range of speakers from APHCRI, including CRE invited experts, CRE Chief Investigators and stream project Chief Investigator

The phenotype of Floating-Harbor syndrome: Clinical characterization of 52 individuals with mutations in exon 34 of SRCAP

Background: Floating-Harbor syndrome (FHS) is a rare condition characterized by short stature, delays in expressive language, and a distinctive facial appearance. Recently, heterozygous truncating mutations in SRCAP were determined to be disease-causing. With the availability of a DNA based confirmatory test, we set forth to define the clinical features of this syndrome. Methods and results. Clinical information on fifty-two individuals with SRCAP mutations was collected using standardized questionnaires. Twenty-four males and twenty-eight females were studied with ages ranging from

The phenotype of floating-harbor syndrome:clinical characterization of 52 individuals with mutations in exon 34 of SRCAP

Background\ud Floating-Harbor syndrome (FHS) is a rare condition characterized by short stature, delays in expressive language, and a distinctive facial appearance. Recently, heterozygous truncating mutations in SRCAP were determined to be disease-causing. With the availability of a DNA based confirmatory test, we set forth to define the clinical features of this syndrome.\ud \ud Methods and results\ud Clinical information on fifty-two individuals with SRCAP mutations was collected using standardized questionnaires. Twenty-four males and twenty-eight females were studied with ages ranging from 2 to 52 years. The facial phenotype and expressive language impairments were defining features within the group. Height measurements were typically between minus two and minus four standard deviations, with occipitofrontal circumferences usually within the average range. Thirty-three of the subjects (63%) had at least one major anomaly requiring medical intervention. We did not observe any specific phenotype-genotype correlations.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud This large cohort of individuals with molecularly confirmed FHS has allowed us to better delineate the clinical features of this rare but classic genetic syndrome, thereby facilitating the development of management protocols.The authors would like to thank the families for their cooperation and permission to publish these findings. SdM would like to thank Barto Otten. Funding was provided by the Government of Canada through Genome Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI-049), by Genome Québec and Genome British Columbia, and the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research at Children’s Hospital Boston. KMB is supported by a Clinical Investigatorship Award from the CIHR Institute of Genetics. AD is supported by NIH grant K23HD073351. BBAdV and HGB were financially supported by the AnEUploidy project (LSHG-CT-2006-37627). This work was selected for study by the FORGE Canada Steering Committee, which consists of K. Boycott (University of Ottawa), J. Friedman (University of British Columbia), J. Michaud (University of Montreal), F. Bernier (University of Calgary), M. Brudno (University of Toronto), B. Fernandez (Memorial University), B. Knoppers (McGill University), M. Samuels (Université de Montréal), and S. Scherer (University of Toronto). We thank the Galliera Genetic Bank - “Telethon Genetic Biobank Network” supported by Italian Telethon grants (project no. GTB07001) for providing us with specimens