Roadwork: Offstage with Special Drama Actresses in Tamilnadu, South India

Publisher's, offprint versionAt the core of this essay are five fieldwork narratives. These retell specific experiences I had researching Special Drama actresses' roads. Each experience helped me to better understand actresses' actions offstage; these were episodes in which I learned, in particular, how and why actresses create private, exclusive spaces in the midst of the Tamil public sphere. Each narrative speaks of one leg in the journey to or from a Special Drama. Together, the five narratives thus constitute a single composite journey, which begins in a calendar shop in town (the first narrative), then heads out, by van (the second) or by bus (the third), to the site of a Special Drama stage and its backstage spaces (the fourth), and finally returns home, on foot, to town (the final narrative). This journey provides an impressionistic map, drawn from my own experiences traveling with specific women on specific roads, of the offstage spaces inhabited by Special Drama actresses. That is, my narrative maps out lived, experienced spaces; it does not aim to be an objective account of things seen at a distance. Each of these lived spaces is charged, for me, and remembered here by me, with images of particular women and men of the Special Drama world, images charged as much by the flair with which the artists interacted with me as by the deft pursuit of their own image-making practices (pp. 217-218)

Review: Playing the Field

Publisher's, offprint versionThe magnetic appeal of the sexually charged sphere of "taboo" -this fantasy mix of the erotic and exotic-has not exactly waned in subsequent decades, as a casual glance at almost any contemporary fashion magazine will attest. Nor has the charge of this encounter been limited to popular culture: indeed the sexuality of Others has been a mainstay of the scholarly discipline of cultural anthropology. But it is only in academic circles that the draw of the "erotic-exotic" is being "problematized" for what it reveals about Western cultural notions of sex, self, and relations of power. The ongoing rethinking of anthropology, especially, has finally begun to confront a certain smoldering disciplinary taboo: sex in the field

Potentiation of thrombus instability: a contributory mechanism to the effectiveness of antithrombotic medications

© The Author(s) 2018The stability of an arterial thrombus, determined by its structure and ability to resist endogenous fibrinolysis, is a major determinant of the extent of infarction that results from coronary or cerebrovascular thrombosis. There is ample evidence from both laboratory and clinical studies to suggest that in addition to inhibiting platelet aggregation, antithrombotic medications have shear-dependent effects, potentiating thrombus fragility and/or enhancing endogenous fibrinolysis. Such shear-dependent effects, potentiating the fragility of the growing thrombus and/or enhancing endogenous thrombolytic activity, likely contribute to the clinical effectiveness of such medications. It is not clear how much these effects relate to the measured inhibition of platelet aggregation in response to specific agonists. These effects are observable only with techniques that subject the growing thrombus to arterial flow and shear conditions. The effects of antithrombotic medications on thrombus stability and ways of assessing this are reviewed herein, and it is proposed that thrombus stability could become a new target for pharmacological intervention.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Double Ventricular Responses Leading to Reversible Cardiomyopathy as Late Complication after Slow-Pathway Ablation

Double ventricular response is a rare arrhythmia that results from simultaneous antegrade conduction over the fast and slow pathways of AV node. Double ventricular responses may lead to arrhythmia-related cardiomyopathy. As far as we know, there is not any reported reversible cardiomyopathy development that resulted from double ventricular responses to one atrial impulse after slow pathway ablation. We report a unique case of double ventricular response cardiomyopathy that has been developed 5 years after slow pathway ablation

Microparticles from patients with metabolic syndrome induce vascular hypo-reactivity via Fas/Fas-ligand pathway in mice

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Sequential Venous Percutaneous Transluminal Angioplasty and Balloon Dilatation of the Interatrial Septum during Percutaneous Edge-to-Edge Mitral Valve Repair

Percutaneous edge-to-edge mitral valve repair (PMVR) is widely used for selected, high-risk patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation (MR). This report describes a case of 81-year-old woman presenting with severe and highly symptomatic mitral valve regurgitation (MR) caused by a flail of the posterior mitral valve leaflet (PML). PMVR turned out to be challenging in this patient because of a stenosis and tortuosity of both iliac veins as well as sclerosis of the interatrial septum, precluding the vascular and left atrial access by standard methods, respectively. We managed to achieve atrial access by venous percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) and balloon dilatation of the interatrial septum. Subsequently, we could advance the MitraClip® system to the left atrium, and deployment of the clip in the central segment of the mitral valve leaflets (A2/P2) resulted in a significant reduction of MR

Case Report: Endocrine, immune and disease dynamics in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis during flare and medication change

ObjectiveRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease of mostly unknown etiology and pathophysiology. In this integrative single-case study on a patient with RA, we had the unique opportunity to closely monitor the individual dynamics of endocrine, immune and disease variables during a naturally occurring flare-up and subsequent medication change.MethodsThe 59-year-old female RA patient collected her entire urine over 30 days in 12-h intervals (60 consecutive measurements in total). Subsequently, cortisol, interleukin-6 (IL-6), orosomucoid-2 (ORM-2), neopterin and creatinine levels were determined in the urine samples. Further, each morning and evening, the patient completed the DIARI, a set of questionnaires on variables such as perceived pain, perceived RA disease activity and emotional states. Once a week, the patient was interviewed online and had an appointment with her rheumatologist, in which several indices of RA disease activity were determined: SDAI, CDAI and DAS28. From these data various time series were constructed for statistical analysis.ResultsRA disease state increased from low to high activity during the first 12 study days. Thereupon, the medication was changed, which proved effective in reducing RA disease activity. However, the levels of urinary neopterin, urinary IL-6 and urinary ORM-2 did not show any response, neither to the increasing disease activity nor the medication change. The patient’s daily reports on pain, RA disease activity, emotional states and body temperature, however, mirrored the course of the rheumatologic indices.ConclusionThis integrative single-case study clearly demonstrated the importance of process analysis for the evaluation of therapeutic measures in RA. In the studied patient, urinary levels of neopterin, IL-6 and ORM-2 were not found to be appropriate biomarkers of short-term fluctuations in RA disease activity. Instead, the results reported by the patient proved to be a useful tool for ambulatory and longitudinal monitoring of RA

Peri-interventional combined anticoagulation and antithrombotic therapy in atrial fibrillation ablation: A retrospective safety analysis

   Background: Catheter ablation (CA) of atrial fibrillation (AF) requires an intensified peri-inter­ventional anticoagulation scheme to avoid thromboembolic complications. In patients with cardiac or extracardiac artery disease, an additional antiplatelet treatment (AAT) is at least temporally necessary especially after a percutaneous intervention with stent implantation. This raises the question whether these patients have a higher peri-interventional bleeding risk during CA of AF. Methods: The data of 1235 patients with CA of AF were retrospectively analyzed in terms of bleeding events, ablation type, antithrombotic medication and comorbidities such as coronary artery disease and components of the HAS- BLED score. Peri-interventional bleeding events were classified in accordance with the BARC classification. Differentiations were made between slight femoral bleeding (based on type 1), severe femoral bleeding and pericardial effusion without pericardiocentesis (based on type 2) with the need of further hospitalization, the need of transfusion (based on type 3a) and pericardial tamponades requiring pericardiocentesis (based on type 3b). Results: 1131/1235 (91.6%) patients were exclusively under anticoagulation and 187 (15.3%) patients were also on AAT. There were no statistically significant differences in type 1 and 3b bleeding complica­tions or the occurrence of femoral pseudoaneurysms between both groups. However, type 2/3a bleeding complications, mostly femoral bleedings, were significantly more frequent in the patient group with AAT (3.2% vs. 7.5%, p = 0.006). Conclusions: An additional antiplatelet therapy increases the risk of severe femoral bleeding events during CA of AF. It appears reasonable to perform the elective procedure of AF ablation after the dis­continuation of AAT.

Human matrix metalloproteinases: An ubiquitarian class of enzymes involved in several pathological processes

Human matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) belong to the M10 family of the MA clan of endopeptidases. They are ubiquitarian enzymes, structurally characterized by an active site where a Zn(2+) atom, coordinated by three histidines, plays the catalytic role, assisted by a glutamic acid as a general base. Various MMPs display different domain composition, which is very important for macromolecular substrates recognition. Substrate specificity is very different among MMPs, being often associated to their cellular compartmentalization and/or cellular type where they are expressed. An extensive review of the different MMPs structural and functional features is integrated with their pathological role in several types of diseases, spanning from cancer to cardiovascular diseases and to neurodegeneration. It emerges a very complex and crucial role played by these enzymes in many physiological and pathological processes

AEPL Members Respond to Lynn Z. Bloom’s Recipe1

AEPL Members Respond to Lynn Z. Bloom’s Recip