A rare case of adrenal extramedullary haematopoiesis in a Cypriot woman with β-thalassaemia

We report a rare case of adrenal extramedullary haematopoiesis (EMH) in a thalassaemia patient in Cyprus. A 40-year-old woman with β-thalassaemia presented with a 2-day history of non-specific right-sided abdominal pain on routine follow-up for her thalassaemia treatment. Her laboratory tests were not dissimilar to her routine results and no palpable mass was detected. Computed tomography findings revealed a 5.8×4.2×4.6cm solid lesion in the right adrenal gland. Surgical excision was advised for this symptomatic large tumour with the possibility of malignancy in a young patient, and a laparoscopic adrenalectomy was performed. Postoperative follow-up was uneventful. A review of the literature in PubMed and MEDLINE revealed 14 case reports worldwide with adrenal EMH secondary to β-thalassaemia. EMH tumours in patients with thalassaemia have been reported incidentally, which stresses the importance of considering this in the list of differentials of adrenal incidentalomas in this patient population.

[The assessment of the endodontic foundation]

The diagnosis of an endodontic disease requires thorough research, collecting both clinical and radiographic information. The clinical examination includes history taking, visual inspection of the tooth and surrounding tissues, palpation of the soft and hard tissues, periodontal examination and percussion. The radiographic examination provides valuable information, but can never stand alone in arriving at a diagnosis. It is important to link the findings of the radiographic examination to other information. Sometimes, invasive examination is necessary, during which the coronal restoration is removed to allow better assessment of the tooth. This can provide additional information about the presence of caries, fractures, leakage of the restoration or other reasons for failure of the initial root canal treatment. A good diagnosis is essential for planning successful follow-up treatment.

Reactive oxygen species can be traced locally and systemically in apical periodontitis: A systematic review

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this systematic review was to summarize the existing evidence on the local production and systemic traces of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in apical periodontitis (AP).

DESIGN

A search of MEDLINE-PubMed and EMBASE was conducted up to January 12 of 2021 to identify studies in 6 different languages. Eligibility was evaluated and data were extracted from the eligible studies following the predefined objective. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used for quality assessment of the included studies.

RESULTS

After screening, 21 papers met the inclusion criteria. Six studies were about systemic oxidative stress, 14 studies examined local production of reactive oxygen species and one studied both. ROS modulate cell signalling and cause oxidant imbalance locally at the site of AP. Cell signalling leads to a pro-inflammatory response, activation of MMPs and formation and progression of the AP lesion. Simultaneously, these oxidative stress biomarkers are also found in blood and saliva of subjects with AP.

CONCLUSIONS

Understanding the mechanism of ROS generation, involved in chronic inflammation, can provide us with important information to enhance local and systemic healing and possibly improve diagnostic tools. Future research considerations would be to use antioxidants to accelerate the return to oxidative balance.

The influence of apical periodontitis on the concentration of inflammatory mediators in peripheral blood plasma and the metagenomic profiling of endodontic infections: Study design and protocol

Increased systemic inflammation has been identified in presence of oral disease, specifically endodontic disease. It is important to investigate whether treatment of the oral disease ameliorates systemic inflammation. Furthermore, there is no information about the extent to which different microorganisms may trigger inflammatory response.

Objectives

Primarily (i) to compare the plasma concentrations of inflammatory mediators of apical periodontitis (AP) subjects to controls, (ii) to evaluate whether elimination of the endodontic infection reduces systemic inflammation (iii) to investigate the microbiome of root canal infections. Secondarily i) to correlate the inflammatory mediator data with the microbiome data to investigate whether the type of infection influences the type and severity of the inflammatory condition ii) to examine patterns in the inflammatory mediator data before and after tooth extraction in order to establish a biomarker signature of AP/oral disease.

This is a multi-centre prospective case-control intervention study. The cohort will consist of 30 healthy human volunteers with one or two teeth with a root-tip inflammation and 30 matched healthy controls. Peripheral blood will be drawn at 6 time points, 3 before and 3 after the extraction of the tooth with apical periodontitis. The teeth will be pulverized, DNA extraction and sequencing will be performed.

This study aims to compare the concentration of inflammatory blood plasma proteins in between AP-subjects and controls at different time points before and after the tooth extraction in a systematic and complete way. Additionally the composition of the root canal microbiome in association with the inflammatory response of the host will be assessed.

Control of asymptotic variability in non-homogeneous Markov systems

In this paper we provide two basic results. First, we find the set of all the limiting vectors of expectations, variances and covariances in an NHMS which are possible provided that we control the limit vector of the sequence of vectors of input probabilities. Secondly, under certain conditions easily met in practice we find the distribution of the limiting vector of expectations, variances and covariances to be multinomial with probabilities the corresponding limiting expected populations in the various states of the NHMS.