Impact of different cooling solutions on autonomic modulation in horses in a novice endurance ride

Cooling down is essential for horse recovery before veterinary inspection during an endurance ride. As salt potentially decreases water temperature, we tested whether adding salt to the water used to cool horses could aid their recovery. Twelve healthy Arabian horses participating in a novice endurance ride were divided evenly into two groups. Heart rate variability (HRV) variables, including time and frequency domains, non-linear results, and autonomic nervous system indices, were determined before recovery and at 1-min intervals for 9 min during recovery using either cold or cold-saline water. An interaction between water type and time was observed in the modulation of the SD of beat-to-beat (RR) intervals, square root of the mean squared differences between successive RR intervals (RMSSD), HRV triangular index, very low-frequency band (VLF), low-frequency band/high-frequency band ratio, and SD of the Poincaré plot perpendicular to the line of identity (SD1) non-linear results. A decrease in heart rate and the sympathetic nervous system index corresponding to an increase in RR intervals and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) index was observed over time. A rise in the triangular interpolation of the normal-to-normal intervals, number of successive RR interval pairs that differ more than 50 ms, low-frequency band, and total power, coinciding with decreased stress index, was detected at 9 min of recovery. A difference between RMSSD and SD1 was observed between groups, in which they were higher in horses cooling with cold-saline water when compared to cold water at 5 min after cooling began. An increase in VLF was seen at 9 min only in horses cooled with cold-saline water. In conclusion, different water types distinctly impacted HRV in horses. The predominant PNS activity in horses recovering with cold-saline water reflects its positive impact on cooling during an endurance ride.

Inhibition of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) proliferation through targeting G6PD

Background

Mounting evidence has linked cancer metabolic reprogramming with altered redox homeostasis. The pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) is one of the key metabolism-related pathways that has been enhanced to promote cancer growth. The glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) of this pathway generates reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), which is essential for controlling cellular redox homeostasis.

Objective

This research aimed to investigate the growth-promoting effects of G6PD in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods

Clinical characteristics and G6PD expression levels in lung tissues of 64 patients diagnosed with lung cancer at the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (Bangkok, Thailand) during 2009-2014 were analyzed. G6PD activity in NSCLC cell lines, including NCI-H1975 and NCI-H292, was experimentally inhibited using DHEA and siG6PD to study cancer cell proliferation and migration.

Results

The positive expression of G6PD in NSCLC tissues was detected by immunohistochemical staining and was found to be associated with squamous cells. G6PD expression levels and activity also coincided with the proliferation rate of NSCLC cell lines. Suppression of G6PD-induced apoptosis in NSCLC cell lines by increasing Bax/Bcl-2 ratio expression. The addition of D-(-)-ribose, which is an end-product of the PPP, increased the survival of G6PD-deficient NSCLC cell lines.

Conclusion

Collectively, these findings demonstrated that G6PD might play an important role in the carcinogenesis of NSCLC. Inhibition of G6PD might provide a therapeutic strategy for the treatment of NSCLC.

Identification and classification of arrhythmic heartbeats from electrocardiogram signals using feature induced optimal extreme gradient boosting algorithm

Arrhythmic heartbeat classification has gained a lot of attention to accelerate the detection of cardiovascular diseases and mitigating the potential cause of one-third of deaths worldwide. In this article, a computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) approach has been proposed for the automated identification and classification of arrhythmic heartbeats from electrocardiogram (ECG) signals using multiple features aided supervised learning model. For proper diagnosis of arrhythmic heartbeats, MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database has been used to train and test the proposed approach. The ECG signals, extracted from sensor leads, have undergone pre-processing via discrete wavelet transform. Three sets of features, i.e. statistical, temporal, and spectral, are extracted from the processed ECG signals followed by random forest aided recursive feature elimination strategy to select the prominent features for proper classification of arrhythmic heartbeats by the proposed optimal extreme gradient boosting (O-XGBoost) classifier. Hyperparameters such as learning rate, tree-specific parameters, and regularization parameters have been optimized to improve the performance of the XGBoost classifier. Moreover, the synthetic minority over-sampling technique has been employed for balancing the dataset in order to improve the classification performance. Quantitative results reveal the remarkable performance over state-of-the-art methods. The proposed model can be implemented in any computer-aided diagnostic system with similar topological structures.

Effect of neonatal reticulocytosis on glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity and G6PD deficiency detection: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Screening for G6PD deficiency in newborns can help prevent severe hemolysis, hyperbilirubinemia, and bilirubin encephalopathy, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). It has been speculated that the presence of a high number of reticulocytes in newborns interferes with the diagnosis of G6PD deficiency since reticulocytes contain higher amounts of G6PD enzyme than mature erythrocytes. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to assess the effect of reticulocytosis in the determination of blood G6PD activity in Thai newborns by using a novel automated UV-based enzymatic assay and to validate the performance of this assay for the detection of G6PD deficiency in newborn samples.

METHODS

The levels of reticulocytes and G6PD activity were measured in blood samples collected from 1,015 newborns. G6PD mutations were identified using TaqMan^® SNP genotyping assay, PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), and direct sequencing. The correlation between the levels of reticulocytes and G6PD activity was examined. The performance of the automated method was compared with that of the fluorescent spot test (FST) and the standard quantitative assay.

RESULTS

The automated assay detected G6PD deficiency in 6.5% of the total newborn subjects compared to 5.3% and 6.1% by the FST and the standard method, respectively. The minor allele frequencies (MAFs) of G6PD Viangchan^G871A, G6PD Mahidol^G487A, and G6PD Union^C1360T were 0.066, 0.005, and 0.005, respectively. The reticulocyte counts in newborns with G6PD deficiency were significantly higher than those in normal male newborns (p < 0.001). Compared with normal newborns after controlling for thalassemias and hemoglobinopathies, G6PD-deficient patients with the G6PD Viangchan^G871A mutation exhibited elevated reticulocyte counts (5.82 ± 1.73%, p < 0.001). In a group of G6PD normal newborns, the percentage of reticulocytes was positively correlated with G6PD activity (r = 0.327, p < 0.001). However, there was no correlation between G6PD activity and the levels of reticulocytes in subjects with G6PD deficiency (r = -0.019, p = 0.881). The level of agreement in the detection of G6PD deficiency was 0.999, while the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC) curve demonstrated that the automated method had 98.4% sensitivity, 99.5% specificity, 92.4% positive predictive value (PPV), 99.9% negative predictive value (NPV), and 99.4% accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS

We report that reticulocytosis does not have a statistically significant effect on the detection of G6PD deficiency in newborns by both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Cell-derived microparticles after exercise in individuals with G6PD Viangchan

Glucose-6-phospate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficient cells are sensitive to oxidative damage leading to the formation of microparticles (MPs). Therefore, we examined the concentration of MPs and changes in the antioxidant balance after an acute strenuous exercise (SEx) and moderate-intensity exercise (MEx). Eighteen healthy females (18-24 years) with G6PD normal and eighteen age-matched females with G6PD Viangchan (871G>A) were tested by running on a treadmill at their maximal oxygen uptake for SEx and at 75% of their maximal heart rate for MEx. It was found that SEx triggered the release of total microparticles (TTMPs) above baseline levels and remained significantly higher 45 minutes after the exercise in G6PD normal individuals. However, SEx-induced increase in TTMPs was significantly higher in G6PD Viangchan as compared to G6PD normal. In contrast, MEx did not to alter the release of TTMPs in both G6PD normal and Viangchan. Moreover, TTMPs concentrations were inversely correlated with G6PD activity (r =-0.82, P <  0.05) but positively correlated with MDA concentrations (r = 0.74, P <  0.05). Using cell specific antibodies, we determined that MPs were mainly derived from platelets and erythrocytes. Altogether, the present study indicates that G6PD Viangchan may participate in MEx without higher MPs concentration and oxidative stress compared with G6PD normal.

Non-radiative depletion of the excited electronic states of 9-cyanoanthracene in presence of tetrahydronaphthols

Both steady state and time resolved spectroscopic measurements reveal that the prime process involved in quenching mechanism of the lowest excited singlet (S1) and triplet (T1) states of the well known electron acceptor 9-Cyanoanthracene (9CNA) in presence of 5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-1-naphthol (TH1N) or 5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-2-naphthol (TH2N) is H-bonding interaction. It has been confirmed that the fluorescence of 9CNA is not at all affected in presence of 5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-2-methoxy naphthalene (TH2MN) both in non-polar n-heptane (NH) and highly polar acetonitrile (ACN) media. This indicates that the H-bonding interaction is crucial for the occurrence of the quenching phenomenon observed in the present investigations with TH1N (or TH2N) donors and 9CNA acceptor. In ACN solvent both contact ion-pair (CIP) and solvent-separated (or dissociated) ions are formed due to intermolecular H-bonding interactions in the excited electronic states (both singlet and triplet). In NH environment due to stronger H-bonding interactions, the large proton shift within excited charge transfer (CT) or ion-pair complex, 1 or 3(D+-H...A-), causes the formation of the neutral radical, 3(D+H-A)*, due to the complete detachment of the H-atom. It is hinted that both TH1N and TH2N due to their excellent H-bonding ability could be used as antioxidants.

Hypersensitivity reactions following laminaria placement

Laminaria tents are commonly placed intracervically prior to elective termination of pregnancy. Three women, each of whom had undergone at least one previous abortion in which a laminaria was utilized, developed hypersensitivity reactions following laminaria placement. The reactions included urticaria, angioedema and respiratory distress. All responded to removal of the laminaria and administration of either diphenhydramine, prednisone, inhaled bronchodilators or subcutaneous epinephrine. One of the women subsequently underwent skin testing and was positive to laminaria. Patients undergoing laminaria placement may manifest a Type I reaction, IgE-mediated sensitivity. Providers should counsel patients with histories of multiple previous laminaria insertions about this possibility, have alternative methods of cervical dilation available, and be able to promptly recognize and treat reactions when they occur.

Solitary papular angiokeratoma overlying common blue naevus

A 12-year old boy had a bluish black nodule since birth. At the age of 10, the lesion become warty following a trauma. Diagnosis was made on histopathological examination.

Role of colchicine in primary localised cutaneous amyloidosis

Fifteen patients with primary localised cutaneous amyloidosis (PLCA), of which 8 had macular amyloidosis (MA) and 7 lichen amyloidosis (LA), received oral colchicine 1 mg/day in 2 divided doses for a period of 3 months. Pruritus completely disappeared in all MA patients and 30-60% diminution occurred in LA patients within 15 days. Flattening of the papules and diminution in thickness of the skin also started within one month in all LA patients, within 90 days of therapy pigmentation almost disappeared in ail patients of MA and size of papuies decreased by 80-98% in all LA patients. No significant side effect was seen in these patients due to colchicine therapy.