Articles Related to Signs

The latent tuberculosis infection worldwide is determined by about 1.7 billion people. Identification of latent tuberculosis infection and prevention of the development of the disease is one of the highest priority tasks in the global radical reduc- tion of the burden of tuberculosis. The research is devoted to the study of the effectiveness of cellular and humoral anti- gen-specific immunological methods for determining the initial signs of tuberculosis infection activity when examining children and adolescents with a latent form of this infection. Cellular immunological reactions in contrast to the determi- nation of specific antibodies of blood serum using the recombinant specific protein ESAT-6-CFP-10, were not sufficiently effective in differentiating active and latent infections. Determination of antibodies to the ESAT-6-CFP-10 protein with analysis of the specific activity criterion and determina- tion of an increased concentration of neopterin up to 9 nM/L in blood plasma samples made it possible to reveal signs of tuberculosis infection activity. These results have been confirmed by the results of chest computed tomography of children and adolescents with the determination tuberculosis of intrathoracic lymph nodes or small intrapulmonary (2-5 mm) intrapulmonary foci, including those with signs of calcification.

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Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a rare neurodegenerative parkinsonian syndrome with distinct clinical features which tends to be progressive, causing vertical supranuclear gaze palsy, frontal lobe cognitive decline, postural instability and progressive axial rigidity. Clinical examination typically reveals ocular motor dysfunction including restricted vertical gaze, slow vertical saccades and “eyelid opening apraxia” with intact vestibule ocular reflex. PSP falls under the rubric of Parkinsonism plus syndromes that are a group of heterogeneous degenerative neurological disorders that differ from the classical idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. PSP is often underreported, making it important for clinicians to be aware of this disorder. Here we report a case of PSP, which presented primarily with speech disturbances and recurrent falls due to postural instability. On investigating, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a classical sign diagnostic of PSP. This teaching case report describes management and prognosis of the disease

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Traditionally, a typical phase II trial has been conducted using a single-arm design recruiting patients only to the experimental therapy to be compared with a historical control. Due to a small sample size and heterogeneity of patient population, the patient characteristics of the patients in a new phase II trial is often different from that of the selected historical control, so that the single-arm phase II trial may lead to biased conclusions. A randomized phase II trial can resolve such problems by randomizing patients between an experimental arm and a control arm. We propose a software package for designing and analyzing randomized phase II trials. We develop a user-friendly Java software that will help us find optimal two-stage phase II trial designs. Although the programs accommodate trial designs based on various statistical methods and different types of early stopping rules, the main part of our paper is focused on randomized phase II trials based on Fisher’s exact test with futility and superiority early stopping values. If users enter input parameter values, the software generates a graphical output displaying all efficient two-stage designs. Minimax, optimal, and admissible designs are highlighted as good designs, but users can select any of the displayed designs. When the circle representing a design is clicked, all the specifics of the selected design are displayed. Fisher’s test is an exact method whose critical values depend on the total number of responders from two arms. So, the computations required to search for optimal randomized multi-stage phase II trial designs based on Fisher’s exact test is very heavy. By using efficient algorithms, our software provides output at almost real time speed

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Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and ethyl sulfate (EtS) are markers for screening previous alcohol consumption and indicating recent drinking in cases of suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.

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A set of Mutually Orthogonal Latin Squares (MOLS) of order 7 gives rise to series of incomplete block designs, such as; balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD), and partially balanced incomplete block designs of two, three, four, five and six associate classes, that is PBIBD(k) with k =2,3,4,5 and 6. Two distinct Near-Resolvable BIBDs that are symmetric are equally obtained. All the aforementioned designs are constructed via orderly combinations of off-diagonal elements of a complete set of mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS).

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Onset of schizophrenia is often preceded by other symptoms and types of behaviour, usually referred to as prodromal symptoms. Identify the main prodromal symptoms and signs preceding the full blown picture of first episode schizophrenia. This is a cross-section study. 328 Iraqi first episode schizophrenic inpatients admitted to Ibn-Rushed psychiatric mental hospital were examined during the period June, 1st, 2009 to June, 1st, 2011. Diagnosis confirmed through a Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR. List of sociodemographic and clinical data was used. Detailed psychiatric history taking and mental state examination were applied. Supplemental information was obtained from patients and family members.

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Medical records of each occurrence of neurologic signs in 181 South American Camelids admitted on 185 occasions (90 alpacas and 95 llamas) were evaluated. Age ranged from 0 days to 20 years, but 70.5% of cases were ≥ 1 year old. Specific clinical diagnosis was achieved by cerebrospinal fluid analysis (CSF), radiographs, computed tomography, laboratory testing, or necropsy in 74% of cases. 54% of cases survived; 46% of cases died or were euthanized. The most common diagnosis (31%) was parasitic myelopathy/encephalopathy (PME). CSF eosinophilia ≥10% was found in 85% of parasitic spinal migrations but only in 55% of intracranial migrations, and 73% had increased protein in CSF. There was a seasonal bias for PME with 79% of cases occurring between October and March. Survival of PME cases was 77% for spinal migration but only 7% when intracranial migration occurred. The most common diagnoses, excluding PME, were infectious disease (15%) and trauma (12%). Most trauma cases involved the cervical spine of which 50% survived.

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Purpose: The purposes of this study were to examine the prevalence of psychological flag signs (yellow, black and blue) in workers who had sustained a low back injury and to examine the relationship between the presence and number of these signs and the level of pain, disability, anxiety, depression and ability to work. Methods: This study involved a review of the electronic files of injured workers with an active work-related claim related to the lumbar spine. The information on demographics, presence and number of psychosocial and workplace risk factors, level of disability as measured by the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ), pain intensity as measured by the numeric pain rating scale (NPRS), and anxiety and depression as measured by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was extracted from standardized forms.

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Parry-Romberg syndrome is a rare disorder characterized by slowly progressive deterioration of the skin and soft tissues of half of the face. The syndrome presents with characteristic skeletal, dental, and soft tissue changes in the affected half of the face, with or without neurological signs and symptoms.

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Document examination has been around for more than a century. The field of Document examination has become more diverse and requires authenticity or validation in many areas of examination which involves determination of authorship, fraud detection and personal identification.

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Periodontal disease is a major oral health problem, in which specific species of bacteria play an important role in its progressing and severity. Because chronic periodontitis is believed to be asymptomatic in its initial stages, it has been suggested that individuals may be unaware of their clinical periodontal status [1-3] and underestimate what treatments are required, as judged by dental professionals [4].

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Cardiac myxomas are a potential source of emboli to the brain and elsewhere in the vascular tree. Myxomas are the most common benign primary cardiac tumor in adults. The commonest location of cardiac myxomas is in the left atrium followed by the right atrium and the remainder develops in the ventricles and rarely in the heart valves.

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Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). They get it after being infected with the HIV virus. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a retrovirus that primarily infects components of the immune system.

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Scientists began developing and publishing a series of best practices to mitigate laboratory risks in the 1970’s. These biosafety guidelines are disseminated by the Department of Health and Human Services in the publication Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL).

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