Scientific Open-access Literature Archive and Repository
Not a member yet
16397 research outputs found
Sort by
Haemoglobin A1C Levels Constantly Below Lower Reference Limit in a Diabetic Patient With Microcytic Anaemia
Get PDFIntroduction: Haemoglobin A1C (A1C), as a parameter of long-term glycaemic control, has been adopted to guide diabetic therapy all over the world. However, falsely high or low A1C could be troublesome in daily practice.
Case description: A 75-year-old male diabetic patient affected by a reasonably inferred life-long history of microcytic anaemia was found to have abnormally low A1C values in the previous 5 months. Subsequent laboratory assessment with brilliant cresyl blue staining and haemoglobin electrophoresis detected haemoglobin H disease as the underlying cause of both the microcytic anaemia and the disturbed A1C measurement.
Discussion: Enhanced erythrocyte destruction such as in haemoglobin H disease could explain a falsely decreased A1C level very well. Upon facing a questionable A1C value, physicians dealing with diabetes should consider the possibility of undiscovered underlying causes rather than too tightly glycaemic control
When Zoster Virus Hides a Primary Brain Lymphoma
Get PDFAim: To describe an unusual presentation of a primary lymphoma of the central nervous system in a patient who, four months prior to admission, was diagnosed with herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO).
Case description: A 68-year-old man, with a history of HZO, was admitted to the emergency department with nausea and vomiting that had persisted over the previous two weeks. Neurological evaluation showed right ptosis, divergent strabismus and anisocoria. Blood tests showed high c-reactive protein, while serology was negative for human immunodeficiency virus. A brain CT scan revealed three round lesions, slightly hyperdense, periventricular in the occipital and frontal regions, which biopsy revealed to be a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The patient started chemotherapy but progression to death was inevitable.
Conclusion: The authors describe an unusual presentation of primary lymphoma of the central nervous system and urge physicians to be aware of this presentation in order to avoid misdiagnosis
Scrofula Caused by Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis
Get PDFTuberculosis (TB) is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) occurs when at the minimum there is resistance to isoniazid and rifampin. Prevention of new infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and progression to TB disease is critical to reduce the burden and mortality of this disease. We present the case of a 73-year-old human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative female who presented with cervical lymphadenopathy and who was diagnosed with MDR-TB
Association of Multiple Myeloma and Giant Cell Arteritis – A Case Report
Get PDFAutoimmune diseases (AID) have been associated with a variety of lymphoproliferative disorders. Multiple myeloma (MM), one of the most common haematologic malignancies characterized by clonal proliferation of bone marrow plasma cells, has been associated with a range of autoimmune disorders. In this report, we described a case study of a patient admitted to our Internal Medicine Department for a bone marrow biopsy and myelogram due to a monoclonal peak observed by his general practitioner. However, at admission he presented typical giant cell arteritis (GCA) complaints, suggesting the coexistence of both diseases. The possible pathogenesis, as found in the literature, explaining the association will be discussed
Statistics of magnetic reconnection and turbulence in Hall-MHD and hybrid-PIC simulations
Get PDFProperties of decaying Alfvenic plasma turbulence are investigated by means of two-dimensional Hall-magnetohydrodynamic and hybrid particle-in-cell numerical simulations. In most cases, spectral properties of turbulent fluctuations find good agreement in both the numerical models. The power spectra of the magnetic field exhibit a double power-law with spectral index -5/3 at large, fluid scales and -3 at sub-ion scales, while for velocity fluctuations the spectral index at fluid scales is -3/2. In both models, the development of a turbulent cascade is concurrently characterized by magnetic reconnection events that are fast, with inverse reconnection rates much smaller than the characteristic large-eddy turnover times. Moreover, these reconnection events trigger a direct energy transfer from large to sub-ion scales. This supports the existence of a reconnection-mediated turbulent regime at sub-ion scales. We conclude that the Hall-MHD fluid description captures to a large extent the transition of the turbulent cascade between the fluid and sub-ion scales
Kinematics of a compression front associated with a Coronal Mass Ejection
Get PDFOn 2014 November 1st a solar prominence eruption associated with a C2.7 class flare and a type II radio burst resulted in a fast partial halo Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Images acquired in the extreme UV (EUV) by SDO/AIA and PROBA-2/SWAP, and in white light (WL) by SOHO/LASCO show a bright compression front expanding ahead of the CME. The main goal of this work was to infer the location and timing of the shock formation in the corona. A comparison between the starting frequency of the type II emission and the frequencies derived from the inferred coronal density distribution, allowed us to identify a region located northward of the CME as the most probable site for shock formation
The Probabilistic Drag Based Model for ICME propagation
Get PDFICME (Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection) are violent phenomena of solar activity that affect the whole heliosphere and the prediction of their impact on different solar system bodies is one of the primary goals of the planetary space weather forecasting. We present some results from the application of the P-DBM (Probabilistic Drag Based Model) to propagate a sample of ICMEs from their sources on the solar surface into the heliosphere. We made use of recent works who tracked the ICMEs through their journeys using data from several spacecraft, tracing the ICMEs trajectory further than Earth. Considering the extremely short computation time needed by the P-DBM to propagate ICMEs into the whole heliosphere, and its accuracy in reproducing the observations, we remark that it is a promising candidate for ICME Time of Arrival computation for Space Weather applications and for the need of present and future interplanetary missions, since it could be used as quick tool to forecast the arrival of ICME to planetary bodies in our Solar System other than the Earth
KM3NeT and ANTARES status and results
Get PDFThe latest results from the ANTARES neutrino telescope will be presented regarding the search for a diffuse high energy neutrino flux, the analysis to identify astrophysical neutrino point sources and the various searches for multimessenger coincidences between neutrinos and other cosmic probes, like photons or gravitational waves. KM3NeT, the new generation of underwater neutrino telescopes, is currently under construction in the Mediterranean sea. Thanks to its large size and improved detection capabilities, KM3NeT will open new perspectives in neutrino astronom
Measuring the muonic H ground state hyperfine splitting with FAMU
Get PDFThe FAMU experiment will measure the hyperfine splitting in the ground state of muonic hydrogen ΔEhfs(μ−p)1s with a precision δλ/λ < 10−5 providing rZ , the Zemach radius of the proton with higher precision, than what was previously possible, disentangling discordant theoretical values. The aim is to seta cornerstone result about not yet explained anomalies on the charge radius rch of the proton. The Zemach radius rZ and the charge radius rch are the only proton shape-related values that can be directly extracted from experimental data, and rZ is the only one that gives information about the proton’s magnetic dipole moment
distribution. The status of the experiment is presented