350 research outputs found
Innovations in pancreatology
No full textIn paper I, we explored the presence and potential significance of intracystic pancreatic microbiomes in patients with suspected pancreatic cystic neoplasms (PCNs), who underwent pancreatic surgery. Paired samples of plasma and cyst fluid were gathered from 105 patients, and bacterial DNA was analyzed using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and PacBio sequencing. Levels of Interleukin (IL)-1β were also quantified. Results indicate significantly higher levels of intracystic bacterial DNA, IL-1β and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs) with high-grade dysplasia (HGD) and IPMNs with invasive cancer compared to non-IPMN PCNs. While intracystic microbiota composition varied greatly among individuals, analyses revealed the co-existence and enrichment of bacterial taxa of the oral cavity, containing Granulicatella adiacens and Fusobacterium nucleatum, in IPMN with HGD. Increased levels of bacterial DNA within the cysts were correlated with prior exposure to endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) with biopsy, but independent of proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) and antibiotic usage. These findings emphasize the possible significance of oral microbiome in the development of precursors of pancreatic cancer and provide insights into their etiopathology and management. Further investigation is warranted.In paper II, our investigation focused on cultivating pancreatic microbiome from PCNs with suspicion of invasive cancer, aiming to shed light on its potential importance in the initiation and progression of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cyst fluid samples acquired during surgery revealed culture positivity predominantly in the IPMN group of lesions. Within the bacteria isolates, Gammaproteobacteria and Bacilli were identified as dominant, using MALDI-TOF MS profiling analysis. Ex vivo co-culture models with pancreatic cell lines showed consistent pathogenic properties in cultivated bacteria, mainly Enterococcus faecalis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Granulicatella adiacens, including intracellular survival capability, induction of cell death, and genotoxic effects resembling double-stranded DNA breaks. These findings provide novel perspectives into the pancreatic microbiota’s potential involvement in the association between PCNs and cancer.Paper III is a retrospective observational cohort study assessing the outcomes of total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplantation (TP-IAT). This study included patients operated between 2004 and 2020 at Karolinska University Hospital. We focused on the safety, morbidity, mortality, and function of the islet graft. A total of 24 patients were operated with TP-IAT, with the islet autotransplantation (IAT) site being either the liver or skeletal muscle of the forearm. The 90-day mortality was zero, and the major postoperative morbidities were primarily related to the total pancreatectomy procedure. Postoperative fasting C-peptide levels were detectable, with higher levels observed in patients in the liver-IAT subgroup. While insulin independence was not attained, patients in the liver-IAT subgroup required significantly lower insulin doses at the last follow-up compared muscle-IAT subgroup. TP-IAT appears safe with tolerable risks, but achieving insulin independence should not be anticipated, as the reported five-year insulin independence is 20%. The liver may be a superior site for islet autotransplantation compared to skeletal muscle.Paper IV is a multicenter retrospective cohort study comparing the outcomes of surgery with or without neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) in patients with pancreatic cancer (PC) suspected of portal venous involvement. Data from 361 patients who underwent NAT and 690 patients who underwent upfront surgery (US) from nine centers between 2007 and 2017 were analyzed. Patients who received NAT had fewer venous resections and less venous infiltration, perineural invasion, angioinvasion, lymph node involvement, and R1 resections compared to those who underwent US. In patients undergoing venous resection, there were no significant differences in major postoperative complications and reoperations between the US and NAT groups. However, patients who received NAT without venous resection experienced fewer major complications, reoperations, and lower 90-day mortality compared to those who underwent US. Furthermore, NAT was associated with better overall survival. These findings suggest that NAT may improve patient selection for surgery and lead to fewer complications and better survival outcomes in PC patients with venous involvement.List of scientific papersI. Rogier Aäron Gaiser, Asif Halimi, Hassan Alkharaan, Liyan Lu, Haleh Davanian, Katie Healy, Luisa W Hugerth, Zeeshan Ateeb, Roberto Valente, Carlos Fernández Moro, Marco Del Chiaro, Margaret Sällberg Chen. Enrichment of oral microbiota in early cystic precursors to invasive pancreatic cancer. Gut. 2019 Dec;68(12):2186- 2194. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2018-317458. Epub 2019 Mar 14. https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2018-317458 II. Asif Halimi, Giorgio Gabarrini, Michał Jacek Sobkowiak, Zeeshan Ateeb, Haleh Davanian, Rogier Aäron Gaiser, Urban Arnelo, Roberto Valente, Alicia Y W Wong, Carlos Fernández Moro, Marco Del Chiaro, Volkan Özenci, Margaret Sällberg Chen. Isolation of pancreatic microbiota from cystic precursors of pancreatic cancer with intracellular growth and DNA damaging properties. Gut Microbes. 2021 Jan- Dec;13(1):1983101. doi: 10.1080/19490976.2021.1983101. https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2021.1983101 III. Klara Fröberg, Asif Halimi, Miroslav Vujasinovic, José Caballero-Corbalan, Urban Arnelo, Ernesto Sparrelid, Olle Korsgren, Johannes-Matthias Löhr, Torbjörn Lundgren, Poya Ghorbani. Outcome after total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplantation: A European single-center study. Scand J Surg. 2023 Dec 25:14574969231220176. doi: 10.1177/14574969231220176. https://doi.org/10.1177/14574969231220176 IV. Asif Halimi, Eline S. Zwart, Bengi S. Yilmaz, Benediktas Kurlinkus, Reea Ahola, Marco Del Chiaro, Ernesto Sparrelid, Elena Rangelova, Laura Maggino, Giuseppe Malleo, Gabriella Lionetto, Roberto Salvia, Keith J. Roberts, Francesco Giovinazzo, Massimo Falconi, Stefano Crippa, Giulio Belfiori, Geert Kazemier, Patrick Maisonneuve, Johanna Laukkarinen, Güralp O. Ceyhan. Neoadjuvant therapy is superior to upfront surgery for pancreatic cancer with venous involvement. [Manuscript]</p
Interactions between the exocrine and the endocrine pancreas
No full textThe pancreas has two main functions: to produce and secrete digestive enzymes (exocrine function) and to produce hormones that regulate blood glucose and splanchnic secretion (endocrine function). The endocrine and exocrine portions of the pancreas are central regulators in digestion and metabolism, with continuous crosstalk between their deeply interconnected components, which plays a role in disease. Pancreatic neoplasms, inflammation, trauma, and surgery can lead to the development of type 3c diabetes when an insult simultaneously damages both acini and islets, leading to exocrine and endocrine dysfunction. In diabetes mellitus patients, pancreatic exocrine insufficiency is highly prevalent, yet little is known about the associations between diabetes mellitus and pancreatic exocrine function. This review aims to provide an overview of the physiology of the pancreas, summarize the pathophysiology and diagnostic work-up of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency, and explore the relationships between exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and diabetes mellitus
Embedding spanning subgraphs into large dense graphs
No full textIn this thesis we are going to present some results on embedding spanning subgraphs into large dense graphs. Spanning Trees Bollob'as conjectured that if is a graph on vertices, for some , and is a bounded degree tree on vertices, then is a subgraph of . The problem was solved in the affirmative by Koml'os, S'ark"ozy and Szemer'edi for large graphs. They then strengthened their result, and showed that the maximum degree of need not be bounded: there exists a constant such that is a subgraph of if , and is large. Both proofs are based on the Regularity Lemma-Blow-up Lemma Method. Recently, using other methods, it was shown that bounded degree trees embed into graphs with minimum degree , where is a constant depending on the maximum degree of . Here we show that in general is sufficient for every . We also show that this bound is tight for the two extreme values of i.e. when and when . Powers of Hamiltonian Cycles In 1962 P'osa conjectured that if then contains the square of a Hamiltonian cycle. Later, in 1974, Seymour generalized this conjecture: if then contains the th power of a Hamiltonian cycle. In 1998 the conjecture was proved by Koml'os, S'ark"ozy and Szemer'edi for large graphs using the Regularity Lemma. We present a ``deregularised" proof of the P'osa-Seymour conjecture which results in a much lower threshold value for , the size of the graph for which the conjecture is true. We hope that the tools used in this proof will push down the threshold value for to around 100 at which point we will be able to verify the conjecture for every .Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Asif Jamshe
Pancreatectomy with arterial resection is superior to palliation in patients with borderline resectable or locally advanced pancreatic cancer
No full textBackground: Few studies have investigated the outcome of pancreatectomy associated with artery resection (PAR). Methods: Retrospective analysis of a cohort of operated borderline or locally advanced pancreatic cancer patients with surgically confirmed arterial involvement. Short and long-term outcome were analyzed and compared in patients who underwent PAR (Group 1) and palliative surgery (Group 2). Results: Of 73 patients who underwent surgical exploration with intent of resection, 34 underwent PAR (±venous resection) (Group 1) and 39 underwent palliation (Group 2). 23 patients (67.7%) in Group 1 underwent combined artery-vein resection (AVR). Operation time was longer and blood loss higher in group 1 compared to group 2. There were no differences in post-operative mortality (2.9% vs 2.6%, p = 0.9) and post-operative surgical complications (38.2% vs 25.6%, p = 0.2). The 1, 3 and 5 years survival in Group 1 was superior to Group 2 (63.7%, 23.4% and Q3 23.4% vs 41.7%, 3.2% and 0, p = 0.003). Conclusion: PAR seems to be safe and feasible in well selected patients and associated with an advantage of survival compared to palliation, in patients affected by locally advanced pancreatic cancer
Prediction of particle concentration profiles in binary-solid liquid fluidized bed
No full textA simple mixing rule is presented here to predict the concentration profile of individual particle species in a binary-solid liquid fluidized bed from the information about the total solid concentration in the bed. Using the experimental data available in the literature, the applicability of this approach is demonstrated for the presence of different size particles in the bed. For the case of binary-solid fluidized bed showing layer inversion behavior, this simple mixing rule is capable of predicting the concentration of two species from the total solid concentration data of the bed.Corresponding Author:
Dr. Mohammad Asif, Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University,
P.O. Box 800, Riyadh-11421, Saudi Arabia.
Email: [email protected]
Semantic Question Classification Datasets
No full textThis is the datasets used in the following paper:Can Taxonomy Help? Improving Semantic Question Matching using Question TaxonomyPaper: http://aclweb.org/anthology/C18-1042If you use the dataset please cite the following paper:@InProceedings{C18-1042,
author = "Gupta, Deepak
and Pujari, Rajkumar
and Ekbal, Asif
and Bhattacharyya, Pushpak
and Maitra, Anutosh
and Jain, Tom
and Sengupta, Shubhashis",
title = "Can Taxonomy Help? Improving Semantic Question Matching using Question Taxonomy",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
year = "2018",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
pages = "499--513",
location = "Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA",
url = "http://aclweb.org/anthology/C18-1042"
}
</div
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Human Rights Law in Egypt and Malaysia: Freedom of Religion and Expression, Volume 1 /
No full textThe discourse surrounding freedom of religion and expression in Muslim-majority countries is complex and multifaceted, shaped by a myriad of factors including cultural, political, and legal dynamics. This volume examines the complex interplay of these factors within the contexts of Egypt and Malaysia, offering valuable insights into the challenges and advancements in safeguarding these fundamental freedoms. From the diverse interpretations of Islamic principles to the varying legal frameworks and the influence of global events, such as geopolitical conflicts and terrorism, on human rights dynamics, this volume provides a comprehensive exploration of the complexities involved. Moreover, it delves into the historical, social, and political contexts that shape the protection and limitation of these freedoms, offering a nuanced understanding of the evolving discourse surrounding human rights in Muslim-majority countries. Through comparative analyses and discussions on the role of civil society and advocacy groups, this volume serves as an invaluable resource for scholars, policymakers, and activists seeking to deepen their understanding of the multifaceted realm of freedom of religion and expression in Egypt and Malaysia. Asif Mohiuddin is a Lecturer in the Department of Moral Studies, Civics and Character Building at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia. Previously, he worked as a Postdoctoral Academic Officer at the same institution. He is the author of the book "Navigating Religious Authority in Muslim Societies: Islamist Movements and the Challenge of Globalisation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). From 2021 to 2022, he served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Theology at Sakarya University, Turkey. Before joining Sakarya University, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Higher Education, Government of Jammu and Kashmir, India. He earned his PhD from the University of Kashmir in 2018. His research interests include globalisation and Islam, the intersection between politics and religion in the Middle East, human rights law, Islam and the West, and Muslim minorities in multicultural societies (Europe and South Asia)
Endoscopic Papillectomy for Ampullary Lesions in patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis compared to sporadic lesions in a propensity-score matched cohort
No full textBackground: Familial-adenomatous-polyposis (FAP) is a rare inherited cancer predisposition syndrome. The treatment for FAP-related ampullary lesions (AL) is challenging and the role of endoscopic papillectomy (EP) is not elucidated yet. Data of FAP associated AL are limited and showed, at least in part, inconclusive results. We retrospectively analyzed the outcomes of EP in matched cohorts of FAP-related and sporadic ampullary lesions (SAL). Methods: The ESAP study included 1422 EPs. A propensity-score matching (nearest-neighbor-method) including age, gender, comorbidity, histologic subtype and size was performed. Main outcomes were complete resection (R0), technical success, complications and recurrence. Results: Propensity-score-based matching identified 202 patients (101 FAP, 101 SAL) with comparable baseline characteristics. FAP-patients were mainly asymptomatic (79.2% [95%CI 71.2-87.3] vs. 46.5% [95%CI 36.6-56.4]), p<0.001). The initial R0-rate was significantly lower in FAP-patients (63.4% [95%CI 53.8-72.9] vs. 83.2% [95%CI 75.8-90.6], p=0.001). After repeated (mean: 1.30 per patient) interventions, R0 was comparable (FAP 93.1% [95%CI 88.0-98.1] vs. SAL 97.0% [95%CI 93.7-100], p=0.194). The overall complication rate was 28.7%. Pancreatitis and bleeding were most common adverse events in both groups. Severe complications were very rare (3.5%). Twenty-one patients in the FAP-group (20.8% [95%CI 12.7-28.8]) and sixteen patients in the SAL-group (15.8% [95%CI 8.6-23.1], p=0.363) had a reccurence . Recurrences occurred later in FAP-patients (25 [95%CI 18.3-31.7] vs. 2 [95%CI CI 0.06-3.9] months). Conclusions: EP is safe and effective in FAP-related ampullary lesions Criteria for endoscopic resection of AL can be extended to FAP-patients. FAP-patients have a life-time risk to relapse even after complete resection and require long-time-surveillance
A tug-of-war in intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms management : Comparison between 2017 International and 2018 European guidelines
No full textBACKGROUND: 2017 International and 2018 European guidelines are the most recent guidelines for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms management. AIM: to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of these guidelines in identifying malignant IPMN. METHODS: data from resected patients with IPMN were collected in two referral centers. Features of risk associated to cancerous degeneration described in International and European guidelines were retrospectively applied. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value in detecting malignant disease were calculated. RESULTS: the study includes 627 resected patients. European guidelines suggest resection in any patient with at least one feature of moderate-risk. International guidelines suggest that patients with moderate-risk features undergo endoscopic ultrasound before surgery. European guidelines had a higher sensitivity (99.2% vs. 83%) but a lower positive predictive value (59.5% vs. 65.8%) and Specificity (2% vs. 37.5%). European guidelines detected almost all malignancies, but 40% of resected patients had low-grade dysplasia. 297 patients underwent endoscopic ultrasound before surgery. 31/116 (26.7%) tumors radiologically classified as "worrisome features" were reclassified as "high-risk stigmata" by endoscopic ultrasound and 24/31 were malignant IPMN. CONCLUSIONS: European and International guidelines have a relatively low diagnostic accuracy, being European guidelines more aggressive. Endoscopic ultrasound can improve guidelines accuracy in patients with moderate-risk features
Prediction of tool temperature during machining of Ti-6Al-4V alloy with atomization-based cutting fluid spray system
No full textAtomization-based cutting fluid (ACF) spray system is being sought as an alternative to cooling processes currently used for machining difficult-to-cut materials such as Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The ACF spray system generates a stream of monodispersed droplets of cutting fluid which then gets mixed in a high-velocity gas flow to form a focused axisymmetric jet of droplets. During machining, this jet is able to penetrate the small region of the tool-chip interface helping in lubrication and cooling of the interface. The advantage of the ACF spray system is that it requires very small amount of cutting fluid, which makes the system more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It has been recently reported that ACF spray system improves machining performances including tool life and reduced temperature near the tool-chip interface in turning Ti-alloy. It is clear from these studies that the reduction in temperature and improvement in machining are mainly dependent on the interaction of the cutting fluid from the ACF spray system with the chip-tool interface. Therefore, it is imperative to have a physics-based understanding of the phenomena taking place at the interface that is responsible for the tool temperature reduction.
In this study, a thermal model for the atomization-based cutting fluid (ACF) spray system is developed to predict the temperature of the cutting edge of the tool during machining of titanium alloys. In the model, film boiling is taken into account because of the high temperatures involved in turning of Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Due to film boiling a thin vapor film is formed between the heated tool surface and the droplet. Heat is being conducted away from the tool through this film. It is shown that the thermal model is able to predict the temperature reduction due to ACF spray cooling and the predicted temperature profile is comparable to the experimental results.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2017-08-01The student, Asif Tanveer, accepted the attached license on 2015-07-24 at 11:26.The student, Asif Tanveer, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2015-07-24 at 11:34.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2015-07-24 at 12:56.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8643 on 2015-09-29 at 15:06:54Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-29T21:08:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2015-07-24Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 89602
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