1,720,977 research outputs found
Radiopharmaceuticals for the study of inflammatory processes: A review.
No full textRecent advances in our understanding of the pathophysiology of inflammatory processes at the molecular level, combined with progress in radiopharmaceutical sciences, has boosted the development of nuclear medicine techniques for the diagnosis of infection/inflammation. The use of radiolabelled white blood cells has been studied and evaluated in several pathologies and is still the reference method. Several alternative approaches, however, have been developed that may, in the future, improve the specificity and the ease of use of the technique. For the first time, a radiopharmaceutical that may distinguish between sterile and septic inflammation, 99Tcm-Infecton, has been developed. Also, monoclonal antibody fragments, cytokines and a variety of new synthetic peptides that bind specifically to granulocytes have been prepared. Particularly promising appears to be the detection of the expression of adhesion molecules by activated endothelium as a first-line technique for the detection of inflammatory foci. For the diagnosis of autoimmunity and chronic inflammatory processes, important progress has also been made. Autoimmunity can now be studied by in vivo detection of tissue-infiltrating activated lymphocytes by radiulabelled interleukin-2. A radiopharmaceutical for the diagnosis of monocyte infiltration, J001X, is also available, and the commercially available Octreoscan® holds promise in autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases. The efforts of the scientific community have given us new perspectives in diagnostic nuclear medicine: easier techniques that promise better sensitivity and specificity are now also being tested for the study of new disease conditions. The results of the clinical trials now in progress will determine the future of this challenging and fascinating field and the role of nuclear medicine in the management of patients with infection/inflammatio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
99mTc-interleukin-2 and (99m)Tc-HMPAO granulocyte scintigraphy in patients with inactive Crohn's disease.
No full textCrohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory
bowel disease that may involve the whole gut. Marked
intestinal T cell and macrophage activation is a key feature
of the disease. Polymorphonuclear cell infiltration is
also observed in the diseased gut, mainly during active
inflammation. Scintigraphic detection of granulocytes
and activated lymphocytes infiltrating the gut wall may
be useful in identifying a subgroup of patients with clinically
inactive CD who are undergoing early clinical relapse.
The aims of the present study were (a) to compare
the effectiveness of scintigraphy with 99mTc-labelled interleukin-
2 (99mTc-IL2) and with 99mTc-HMPAO labelled
granulocytes (99mTc-WBC) in detecting the presence and
extent of bowel inflammation in patients with long-term
inactive CD (>12 months) and (b) to assess the accuracy
of these techniques in predicting future disease relapse.
We studied 29 patients with ileal and/or colonic CD in
stable clinical remission (Crohn’s Disease Activity Index
<150 for at least 12 months) using both 99mTc-IL2 and
99mTc-WBC scintigraphy in order to evaluate the extent
of acute and chronic inflammation in the bowel. Planar
and single-photon emission tomography images were acquired
in each patient at 1 h p.i. For quantitative analysis
of 99mTc-IL2 uptake, the abdomen was divided into 32
regions of interest. Despite the absence of symptoms, 18
patients (62%) showed a positive 99mTc-IL2 and 18
(62%) a positive 99mTc-WBC scan. Only 12 patients
(41.4% of the total group) were positive on both scans,
and the sites of IL2 and granulocyte bowel uptake were
usually located in different segments, indicating that in
CD, acute and chronic inflammation can be present in
different sites. As far as the prognostic role of the two
scans in predicting future disease relapse is concerned,
both 99mTc-IL2 and 99mTc-WBC scintigraphy showed a
high negative predictive value (1.00 and 0.91, respectively)
but a weak positive predictive value (0.44 and
0.39, respectively). Nevertheless, Kaplan-Meier curves
generated between scintigraphic findings and time free
from disease relapse were statistically different only for
99mTc-IL2 scintigraphy (log-rank test, P=0.013). These
results indicate that 99mTc-IL2 scintigraphy can be useful
in selecting CD patients in clinical remission who could
benefit from preventive therapy to avoid disease relapse
Detection of pancreatic insulitis by 99mTc-IL2 scintigraphy in newly diagnosed type 1 dabetes patients: prediction of response to immunotherapy
No full textVariations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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