Shorepham1741

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which may result in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multiorgan failure, and death. The alveolar epithelium is a major target of the virus, but representative models to study virus host interactions in more detail are currently lacking. selleck chemical Here, we describe a human 2D air-liquid interface culture system which was characterized by confocal and electron microscopy and single-cell mRNA expression analysis. In this model, alveolar cells, but also basal cells and rare neuroendocrine cells, are grown from 3D self-renewing fetal lung bud tip organoids. These cultures were readily infected by SARS-CoV-2 with mainly surfactant protein C-positive alveolar type II-like cells being targeted. Consequently, significant viral titers were detected and mRNA expression analysis revealed induction of type I/III interferon response program. Treatment of these cultures with a low dose of interferon lambda 1 reduced viral replication. Hence, these cultures represent an experimental model for SARS-CoV-2 infection and can be applied for drug screens.

Dermatomyositis (DM) and polymyositis (PM) are two rare autoimmune disorders occasionally described with dysthyroidism; however, no solid evidence still proves such an association.

To evaluate the prevalence of dysthyroidism among DM/PM patients.

A nation-wide case-control study was conducted.

From the Clalit Health Services health records database, we extracted 2085 (DM=1475 (70.7%), PM=610 (29.3%)) PM/DM cases and 10193 sex-age matched controls in the period 2000-2018. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the link dysthyroidism and PM/DM. Survival analysis was also performed.

The rate of hyperthyroidism was significantly (P=.0097) higher in cases (n=40, 1.9%) with respect to controls (n=123, 1.2%). Similarly, the rate of hypothyroidism was significantly (P<.0001) associated with cases (n=234, 11.2%) when compared to controls (n=853, 8.4%). At the multivariate logistic regression analysis, both DM (OR 1.31 [95%CI 1.07-1.60], P=.0087) and PM (OR 1.54 [95%CI 1.21-1.95], P=.004) were significantly associated with hypothyroidism, whereas DM (OR 1.70 [95%CI 1.10-2.61], P=.0165) but not PM (OR 1.45 [0.83-2.55], P=.1947) was found to be associated with hyperthyroidism. Subjects with PM and positive for anti-Sjögren's syndrome-related antigen A (SSA) auto-antibody displayed a significant risk of developing hyperthyroidism (OR 5.85 [95%CI 1.02-33.74], P=.0480), whereas individuals with DM and positive for antinuclear antibody (ANA) had a higher risk of developing hyperthyroidism (OR 2.65 [95%CI 1.00-7.03], P=.0498).

Physicians treating PM/DM patients should consider screening for thyroid dysfunction on a regular basis.

Physicians treating PM/DM patients should consider screening for thyroid dysfunction on a regular basis.Although public debates on cannabis are ongoing in many countries, there are currently no EU-wide rules for either medical or recreational use of cannabis. Numerous studies have illustrated that creating such rules is a complex challenge. The battle over the legalisation of medical use of cannabis in Poland is a good example for analysing the mutual impact of the social practices that various actors perform through and by the discourses in the field of health care how they discursively create their own roles and take positions and how they shape the coalitions and opposition in trying to achieve their strategic goals. This article aims to reconstruct and explain how different types of knowledge are discursively used to sustain or question power relations in the healthcare field. The dispersed knowledge-power influences social actors, who try to define or redefine social practices and aspire to guide them in the healthcare field. The presented approach allows authors to go beyond the social actors' perception vs institutional regulations and to analyse discursive actions as elements of the complex networks of meanings activating various type of resources. Those dynamic networks, involving the different (and sometimes the same) actors in the different actions, open the new fields of rationality. Starting by identifying the crucial actors and their discursive actions visible in the mainstream press discourse, we will reconstruct three types of groups related to medical cannabis. We will then investigate three types of dispositives - law, discipline and security - to investigate the relations between discursive and non-discursive elements. The proposed analysis belongs to the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) paradigm and includes investigation of the media discourses and in-depth interviews with the identified actors.

Assessment of image quality directly in clinical image data is an important quality control objective as phantom-based testing does not fully represent image quality across patient variation. Computer algorithms for automatically measuring noise in clinical computed tomography (CT) images have been introduced, but the accuracy of these algorithms is unclear. This work benchmarks the accuracy of the global noise (GN) algorithm for automatic noise measurement in contrast-enhanced abdomen CT exams in comparison to precise reference noise measurements. The GN algorithm was further optimized compared to the previous report in the literature.

Reference values of noise were established in a public image dataset of 82 contrast-enhanced abdomen CT exams. The reference noise values were obtained by manual regions-of-interest measurements of pixel standard deviation in the liver parenchyma according to an instruction protocol. Noise measurements taken by six observers were averaged together to improve reference noisn of automatic clinical image quality measurement methods. The GN algorithm was optimized and validated for automatic measurement of soft-tissue noise in abdomen CT exams.

The performance of automatic noise measurement was benchmarked in a large clinical CT dataset. The study provides a framework for thorough validation of automatic clinical image quality measurement methods. The GN algorithm was optimized and validated for automatic measurement of soft-tissue noise in abdomen CT exams.