Ten Years of Pediatric Lung Ultrasound: A Narrative Review

Lung diseases are the most common conditions in newborns, infants, and children and are also the primary cause of death in children younger than 5 years old. Traditionally, the lung was not thought to be a target for an ultrasound due to its inability to penetrate the gas-filled anatomical structures. With the deepening of knowledge on ultrasound in recent years, it is now known that the affected lung produces ultrasound artifacts resulting from the abnormal tissue/gas/tissue interface when ultrasound sound waves penetrate lung tissue. Over the years, the application of lung ultrasound (LUS) has changed and its main indications in the pediatric population have expanded. This review analyzed the studies on lung ultrasound in pediatrics, published from 2010 to 2020, with the aim of highlighting the usefulness of LUS in pediatrics. It also described the normal and abnormal appearances of the pediatric lung on ultrasound as well as the benefits, limitations, and possible future challenges of this modality.

Mammography Image-Based Diagnosis of Breast Cancer Using Machine Learning: A Pilot Study

A tumor is an abnormal tissue classified as either benign or malignant. A breast tumor is one of the most common tumors in women. Radiologists use mammograms to identify a breast tumor and classify it, which is a time-consuming process and prone to error due to the complexity of the tumor. In this study, we applied machine learning-based techniques to assist the radiologist in reading mammogram images and classifying the tumor in a very reasonable time interval. We extracted several features from the region of interest in the mammogram, which the radiologist manually annotated. These features are incorporated into a classification engine to train and build the proposed structure classification models. We used a dataset that was not previously seen in the model to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed system following the standard model evaluation schemes. Accordingly, this study found that various factors could affect the performance, which we avoided after experimenting all the possible ways. This study finally recommends using the optimized Support Vector Machine or Naïve Bayes, which produced 100% accuracy after integrating the feature selection and hyper-parameter optimization schemes.

Brillouin and Raman Micro-Spectroscopy: A Tool for Micro-Mechanical and Structural Characterization of Cortical and Trabecular Bone Tissues

Human bone is a specialized tissue with unique material properties, providing mechanical support and resistance to the skeleton and simultaneously assuring capability of adaptation and remodelling. Knowing the properties of such a structure down to the micro-scale is of utmost importance, not only for the design of effective biomimetic materials but also to be able to detect pathological alterations in material properties, such as micro-fractures or abnormal tissue remodelling. The Brillouin and Raman micro-spectroscopic (BRmS) approach has the potential to become a first-choice technique, as it is capable of simultaneously investigating samples’ mechanical and structural properties in a non-destructive and label-free way. Here, we perform a mapping of cortical and trabecular bone sections of a femoral epiphysis, demonstrating the capability of the technique for discovering the morpho-mechanics of cells, the extracellular matrix, and marrow constituents. Moreover, the interpretation of Brillouin and Raman spectra merged with an approach of data mining is used to compare the mechanical alterations in specimens excised from distinct anatomical areas and subjected to different sample processing. The results disclose in both cases specific alterations in the morphology and/or in the tissue chemical make-up, which strongly affects bone mechanical properties, providing a method potentially extendable to other important biomedical issues.

Renal cystic disease in tuberous sclerosis complex

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is associated with TSC1 or TSC2 gene mutations resulting in hyperactivation of the mTORC1 pathway. This mTORC1 activation is associated with abnormal tissue development and proliferation such that in the kidney there are both solid tumors and cystic lesions. This review summarizes recent advances in tuberous sclerosis complex nephrology and focuses on the genetics and cell biology of tuberous sclerosis complex renal disease, highlighting a role of extracellular vesicles and the innate immune system in disease pathogenesis.

LEMON AROMATHERAPY AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO REDUCE THE INTENSITY OF CHEMOTHERAPY-RELATED NAUSEA AND VOMITING EXPERIENCED BY THE BREAST CANCER PATIENTS

ABSTRACT Introduction : The mechanism of breast cancer is the cells growing and breeding become appear abnormal tissue of breast. One of the common treatments for it is chemotherapy using cytotoxic drugs. However, chemotherapy may cause nausea and vomiting as its side effects. Lemon aromatherapy is a complementary therapy in patients with breast cancer who experience nausea or vomiting. The study’s purpose was to know the effect of lemon aromatherapy on the intensity of nausea and vomiting experienced by the breast cancer patients as an effect of chemoterapy in the Chemo Center Room of RSAL Dr. Ramelan Surabaya. Material and Methods : The study was the pre-experimental design with pre-post test without control group. There are two variables, lemon aromatherapy is independent, and the intensity of nausea and vomiting is dependent. The sampling technique was nonprobability purposive sampling, with 34 breast cancer patients taken as the sample. A questionnaire was the instrument for collecting the data. The Data collected were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Test (α = 0,05). Results : The study’s result indicated that the lemon aromatherapy was effectively to decrease of the intensity of nausea and vomiting exeperienced by the respondents, with the value of Wilcoxon test p < 0.001. Conclusion : Lemon aromatherapy stimulates the raphe nucleus to produce serotonin. Which function to generate a sense of comfort and calm. For that reason, it can be used as an alternative for taking care of nausea and vomiting experienced by patients with breast cancer as the side effect of chemotherapy. Keywords: Lemon Aromatherapy, Nausea, Vomiting, Chemotherapy

Prostasomes (Exosomes) Mediate Functional Abilities to Recipient Cells through Transfer of Proteins and Nucleic Acids: A Comprehensive Model for Exosomal Intercellular Communication

The prostasome is the first described exosome and constitutes the third communication system between cells mediating messages besides gap junctions and soluble compounds such as hormones. Exosomes are nanometer vesicles surrounded by a lipid bilayered membrane and released by most cell types including malignant cells. The exosomal messenger system reaches distant cells even on the other side of the blood brain barrier. In this way they are able to interact with their target cells for delivery of their cargo. We here describe prostasomal properties in more detail thus exemplifying common exosomal characteristics. Myocardial derived exosomes (cardiosomes), are also described in order to highlight other common biological functions including damaged tissue, i.e. tissue repair. Abnormal tissue such as malignant progression can be driven by cancer cell derived exosomes, believed mainly to be mediated by different forms of short RNAs exerting their action through specific signaling pathways related to metastases, therapeutic resistance and immunosuppression.

Overestimation of grey matter atrophy in glioblastoma patients following radio(chemo)therapy

Objective Brain atrophy has the potential to become a biomarker for severity of radiation-induced side-effects. Particularly brain tumour patients can show great MRI signal changes over time caused by e.g. oedema, tumour progress or necrosis. The goal of this study was to investigate if such changes affect the segmentation accuracy of normal appearing brain and thus influence longitudinal volumetric measurements. Materials and methods T1-weighted MR images of 52 glioblastoma patients with unilateral tumours acquired before and three months after the end of radio(chemo)therapy were analysed. GM and WM volumes in the contralateral hemisphere were compared between segmenting the whole brain (full) and the contralateral hemisphere only (cl) with SPM and FSL. Relative GM and WM volumes were compared using paired t tests and correlated with the corresponding mean dose in GM and WM, respectively. Results Mean GM atrophy was significantly higher for full segmentation compared to cl segmentation when using SPM (mean ± std: ΔVGM,full = − 3.1% ± 3.7%, ΔVGM,cl = − 1.6% ± 2.7%; p < 0.001, d = 0.62). GM atrophy was significantly correlated with the mean GM dose with the SPM cl segmentation (r = − 0.4, p = 0.004), FSL full segmentation (r = − 0.4, p = 0.004) and FSL cl segmentation (r = -0.35, p = 0.012) but not with the SPM full segmentation (r = − 0.23, p = 0.1). Conclusions For accurate normal tissue volume measurements in brain tumour patients using SPM, abnormal tissue needs to be masked prior to segmentation, however, this is not necessary when using FSL.

BRENNER TUMOR -AN OVERVIEW

The ovaries are an essential part of the reproductive system to produce ovum which helps to regulate hormones and play a prime role in pregnancy and fertility in women health. In contrast, Excess growth of abnormal tissue in any part of ovaries affect the normal reproductive function among women. Generally, Ovarian tumors are prevalent forms of neoplasm among women and it attributes for about 30% of female reproductive cancers. Ovarian cancer is the one of the most habitual female carcinomas, and the fourth main cause of death among cancer demise in female. These tumors act in different ways, and predominantly they are discovered after procuring a bigger volume. There are four major groups of ovarian cancer which are surface epithelial, sex cord or stromal, germ cell and metastatic tumors. Brenner tumor is one of the subtypes of surface epithelial carcinoma which resembles transitional neoplasm of urinary tract.