Krill's disease: a newer management option

Purpose: To report a case of a young female who presented with scotoma in the right eye for few days. Case Report: Krill's disease or acute retinal pigment epithelitis (ARPE) is a self-limiting retinal disease with no specific treatment. Typical clinical and imaging features helped us to diagnose her with ARPE. Intravenous methylprednisolone (IVMP), which gives a rapid anti-inflammatory response, was advised. An SD-OCT scan post-injection showed a reduction in hyperreflectivity and height of lesion at day 3 and near total resolution by day 5. Conclusion: This case suggests rapid resolution of ARPE with the use of IVMP.

Evaluation of losartan plus hydrochlorothiazide combination therapy against amlodipine monotherapy in patients of hypertension

Background: Microalbuminuria has been shown to predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients with hypertension. Recently the FDC of losartan and hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) has been reported to be effective for achieving a target BP level and also improvement in cardiovascular prognosis. The present study was conducted to compare effect of losartan plus hydrochlorothiazide combination therapy and high dose amlodipine monotherapy on blood pressure and microalbuminuria.Methods: Total 184 patients with hypertension were randomly allocated to two groups. The patients in group 1 received Amlodipine 5 mg orally for first 4 weeks. The patients from group 2 received losartan 50 mg orally for first 4 weeks. Patients in group 1 were titrated to amlodipine 10 mg orally for next 4 weeks. The patients in group 2 were titrated to FDC of losartan (50 mg) plus HCTZ (12.5 mg) for next 4 weeks. Follow杣p visits were scheduled at 4 weeks and 8 weeks. Pulse rate, sSBP and sDBP were estimated at each follow杣p. Microalbuminuria was estimated at 8 weeks.Results: There was no significant difference in mean change in sSBP, sDBP and pulse rate between two treatment groups (p>0.05). There was greater reduction in microalbuminuria in group 2 patients (p<0.0001). The adverse effects such as flushing and lower extremity oedema were significantly more in amlodipine group (p<0.05).Conclusions: Losartan plus HCTZ has similar effect on BP, better safety profile and superior effect on microalbuminuria level reduction.

A study of relation of stature and percutaneous ulnar length.

Introduction: Stature of an individual is one of the most important characteristics of identification which is required in medico legal practice quite often. There is direct relationship between anthropometric characteristics and sex, shape and form of an individual. Stature estimation is usually based on measurement of long bones. Ulna is a very useful bone for this purpose. Material and Methods : In this paper, attempts are made for the estimation of the stature of native of Gujarat state at Smt NHL Municipal medical college, Ahmedabad using “Percutaneous ulnar length” in year 2010-2011. Four hundred and fifty ( 450 ) healthy adults ( 245 Males and 205 Females) aged between 17-30 years who are medical students, paramedical students and staff members of Smt. N.H.L. Municipal Medical College, Ahmedabad were studied and measurement of stature and percutaneous ulnar length was done for each of them. The ulnar length was measured from tip of olecrenon process to the distal margin of the head of ulna (palpable on the dorsum of the wrist) with forearm flexed and semi pronated and the hand in the neutral position. Observation and Results : We found that the difference in age of Males and Females was statistically not significant with p>0.05 but the difference in Mean stature between Males and Females and the difference in Mean Ulnar length between Males and Females was statistically highly significant (p<0.001).Simple linear regression equations are derived in the study for estimation of height of Males and Females based on length of Ulna.Conclusion : It was concluded that the estimation of Stature among the population can be carried out using measurements of Ulna and there is positive correlation between Stature and Length of Ulna in a particular population.

Long-range correlations in prokaryotic chromosomes.

One of the fascinating properties of the DNA sequences of prokaryotic and eukaryotic chromosomes is that they possess long-range order. Computational methods like spectral analysis, mutual information and DNA random walks have been used to probe long-range order via-long range correlations. This work attempts to show the advantage of using the Information Theoretic measure of mutual information for this purpose. A number Mu is found which indicates the existence of long-range order. Mu is the ratio between the value of mutual information function between two nucleotides of a DNA sequence separated by a large distance of 100 kilobases to the value expected from a randomized sequence of the same DNA. It is found that in spite of the constant shuffling of nucleotides due to insertion, deletion, inversion and recombination that occur during evolution, the chromosomal structure of prokaryotes is not always mosaic. While all archaeal chromosomes show mosaic structure and lack long-range order, a sizable fraction of the bacterial chromosomes do possess long-range order. A statistical multivariate analysis has been done to find which of the physical variables like genome size or GC% affects the organization of the chromosome or correlates with the long-range order. The existence of long-range order in bacterial chromosomes could be directly correlated to the degree of gene strand bias shown by it. Firmicutes which have low GC content also have pronounced strand bias and show long-range correlations. It is observed that the occurrence of long-range order in bacteria is independent of genome size, but depends on its GC content and gene strand bias.

In silico comparison of bacterial strains using mutual information.

Fast-sequencing throughput methods have increased the number of completely sequenced bacterial genomes to about 400 by December 2006, with the number increasing rapidly. These include several strains. In silico methods of comparative genomics are of use in categorizing and phylogenetically sorting these bacteria. Various word-based tools have been used for quantifying the similarities and differences between entire genomes. The simple di-nucleotide frequency comparison, codon specificity and k-mer repeat detection are among some of the well-known methods. In this paper, we show that the Mutual Information function, which is a measure of correlations and a concept from Information Theory, is very effective in determining the similarities and differences among genome sequences of various strains of bacteria such as the plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa, marine Cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus marinus or animal and human pathogens such as species of Ehrlichia and Legionella. The short-range three-base periodicity, small sequence repeats and long-range correlations taken together constitute a genome signature that can be used as a technique for identifying new bacterial strains with the help of strains already catalogued in the database. There have been several applications of using the Mutual Information function as a measure of correlations in genomics but this is the first whole genome analysis done to detect strain similarities and differences.