Diagnostic value of T-SPOT.TB in patients with fever / 中华传染病杂志

Objective To investigate the diagnostic value of T-SPOT.TB in patients with fever.Methods T-SPOT.TB was carried out in 456 febrile patients who had no determined reason for fever or who could not be excluded from infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.These patients were followed up for their final clinical diagnosis and the diagnostic value of T-SPOT.TB was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.Results In the present study,85 patients were clinically diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) (including 34 cases of pulmonary TB,24 cases of TB infection defined as T-SPOT.TB positive without TB lesion,but effective with anti-TB treatment,10 cases of tuberculous pleurisy and 17 cases of other extrapulmonary TB) and 371 patients had no definite evidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (including 42 cases of suspected TB and 329 cases of other diseases).T-SPOT.TB had a high sensitivity of 84.3％ in TB patients and a high negative predictive value of 94.2 ％,but the specificity was 68.1％ and the positive predictive value was 41.4 ％.The Kappa value was 0.380 and the area under ROC curve was 0.762 (95％CI:0.707-0.817).T-SPOT.TB had a higher sensitivity in extrapulmonary TB than in pulmonary TB (88.2 ％ vs 78.1 ％),with the negative predictive values of 95.3 ％ and 92.6 ％,Kappa values of 0.438 and 0.299,and the areas under ROC of 0.791 (95 ％ CI:0.724-0.857) and 0.719 (95％CI:0.623-0.815),respectively.Ninety-nine cases were T-SPOT.TB positive out of 329 patients diagnosed with other diseases.Conclusions T-SPOT.TB test can be used as a method for TB diagnosis in patients without obvious TB lesions.Due to its relatively high negative predictive value,T-SPOT.TB can be used to rule out infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

In-vitro antimycoplasmal activity of triclosan in combination with fluoroquinolones against five mycoplasma species

Mycoplasmosis caused by mycoplasma has immensely reduced the performance of commercial animal husbandry, along with prevalence and increase of drug resistance in mycoplasma, thus new agents and therapies are urgently needed. Triclosan is a broad spectrum antimicrobial agent with a favorable safety profile. In the present study, we tested the antimycoplasmal activity of triclosan alone, as well as the in-vitro interaction of triclosan and the fluoroquinolones, gatifloxacin [GAT], moxifloxacin [MXF], levofloxacin [LVX], sparfloxacin [SPX], ciprofloxacin [CIP], enrofloxacin [EFX], and norfloxacin [NOR], against five mycoplasma species. This study demonstrated that triclosan had antimycoplasmal activity against both fluoroquinolones-sensitive species and a fluoroquinolones-resistant species isolated from clinic, with minimum inhibitory concentrations [MICs] of 16.0-64.0 micro g/mL and 64.0 micro g/ mL, respectively. A synergistic antimycoplasmal effect between triclosan and GAT, MFX or EFX against the five mycoplasma species was observed, with modulation factors [MFs] of 4-8, 4-16, 8-32, respectively, and fractional inhibitory concentration indexes [FICIs] of 0.375- 0.500, 0.350-0.500, 0.281-0.375, respectively. The combination of triclosan with LVX, SPX, CIP or NOR displayed either synergistic activity or indifference against the same mycoplasma species with MFs of 2-64, 4-16, 2-16, 2-64, respectively, while FICI values range from 0.516- 0.750, 0.500-0.625, 0.306-0.750, and 0.615-0.750, respectively. No antagonism was observed for any drug combination against any of the species tested. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report that triclosan has synergistic activity with fluoroquinolones against mycoplasma species

QRS complex detection using empirical mode decomposition and windowing technique / 生物医学工程学杂志

A QRS complex detection algorithm based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and adaptive windowing technique is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm we mainly used Hilbert-Huang transform to propose EMD method suitable for QRS complex detection, with which the 30th signal in sddb database and the 208th signal in mit-db database could be processed, and then obtained R wave detection results. At the same time, Q and S points' detection technique was analyzed with adaptive windowing technique. The detection results, through proceeding R wave detection on part data of MIT/BIT arrhythmia database, showed that the proposed algorithm in this paper had a very good detection effect, and that its average correct detection rate of R wave reached 99.62%, its average sensitivity of QRS complex was 98.91%, and the corresponding average specificity was 99.35%.