Is Long-term Ambient Air Pollutant Exposure a Risk Factor for Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Children? A 12-year Longitudinal Cohort Study

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Recent studies suggest that air pollution may play a role in gastrointestinal disorders. However, the effect of long-term exposure to air pollution on childhood irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is unclear. Hence, we conducted a nationwide cohort study to investigate the association between long-term air pollution exposure and the incidence and risk of IBS in Taiwanese children during 2000–2012. METHODS: We collected data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, linked to the Taiwan Air Quality-Monitoring Database according to the insurant living area and the air quality-monitoring station locations. Children < 18 years old, identified from January 1st, 2000, were followed-up until IBS diagnosis or December 31st, 2012. The daily average air pollutant concentrations were categorized into 4 quartile-based groups (Q1–Q4). We measured the incidence rate, hazard ratios (HRs), and 95% confidence intervals for IBS stratified by the quartiles of air pollutant concentration. RESULTS: A total of 3537 children (1.39%) were diagnosed with IBS within the cohort during the follow-up period. The incidence rate for IBS increased from 0.84 to 1.76, from 0.73 to 1.68, from 0.85 to 1.98, and from 0.52 to 3.22 per 1000 person-years, with increase in the carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, non-methane hydrocarbon, and methane quartile (from Q1 to Q4) exposure concentration, respectively. The adjusted HR for IBS increased with elevated carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, non-methane hydrocarbon, and methane exposure in Q4 to 1.98, 2.14, 2.19, and 5.87, respectively, compared with Q1. CONCLUSION: Long-term ambient air pollutant exposure is an environmental risk factor for childhood IBS.

Statin and the Risk of Ischemic Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack in Head and Neck Cancer Patients with Radiotherapy / 대한뇌졸중학회지

No abstract available.

Parkinson’s disease and risk of colorectal cancer: A population-based case-control study in Taiwan

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether there is an association between Parkinson’s disease (PD) and colorectal cancer in Taiwan. Methods: This was a case-control study using claim data of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. There were 64,619 subjects aged 20-84 with newly diagnosed colorectal cancer as cases and 64,619 randomly selected subjects without colorectal cancer as controls from 2005 to 2011. Both cases and controls were matched by sex, age, comorbidities, and index year of diagnosing colorectal cancer. Subjects who were diagnosed with PD within 5 years of diagnosing colorectal cancer were excluded. The multivariable logistic regression model was used to estimate the adjusted odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for risk of colorectal cancer associated with PD. Results: After adjusting for confounding factors, the multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that the adjusted OR of colorectal cancer was 0.69 for subjects with PD more than 5 years before index date (95% CI 0.59, 0.81), as compared with subjects without PD. Conclusion: PD is associated with reduced odds of colorectal cancer. Further research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying our findings.

Herpes zoster correlates with pyogenic liver abscesses in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the paper was to explore the relationship between herpes zoster and pyogenic liver abscesses in Taiwan. METHODS: This was a nationwide cohort study. Using the database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program, there were 33049 subjects aged 20-84 years who were newly diagnosed with herpes zoster from 1998 to 2010 that were selected for our study, and they were our herpes zoster group. 131707 randomly selected subjects without herpes zoster were our non-herpes zoster group. Both groups were matched by sex, age, other comorbidities, and the index year of their herpes zoster diagnosis. The incidence of pyogenic liver abscesses at the end of 2011 was then estimated. The multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to estimate the hazard ratio and 95% confidence interval for pyogenic liver abscesses associated with herpes zoster and other comorbidities. RESULTS: The overall incidence rate was 1.38-fold higher in the herpes zoster group than in the non-herpes zoster group (4.47 vs. 3.25 per 10000 person-years, 95% confidence interval 1.32, 1.44). After controlling for potential confounding factors, the adjusted hazard ratio of pyogenic liver abscesses was 1.34 in the herpes zoster group (95% confidence interval 1.05, 1.72) when compared with the non-herpes zoster group. Sex (in this case male), age, presence of biliary stones, chronic kidney diseases, chronic liver diseases, cancers, and diabetes mellitus were also significantly associated with pyogenic liver abscesses. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with herpes zoster are associated with an increased hazard of developing pyogenic liver abscesses.

Parkinson’s disease and risk of pancreatic cancer: a population-based case-control study in Taiwan

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer in Taiwan. Methods: This was a case-control study using claim data of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. There were 13,861 subjects aged 20- 84 with newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer as cases and 55,444 randomly selected subjects without pancreatic cancer as controls from 1998 to 2011. Cases and controls were matched by sex, age and index year of diagnosing pancreatic cancer. The association of pancreatic cancer with Parkinson’s disease was evaluated by the multivariable logistic regression model to estimate the adjusted odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results: After adjusting for confounding factors including acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, diabetes mellitus, biliary stone, alcoholism, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, the multivariable logistic regression analysis showed the adjusted OR of pancreatic cancer was 0.82 for subjects with Parkinson’s disease (95% CI 0.55, 1.21), as compared with subjects without Parkinson’s disease. Conclusion: No association is detected between Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer.

Occult Interpositional Rotator Cuff - an Extremely Rare Case of Traumatic Rotator Cuff Tear

Traumatic interposition of a rotator cuff tendon in the glenohumeral joint without recognizable glenohumeral dislocation is an unusual complication after shoulder trauma. Here we report the clinical and imaging presentations of a 17-year-old man with trapped rotator cuff tendons in the glenohumeral joint after a bicycle accident. The possible trauma mechanism is also discussed.

Using nonuniform electric fields to accelerate the transport of viruses to surfaces from media of physiological ionic strength.

Nonuniform ac (alternating current) electric fields created by microelectrodes are investigated for their influence on the transport of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) from aqueous suspensions of physiological ionic strength to surfaces on which the VSV is captured. Whereas passive diffusion did not lead to detectable levels of virus captured on a surface when using titers of VSV as high as 107 PFU/mL, nonuniform electric field-mediated transport led to the detection of 105 PFU/mL of virus in 2 min. An order-of-magnitude analysis of the time scales associated with virus transport to the microelectrodes inside media of physiological relevance indicates that electrothermal fluid flow (and the resulting viscous drag forces on the virus) rather than dielectrophoresis likely constitutes the major mechanism for virus transport far from the electrodes. The influence of dielectrophoresis was calculated to be confined to a region within a few micrometers of the electrodes and to lead to collection patterns of both virus and fluorescently labeled particles near the electrodes that were found to be in qualitative agreement with experiments. These observations and conclusions are discussed within a theoretical framework presented in the paper. The results presented in this work, when combined, suggest that ac electrokinetic phenomena can be used to expeditiously transport and capture viruses onto surfaces from solutions of high ionic strength, thus providing a potentially useful approach to addressing a bottleneck in the development of devices that allow for rapid sampling and detection of infectious biological agents.

Anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on viruses with different envelope structures.

The ordering of synthetic liquid crystals near surfaces is known to be dependent on the nanoscopic structure and chemical functionality of surfaces. In this letter, we report that the orientational ordering of synthetic liquid crystals on surfaces decorated with viruses is also dependent on the structures of the viruses. Each of the four virions investigated had diameters of approximately 100 nm, but three of the viruses (influenza virus, La Crosse virus, and vesicular stomatitis virus) were enveloped in a lipid bilayer, whereas one virus (adenovirus) was not. We observed that lipid bilayer-enveloped viruses induce homeotropic (perpendicular) ordering of a nematic liquid crystal upon contact with the liquid crystal. In contrast, nonenveloped virus (adenovirus)-treated surfaces caused a near-planar orientation of the liquid crystal. We conclude that the homeotropic ordering of liquid crystals is a signature of the presence of enveloped viruses present on surfaces. These results suggest new approaches to the design of nanostructured materials that incorporate viruses as well as suggest methods that can be used to amplify the presence of nanoscopic virions into micrometer-sized domains of liquid crystal that can be optically probed.

Compatibility of lyotropic liquid crystals with viruses and mammalian cells that support the replication of viruses.

We report a study that investigates the biocompatibility of materials that form lyotropic liquid crystals (LCs) with viruses and mammalian cells that support the replication of viruses. This study is focused on aqueous solutions of tetradecyldimethyl-amineoxide (C(14)AO) and decanol (D), or disodium cromoglycate (DSCG; C(23)H(14)O(11)Na(2)), which can form optically birefringent, liquid crystalline phases. The influence of these materials on the ability of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) to infect human epitheloid cervical carcinoma (HeLa) cells was examined by two approaches. First, VSV was dispersed in aqueous C(14)AO+ D or DSCG, and then HeLa cells were inoculated by contacting the cells with the aqueous C(14)AO + D or DSCG containing VSV. The infectivity of VSV to the HeLa cells was subsequently determined. Second, VSV was incubated in LC phases of either C(14)AO + D or DSCG for 4 h, and the concentration (titer) of infectious virus in the LC was determined by dilution into cell culture medium and subsequent inoculation of HeLa cells. Using these approaches, we found that the LC containing C(14)AO + D caused inactivation of virus as well as cell death. In contrast, we determined that VSV retained its infectivity in the presence of aqueous DSCG, and that greater than 74-82% of the HeLa cells survived contact with aqueous DSCG (depending on concentration of DSCG). Because VSV maintained its function (and we infer structure) in LCs formed from DSCG, we further explored the influence of the virus on the ordering of the LC. Whereas the LC formed from DSCG was uniformly aligned on surfaces prepared from self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of HS(CH(2))(11)(OCH(2)CH(2))(4)OH on obliquely deposited films of gold in the absence of VSV, the introduction of 10(7)-10(8) infectious virus particles per milliliter caused the LC to assume a non-uniform orientation and a colorful appearance that was readily distinguished from the uniformly aligned LCs. Control experiments using cell lysates with equivalent protein concentrations but no virus did not perturb the uniform alignment of the LC.

Flock house virus replicates and expresses green fluorescent protein in mosquitoes.

Flock house virus (FHV) is a non-enveloped, positive-sense RNA virus of insect origin that belongs to the family Nodaviridae. FHV has been shown to overcome the kingdom barrier and to replicate in plants, insects, yeast and mammalian cells. Although of insect origin, FHV has not previously been shown to replicate in mosquitoes. We have tested FHV replication in vitro in C6/36 cells (derived from neonatal Aedes albopictus) and in vivo in four different genera of mosquitoes, Aedes, Culex, Anopheles and Armigeres. FHV replicated to high titres in C6/36 cells that had been subcloned to support maximum growth of FHV. When adult mosquitoes were orally fed or injected with the virus, FHV antigen was detected in various tissues and infectious virus was recovered. Vectors developed from an infectious cDNA clone of a defective-interfering RNA, derived from FHV genomic RNA2, expressed green fluorescent protein in Drosophila cells and adult mosquitoes. This demonstrates the potential of FHV-based vectors for expression of foreign genes in mosquitoes and possibly other insects.