[What is new in ambulatory internal medicine in 2012?]. / Nouveautés 2012 en médecine interne générale ambulatoire.

Ten articles published in 2012 and of interest for the practice of ambulatory general internal medicine are reviewed in this paper. Topics of public health issues, such as the association between sleep disorders and prediabetes, the association between prediabetes and stroke, and the harmful effects of prolonged sitting are tackled. Other focuses include hepatitis C screening, abdominal aortic aneurysm screening and prostatic cancer screening. Therapeutic aspects are reviewed, such as the management of nongonococcal urethritis, the treatment of iron deficiency without anemia and the substitution of subclinical hypothyroidism. Finally a new study about aspirin and cancer prevention is discussed.

[Advantages of capillary INR monitoring for oral anticoagulation]. / Avantages du contrôle de l'anticoagulation orale par INR capillaire.

More and more patients are treated with long term oral anticoagulation. The time spent in therapeutic range is often limited since many factors affect INR. Too high or too low INRs increase respectively the hemorrhagic or thromboembolic risks. INR monitoring by a capillary device either in autonomy (self-management) by some selected patients or in relation with the treating physician (self-control), allows increasing the time spent in therapeutic range. Capillary INR monitoring can also be made at the medical office: it is less invasive and provides a quicker answer than a venous INR.

Three-dimensional point spread function model for line-scanning confocal microscope with high-aperture objective.

Point Spread Function (PSF) modelling is an important task in image formation analysis. In confocal microscopy, the exact PSF is rarely known, thus one has to rely on its approximation. An initial estimation is usually performed experimentally by measuring fluorescent beads or analytically by studying properties of the optical system. Yet, fluorescent line-scanning confocal microscopes are not widespread; therefore, very few adapted models are available in the literature. In this paper, we propose an analytical PSF model for line-scanning confocal microscopes. Validation is performed by measuring the error between our model and an experimental PSF measured with fluorescent beads, assumed to represent the real PSF. Comparison with existing models is also presented.

Anomalous diffusion of fluorescent probes inside living cell nuclei investigated by spatially-resolved fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.

We have investigated spatial variations of the diffusion behavior of the green fluorescent protein mutant EGFP (F64L/S65T) and of the EGFP-beta-galactosidase fusion protein in living cells with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Our fluorescence correlation spectroscopy device, in connection with a precision x-y translation stage, provides submicron spatial resolution and a detection volume smaller than a femtoliter. The fluorescence fluctuations in cell lines expressing EGFP are caused by molecular diffusion as well as a possible internal and a pH-dependent external protonation process of the EGFP chromophore. The latter processes result in two apparent nonfluorescent states that have to be taken into account when evaluating the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy data. The diffusional contribution deviates from ideal behavior and depends on the position in the cell. The fluorescence correlation spectroscopy data can either be evaluated as a two component model with one fraction of the molecules undergoing free Brownian motion with a diffusion coefficient approximately five times smaller than in aqueous solution, and another fraction diffusing one or two orders of magnitude slower. This latter component is especially noticeable in the nuclei. Alternatively, we can fit the data to an anomalous diffusion model where the time dependence of the diffusion serves as a measure for the degree of obstruction, which is large especially in nuclei. Possible mechanisms for this long tail behavior include corralling, immobile obstacles, and binding with a broad distribution of binding affinities. The results are consistent with recent numerical models of the chromosome territory structure in the cell nucleus.