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U lcerative colitis (UC) is one of the 2 major forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), along with Crohn's disease. [1] The classification of UC based on disease activity is important in patient management. Early detection of disease activity in severe UC reduces the rate of surgery and mortality. [2] Clinical features, laboratory parameters, imaging tests, endoscopic parameters, and histopathology are used to determine disease activity. [3] Noninvasive tests, such as erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), white blood cell (WBC) count, platelet count, and levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), acid glycoprotein, and albumin are being recognized as important markers for initial diagnosis and disease activity detection. [4] Since these parameters are not specific for UC disease activity, adjunctive use of additional serum markers is required to monitor disease activity. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a marker of subclinical inflammation used to determine outcomes in coronary artery disease and some malignancies. [5, 6] Unlike

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) has the potential to enable the next-generation Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In ITS, data contributed from vehicles can build a spatiotemporal view of traffic statistics, which can consequently improve road safety and reduce slow traffic and jams. To preserve vehicles' privacy, vehicles should use multiple pseudonyms instead of only one identity. However, vehicles may exploit this abundance of pseudonyms and launch Sybil attacks by pretending to be multiple vehicles. Then, these Sybil (or fake) vehicles report false data, e.g., to create fake congestion or pollute traffic management data. In this paper, we propose a Sybil attack detection scheme using proofs of work and location. The idea is that each road side unit (RSU) issues a signed time-stamped tag as a proof for the vehicle's anonymous location. Proofs sent from multiple consecutive RSUs is used to create vehicle trajectory which is used as vehicle anonymous identity. Also, one RSU is not able to issue trajectories for vehicles, rather the contributions of several RSUs are needed. By this way, attackers need to compromise an infeasible number of RSUs to create fake trajectories. Moreover, upon receiving the proof of location from an RSU, the vehicle should solve a computational puzzle by running proof of work (PoW) algorithm. So, it should provide a valid solution (proof of work) to the next RSU before it can obtain a proof of location. Using the PoW can prevent the vehicles from creating multiple trajectories in case of low-dense RSUs. Then, during any reported event, e.g., road congestion, the event manager uses a matching technique to identify the trajectories sent from Sybil vehicles. The scheme depends on the fact that the Sybil trajectories are bounded physically to one vehicle; therefore, their trajectories should overlap. Extensive experiments and simulations demonstrate that our scheme achieves high detection rate to Sybil attacks with low false negative and acceptable communication and computation overhead.

Aim: Arterial and venous thromboembolic complications are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Essential thrombocytosis (ET). The mechanism of thrombosis in ET is not fully explained. In present retrospective analysis, we aimed to investigate the association between thrombosis complication and age, gender, disease duration, laboratory findings, janus kinase 2 (JAK2) V617F mutation status in patients with ET. Methods: Medical database of ET patients whom admitted to outpatient clinics of our institution, between April 2015 and April 2017, were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were divided into two groups, with and without arterial or venous thrombosis history. According to the thrombosis story, general characteristics, laboratory findings and JAK2 V617F mutation status of the groups were compared. Results: 37 patients with thrombosis history and 15 patients without thrombosis history were detected. The number of leukocyte, platelet and lymphocyte in ET patients with thrombosis history was statistically significantly higher than without thrombosis history patients. JAK2 V617F mutation positivity was statistically significant in ET patients with thrombosis history. Conclusion: This study confirmed the high leukocyte count, high platelet and lymphocyte count and JAK2 V617F mutation positivity as the thrombosis risk factor in patients with ET. In addition, the characteristics of the patients who applied to our clinic were compared with the literature and the differences were revealed.

Background In this study, we investigated the importance of netrin-1 levels in ulcerative colitis (UC) in clinical activity of the disease, and its association with other proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-α. Methods This study is a type of case–control study. Sixty-seven patients with UC (36 of them activation, 31 of remission) and 50 healthy controls were included in the study. UC patients; ‘Truelove Witts clinical activity index by remission (n = 31), mild activation (n = 21), moderate activation (n = 6) and severe activation (n = 9) were divided into groups. Netrin, IL-6 and TNF-α measurements in plasma samples were performed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. Results Between the patient group and the control group; there was a statistically significant difference between netrin-1, IL-6, TNF-α, neutrophil, platelet (p < 0.05 for all). The plasma netrin-1 mean of UC with severe activation group (139.21 ± 48.09 pg/ml) was statistically significantly higher than that of the mild activation (p = 0,037), remission group (p = 0,001) and control group(p = 0,011). The plasma netrin-1 mean of UC with moderate activation group was statistically significantly higher than that of the mild activation(p = 0,045) and remission group(p = 0,004). Conclusion Our results reveal that plasma netrin-1 levels have been shown to be associated with UC activation, similar to proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-6, in UC.

Objective: Studies comparing the efficacy and safety of prophylactic regimens for central nervous system (CNS) involvement in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are scarce in adults. This multicenter retrospective study aimed to compare the efficacy of prophylactic regimens with and without CNS irradiation on the development of CNS relapse during follow-up. Materials and Methods: This was a multicenter comparative cohort study. A total of 203 patients were included from four tertiary care centers in Turkey. Patients were divided into two groups according to whether they received CNS irradiation or not. The groups were analyzed retrospectively regarding patient and disease characteristics, with the main focus being CNS relapse. Results: While 105 patients received chemotherapy-based prophylaxis, 98 patients received additional CNS irradiation. These groups were statistically comparable in terms of demographic characteristics and risk factors for CNS involvement. In the irradiation group, patients were younger and had more stem cell transplants. In a median of 23.8 (11.1-62.4) months, there was no difference between the two groups regarding CNS relapse-free survival (log-rank p=0.787). Conclusion: Craniospinal irradiation may not be indispensable for every adult patient with ALL, similarly to pediatric patients. It is crucial to avoid the long-term toxicities of radiation, especially in patients with long life expectancy. Craniospinal irradiation may be reserved for therapeutic use in cases of CNS relapse and prophylaxis for some high-risk patients.

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