Introduction: Present study was performed to verify red blood cell distribution width-to-platelet ratio (RPR) level in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and to examine its correlation with clinical and biochemical indicators of disease activity status.Methods: In this cross-sectional analytical study, 67 patients with RA and 34 age- and gender-matched healthy control subjects were enrolled. Based on the disease activity score 28-ESR (DAS28-ESR), RA patients were divided into subgroups: low disease activity (n=20), moderate disease activity (n=22) and high disease activity (n=25). Laboratory tests included erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration, platelet count (PLT), red blood cells count (RBC), red blood cells distribution width (RDW) and fibrinogen concentration. Statistical analyses were carried out using SPSS 13 software. Statistical significance was set at a p-value less than 0.05.Results: There was statistically significant difference (p=0.006) between RPR in RA patients with different stages of disease activity, with higher values in patients with low disease activity. The RPR showed statistically significant negative correlations with ESR (rho= -0.309; p=0.012), CRP (rho= -0.421; p=0.001), swollen joint count - SJC (rho = -0.368; p=0.002) and tender joint count - TJC (rho= -0.355; p=0.003), DAS28-ESR (rho= -0.409; p=0.001), DAS28-CRP (rho= -0.422; p<0.0005) and Visual analogue scale - VAS (rho= -0.260; p=0.033) in RA patients.Conclusion: The present study provided evidence that the lower RPR values in RA patients are significantly associated with the disease activity indicators.

Background. Understanding the anatomy and morphological variability of the orbital region is of great importance in clinical practice, forensic medicine, and biological anthropology. Several methods are used to estimate sex based on the skeleton or parts of the skeleton: classic methods and the geometric morphometric method. The objective of this research was to analyse sex estimation of the orbital region on a sample of skulls from a Bosnian population using the geometric morphometric method. Materials and Methods. The research was conducted on three-dimensional models of 211 human adult skulls (139 males and 72 females) from the Osteological Collection at the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo. The skulls were recorded using a laser scanner to obtain skull 3D models. We marked 12 landmarks on each model to analyse sexual dimorphism. Landmarks were marked using the program Landmark Editor. After marking the landmarks, we used the MorphoJ program to analyse the morphological variability between male and female orbital regions. Results. After Procrustes superimposition, generating a covariant matrix, and introducing sex as a variable for classification, a discriminant functional analysis (DFA) was applied which determined the estimation for males with 86.33% accuracy and for females with 88.89% based on the form of the orbital region. The results of regression analysis showed that the size of the orbital region has a statistically significant effect on its shape’s sexual dimorphism. After excluding the influence of size and providing DFA, we concluded that sex estimation was possible with 82.01% accuracy for males and 80.55% accuracy for females based on the shape of the orbital region in the examined sample. Conclusion. Sex estimation based on the orbital region was possible with more than 80% accuracy for both sexes, which is a high percentage of correct estimation. Therefore, we recommend using the orbital region of the skull for sex estimation.

Environmental threats increasingly entail important risks from government responses. In considering the risks of a new vector-borne disease, for example, decision-makers must also grapple with potential risks from responses such as the aerial spraying of pesticides. In communicating about these complex risks, public officials often choose different “frames” that promote different conceptualizations of the issue. Yet prior research has paid limited attention to how public officials frame the related risks of the environmental threat and the public response. This paper starts to fill that gap by conducting a content analysis of statements by public officials regarding risks from the threat of a local outbreak of the Zika virus in South Florida in 2016, as well as risks from the response of aerial pesticide spraying. Based on limited prior research, we hypothesize that public officials are likely to have adopted a “risk maximization” frame that stressed the high risks from exposure to Zika, but a “risk trade-off” frame when discussing aerial spraying. In actuality, we find that officials strongly favored a “reassurance” frame that downplayed both types of risks. Based on this analysis, we suggest framing strategies for disease outbreaks and other threats with potentially risky government responses may vary significantly depending on local contexts and that the South Florida experience was a missed opportunity to test the strategy of trade-off framing.

The aim was to find what happens to heart weight and forms of erythrocytes antemortemly and postmortemly as a result of exposure to high water temperature. Total of 40 adult Wistar rats is divided into three groups, depending on water temperature exposure of 37°C (KG, n = 8), 41°C (G41, n = 16), and 44°C (G44, n = 16). Depending on the length of time of exposure to water, temperatures of 41 and 44°C are further divided into G41-AM, G41-PM, G44-AM, and G44-PM. The anesthetized rats were exposed to preheated water using the water bath. May-Grünwald-Giemsa coloring technique was applied to blood samples. Light microscopy was performed to detect poikilocytes. Heart weight was measured after dissection with a scale. A statistically significant difference in heart weight was found in the experimental groups (p = 0.024). The lowest value was observed in KG37 and was 0.99 ± 0.11 g, and the highest values were found in rats of the G41-PM group, with a mean value of 1.26 ± 0.26 g. There is a statistically significant difference between the experimental groups in forms of poikilocytes.