No abstract

The currently prescribed tests for asthma diagnosis require compulsory patient compliance, and are usually not sensitive to mild asthma. Development of an objective test using minimally invasive samples for diagnosing and monitoring of the response of asthma may help better management of the disease. Raman spectroscopy (RS) has previously shown potential in several biomedical applications, including pharmacology and forensics. In this study, we have explored the feasibility of detecting asthma and determining treatment response in asthma patients, through RS of serum. Serum samples from 44 asthma subjects of different grades (mild, moderate, treated severe and untreated severe) and from 15 reference subjects were subjected to Raman spectroscopic analysis and YKL-40 measurements. The force expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) values were used as gold standard and the serum YKL-40 levels were used as an additional parameter for diagnosing the different grades of asthma. For spectral acquisition, serum was placed on a calcium fluoride (CaF2) window and spectra were recorded using Raman microprobe. Mean and difference spectra comparisons indicated significant differences between asthma and reference spectra. Differences like changes in protein structure, increase in DNA specific bands and increased glycosaminoglycans-like features were more prominent with increase in asthma severity. Multivariate tools using Principal-component-analysis (PCA) and Principal-component based-linear-discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) followed by Leave-one-out-cross-validation (LOOCV), were employed for data analyses. PCA and PC-LDA results indicate separation of all asthma groups from the reference group, with minor overlap (19.4%) between reference and mild groups. No overlap was observed between the treated severe and untreated severe groups, indicating that patient response to treatment could be determined. Overall promising results were obtained, and a large scale validation study on random subjects is warranted before the routine clinical usage of this technique.

During normal ageing, the rods (and other neurones) undergo a significant decrease in density in the human retina from the fourth decade of life onward.Since the rods synapse with the rod bipolar cells in the outer plexiform layer, a decline in rod density (mainly due to death)may ultimately cause an associated decline of the neurones which,like the rod bipolar cells,are connected to them.The rod bipolar cells are selectively stained with antibodies to protein kinase C-alpha.This study examined if rod bipolar cell density changes with ageing of the retina, utilizing donor human eyes (age: 6-91 years).The retinas were fixed and their temporal parts from the macula to the mid-periphery sectioned and processed for protein kinase C-alpha immunohistochemistry.The density of the immunopositive rod bipolar cells was estimated in the mid-peripheral retina (eccentricity: 3-5 mm)along the horizontal temporal axis.The results show that while there is little change in the density of the rod bipolar cells from 6 to 35 years (2.2%), the decline during the period from 35 to 62 years is about 21% and between seventh and tenth decades,it is approximately 27%.

One hundred and ten adult patients hospitalized with dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) during the recent outbreak in North India were prospectively studied. Of these, 48 (43.6%) were grade I, 40 (36.4%) grade II, 10 (9.1%) grade III and 12 (10.9%) grade IV DHF. Dengue shock syndrome (DSS) was seen in 22 (20%) patients. Fever, headache, myalgias and arthralgias were the common symptoms seen in 100%, 80.9%, 76.2% and 52.3% patients, respectively. Spontaneous bleeding was seen in 62 patients (56.4%) with mucocutaneous bleeding being the most common (46 patients). Gastrointestinal bleeding was seen in 38 (34.5%) patients. In as many as 40 patients, the haemorrhagic manifestations occurred after the fever had come down. Fifty-five patients (50%) required platelet transfusions. Twelve patients died, giving a mortality rate of 10.9% in the present study. Prompt recognition and supportive treatment can be lifesaving.