Background: Heart dysfunction and liver disease often coexist because of systemic disorders. Any cause of right ventricular failure may precipitate hepatic congestion and fibrosis. Digital image technologies have been introduced to pathology diagnosis, allowing an objective quantitative assessment. The quantification of fibrous tissue in liver biopsy sections is extremely important in the classification, diagnosis and grading of chronic liver disease. Aim: To create a semi-automatic computerized protocol to quantify any amount of centrilobular fibrosis and sinusoidal dilatation in liver Masson’s Trichrome-stained specimen. Method: Once fibrosis had been established, liver samples were collected, histologically processed, stained with Masson’s trichrome, and whole-slide images were captured with an appropriated digital pathology slide scanner. After, a random selection of the regions of interest (ROI’s) was conducted. The data were subjected to software-assisted image analysis (ImageJ®). Results: The analysis of 250 ROI’s allowed to empirically obtain the best application settings to identify the centrilobular fibrosis (CF) and sinusoidal lumen (SL). After the establishment of the colour threshold application settings, an in-house Macro was recorded to set the measurements (fraction area and total area) and calculate the CF and SL ratios by an automatic batch processing. Conclusion: Was possible to create a more detailed method that identifies and quantifies the area occupied by fibrous tissue and sinusoidal lumen in Masson’s trichrome-stained livers specimens.
Resistin levels are elevated in psoriasis patients. In this sample, clinical, epidemiological and activities indexes were not linked to resistin levels, but atherosclerotic risk factors were. They associated with the presence of DM and metabolic syndrome and correlated with serum triglycerides and total cholesterol.
BACKGROUNDPsoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory skin disease. It is now widely accepted that it is associated with an amplified risk of atherosclerosis and its consequences. An increase of comorbidities that may explain, at least in part, this increase in cardiovascular disease, has been noted. Diabetes mellitus (DM), obesity and hypertension are more common in individuals with psoriasis than in normal population. Moreover, it is known that the chronic inflammation may contribute to this complication. If the presence of associated arthritis increases this risk is debated.
METHODSAbout 127 individuals were studied: 49 controls and 78 with psoriasis (47 with psoriatic arthritis and 31 without it). Data on epidemiological, clinical, presence of comorbidities and treatment data were collected. Measurements of lipid profile, fasting glycemia and cIMT by ultrasound were done.
RESULTSDiabetes and hypertension were more frequent in the psoriasis group (OR = 2.3; 95%CI=1.009 to 5.08 for DM and OR = 6.8; 95%CI = 1.7 to 30.8) than controls. Also, the cIMT of controls was lower than those from psoriasis patients (median value of 0.68 mm in psoriasis and 0.57 mm in controls with p = 0.001). When patients with psoriasis with and without arthritis were compared, no differences in the presence of traditional risk factors, neither in the measurement of cIMT were detected (all with p > 0.05) except by BMI that was higher in those with arthritis (p = 0.03).
CONCLUSIONIn this sample of Brazilian patients with psoriasis, DM, hypertension and increased values in cIMT were more common than in controls. However, the cIMT and traditional risk factors were similar in patients with and without arthritis except by higher values of BMI in those with arthritis.
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