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Serologic testing remains crucial for Zika virus diagnosis. We found that urea wash in a Zika virus nonstructural protein 1 IgG ELISA distinguishes secondary dengue virus infection from Zika virus infection with previous dengue (sensitivity 87.5%, specificity 93.8%). This test will aid serodiagnosis, serosurveillance, and monitoring of Zika complications in dengue-endemic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. The explosive spread of Zika virus (ZIKV) and associated microcephaly present an urgent need for sensitive and specific serodiagnostic tests, particularly for pregnant women in dengue virus (DENV)-endemic regions. Recent reports of enhanced ZIKV replication by dengue-immune sera have raised concerns about the role of previous DENV infection on the risk and severity of microcephaly and other ZIKV complications. Methods. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) based on ZIKV and DENV nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) were established to test acute, convalescent phase, and post-convalescent phase serum/plasma samples from reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction-confirmed cases including 20 primary ZIKV, 25 ZIKV with previous DENV, 58 secondary DENV, and 16 primary DENV1 infections. Results. ZIKV-NS1 immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) ELISAs combined can detect ZIKV infection with a sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 66.7%. The ZIKV-NS1 IgG cross-reactivity by samples from secondary DENV infection cases ranged from 66.7% to 28.1% (within 1 month to 1-2 years post-illness, respectively). Addition of DENV1-NS1 IgG ELISA can distinguish primary ZIKV infection; the ratio of absorbance of ZIKV-NS1 to DENV1-NS1 IgG ELISA can distinguish ZIKV with previous DENV and secondary DENV infections with a sensitivity of 87.5% and specificity of 81.3%. These findings were supported by analysis of sequential samples. Conclusions. An algorithm for ZIKV serodiagnosis based on 3 simple ELISAs is proposed to distinguish primary ZIKV, ZIKV with previous DENV, and secondary DENV infections; this could be applied to serodiagnosis for ZIKV, serosurveillance, and monitoring ZIKV infection during pregnancy to understand the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and complications of ZIKV in dengue-endemic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI) has demonstrated a great potential to help distinguish benign from malignant tumours in paediatric body. Our purpose is to evaluate whether DWI allow discrimination of thoracoabdominal neuroblastic tumours of various histological types and differentiation grades.Methods: We retrospectively analysed DWI scans of the thoracoabdominal neuroblastic tumours in 25 children (11 girls, 14 boys). DWI was performed with two b-values of 0 and 800 s/mm2 on a 3.0T MR scanner. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of different classifications of tumours were compared with Independent-Samples T Test.Results: In the 25 cases, ganglioneuroma (GN) was in 3 cases, ganglioneuroblastoma (GNB) in 7 (GNB-Intermixed in 4, GNB-Nodular in 3) and neuroblastoma (NB) in 15. In three cases of GNB-Nodular, two cases had poorly differentiated nodules and another had differentiated nodules. In 15 cases of NB, poorly differentiated, differentiated and undifferentiated tumours were, respectively, in eight, five and two cases. The ADC value of the NB was significantly lower than that of GN/GNB (P < 0.001). The ADC of GNB-Nodular/NB was significantly less than that of GN/GNB-Intermixed (P < 0.0001). In GNB-Nodular/NB detection, there was a cut-off value of 1.165 × 10-3  mm2 /s. In GNB-Nodular/NB, the tumours with poorly differentiated and undifferentiated lesions (n = 12) had significantly smaller ADC than those with differentiated composition (n = 6) (P = 0.0012).Conclusion: ADC of DWI is highly valuable for discriminating thoracoabdominal neuroblastic tumours of different histological types and differentiation grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: Differential transcript expression (DTE) analysis without predefined conditions is critical to biological studies. For example, it can be used to discover biomarkers to classify cancer samples into previously unknown subtypes such that better diagnosis and therapy methods can be developed for the subtypes. Although several DTE tools for population data, i.e. data without known biological conditions, have been published, these tools either assume binary conditions in the input population or require the number of conditions as a part of the input. Fixing the number of conditions to binary is unrealistic and may distort the results of a DTE analysis. Estimating the correct number of conditions in a population could also be challenging for a routine user. Moreover, the existing tools only provide differential usages of exons, which may be insufficient to interpret the patterns of alternative splicing across samples and restrains the applications of the tools from many biology studies. Results: We propose a novel DTE analysis algorithm, called SDEAP, that estimates the number of conditions directly from the input samples using a Dirichlet mixture model and discovers alternative splicing events using a new graph modular decomposition algorithm. By taking advantage of the above technical improvement, SDEAP was able to outperform the other DTE analysis methods in our extensive experiments on simulated data and real data with qPCR validation. The prediction of SDEAP also allowed us to classify the samples of cancer subtypes and cell-cycle phases more accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurilemmomas are rare tumors of neural crest cell origin that occur most commonly in the head and neck region. Intercostal neurilemmomas are extremely rare and are mostly seen as solitary tumors in the posterior mediastinum. Only one case report of multiple intercostal neurilemmomas has been documented previously. In this article, we report a case of multiple intercostal neurilemmomas in a 54-year-old woman who had initially presented with progressive dull left chest pain over a 1-year period. A computed tomography scan revealed three tumors in the left thoracic cavity which were distributed as a string of beads along the third intercostal nerve. Histological and immunohistochemical testing confirmed a diagnosis of neurilemmomas. The patient underwent successful radical excision of the tumors through a thoracotomy approach, and her postoperative course was uneventful. Following the operation, she had no evidence of recurrences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extrahepatic portal vein aneurysm is extremely rare in infants. We report an infant with thrombosed congenital extrahepatic portal vein aneurysm demonstrated on US and CT. Follow-up US after 16 months showed complete regression of the portal vein aneurysm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Most infants infected with Toxoplasma gondii are completely asymptomatic at birth, yet they may develop ocular and neurological sequelae in the first few months of life. Cases of congenital toxoplasmosis with severe jaundice early after birth combined with pancytopenia and splenomegaly are extremely rare. Here, we report on a rare case of congenital toxoplasmosis presenting with severe jaundice and hemolysis early after birth combined with pancytopenia and splenomegaly.Case Presentation: A male preterm infant with severe jaundice and splenomegaly was admitted to our department. Laboratory examinations revealed severe hyperbilirubinemia, increased reticulocytes, and pancytopenia. After comprehensive analysis and examination, the final diagnosis was congenital toxoplasmosis, and the infant was treated with azithromycin and subsequently trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Regular follow-up revealed congenital toxoplasmosis in both eyes, which was surgically treated, while neurofunctional assessment results were unremarkable. In this case of congenital toxoplasmosis combined with severe jaundice, we treated the infant with two courses of azithromycin, followed by trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole after the jaundice resolved. Clinical follow-up indicated that this treatment was effective with few side effects; thus, this report may serve as a valuable clinical reference.Conclusions: Timely diagnosis and adequate treatment are closely associated with congenital toxoplasmosis-related prognosis. Infants with congenital toxoplasmosis require long-term follow-up, focusing on nervous system development and ophthalmology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early eye examination based on fundus images effectively prevents visual impairment caused by retinopathy. The laborious and error-prone process of interpreting fundus images and the lack of ophthalmologists have driven research toward automated retinopathy diagnosis. However, most previous studies have focused on single-modality fundus images, disregarding the integration of information from multiple views, rendering the results unsatisfactory and inconsistent with clinical practice due to the incomprehensive lesion features and incomplete fundus fields. To address this issue, we introduce multi-modality and multi-view fundus images into the automated retinopathy diagnosis pipeline. In contrast to single fundus images, sequential relationships in multi-modality and multi-view fundus images contain essential long-range dependency information, which is vital for retinopathy diagnosis. Inspired by the recent success of transformers for excavating long-range dependencies in sequence data, in this paper, we propose a transformer-based automated retinopathy diagnosis framework for pathology classification and symptom report generation by integrating multi-modality and multi-view fundus images. Specifically, we present two transformer-based networks to construct long-range dependencies in different fundus images. Moreover, we adopt two novel modules to aggregate features of different modalities and views by modeling long-range dependencies among different fundus image sequences. Experiments are conducted on two in-house datasets, in which each subject provides one color fundus photography image and four-view fundus fluorescein angiography images. The experimental results of retinopathy classification and report generation tasks indicate that our proposed method is superior to other benchmarking methods, achieving a classification accuracy of 85.49% and a report generation BlEU-1 of 0.422. • A multi-modality and multi-view framework for automated retinopathy diagnosis. • Transformers for modeling intra-modality and intra-view long-range dependency. • A multi-view fusion embedding module for modeling inter-view long-range dependencies. • A multi-modality fusion embedding module for modeling inter-modality long-range dependencies. • Extensive experiments on three different tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neonatal intrahepatic cholestasis caused by citrin deficiency (NICCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder resulting from biallelic mutations of the SLC25A13 gene. Due to the lack of well-recognized clinical or biochemical diagnostic criteria, the definitive diagnosis of this disease relies on the genetic analysis of SLC25A13 at present. As novel large deletion/insertion mutations of the SLC25A13 gene are difficult to detect using routine DNA analytic approaches, the timely diagnosis of patients with these types of mutations remains a challenge. The present study aimed to examine SLC25A13 mutations in an infant with a suspected diagnosis of NICCD. DNA was extracted from blood samples, and SLC25A13 mutations were examined by screening for high-frequency mutations and Sanger sequencing. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and cDNA cloning analyses were then performed using peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) to identify the obscure mutation. The results demonstrated that the infant was heterozygous for a paternally-inherited mutation, c.851_854del4, and a maternally-inherited large deletion, c.1019_1177+893del, which has not been reported previously. A positive diagnosis of NICCD was made, and the infant responded favorably to a galactose-free and medium-chain triglyceride-enriched formula. The present study confirmed the effectiveness of this formula in NICCD therapy, enriched the SLC25A13 mutational spectrum and supported the feasibility of cDNA cloning analysis using PBLs as a molecular tool for facilitating the identification of large SLC25A13 deletions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soybean mosaic virus (SMV) is the most common virus in soybean and poses a serious threat to crop production and germplasm recession in many countries worldwide. In this study, a highly practical and rapid lateral-flow assay (LFA) was developed for the detection of SMV. The SMV coat protein (CP) was prokaryotically expressed and purified to immunize mice. After generation of hybridoma cell lines, four anti-SMV monoclonal antibodies were selected. The LFA-strip was then assembled using a double-antibody sandwich strategy. When the SMV-infected leaf sample was assayed using the assembled LFA-strip, the positive pink color appeared in the test line within 5–10 min. The strip only gave positive results with SMV and not other viruses tested and could be used to detect 800 fold dilutions of infected leaf samples. The LFA could be used to detect SMV in infected leaf tissue as well as soybean seeds. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the development of a LFA for the detection of SMV. The practical, rapid and specific assay that was developed in this study can be widely applied to the diagnosis and surveillance of SMV in the laboratory and the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have found lower risk of childhood cancer among Asian children. We aim to characterize the recent incidence and incidence-trend of childhood cancer in Taiwan after the National Health Insurance program was launched in March 1995. Data were extracted from the Taiwan Cancer Registry, a population-based database established in 1979. Cases diagnosed at age 0-14 from 1996 to 2010 were analyzed and categorized according to the International Classification of Childhood Cancer, Third Edition (ICCC-3). In total, 8032 childhood cancer cases were included, with a microscopic verification rate of 93.9%. The overall age-standardized rate (ASR) of incidence adjusted to the 2000 World Standard Population is 125.0 cases/million, with a male-to-female ratio of 1.3. The top five cancer types (ICCC-3 subgroup[s]; ASR per million) are acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ia, 30.3), acute myeloid leukemia (Ib; 9.4), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (IIb,c,e, 9.0), extracranial germ cell tumor (Xb,c; 8.3), and neuroblastoma (IVa; 7.8). The median age of diagnosis was 6 years for both genders. During the study period, the ASR of childhood cancer has been increasing at a rate of 1.2% per year (95% confidence interval, 0.6-1.7%). In contrast to Western countries, China, Japan, and Taiwan have lower incidence of childhood cancer; however, Taiwan's incidence rates of childhood germ cell tumors and hepatic tumors are higher. In conclusion, this population-based study reveals that the incidence rate of childhood cancer in Taiwan is rising consistently. The high incidence of germ cell tumors warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigral dopaminergic projections to the striatum are targeted in Parkinson’s disease (PD). The extent of the degeneration of the dopaminergic system in PD can be visualised by dopamine transporter imaging using single-photon emission tomography (SPET). In this study in 188 patients with PD, we analysed the image patterns and compared them with the clinical features in order to verify the usefulness of technetium-99m TRODAT-1 brain SPET in the evaluation of patients with PD. Two independent readers visually assessed SPET slices from three brain axes according to a “fine” visual scale; results were also grouped according to a “rough” visual scale. Results of both visual and semi-quantitative analyses were compared among patients with different stages of PD and healthy controls. There was good agreement between the readers in the interpretation of the image patterns [kappa statistic (κ)=0.85 for the presence of PD; κ=0.88 for the rough scale and 0.81 for the fine scale]. Good concordance was obtained when visual interpretation was used to evaluate the presence of PD (sensitivity =98%, specificity =86%, κ=0.85). Semi-quantitative analyses revealed significant negative correlations between both striatal and putaminal uptake and disease severity as assessed using the Hoehn and Yahr scale (ρ=-0.89 and -0.93 respectively). An apparent decrease in striatal uptake in early PD, hardly discernible from the uptake level in advanced PD, was commonly found in visual analyses. The results suggest that both visual and semi-quantitative analyses of [sup 99m]Tc-TRODAT-1 SPET images reflect neurodegeneration in PD, and that [sup 99m]Tc-TRODAT-1 SPET represents an adequate means for evaluation of the status of patients with PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]