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Purpose: The aim of this study was to establish the rate at which routine postoperative renal ultrasonography is able to detect urinary tract injury following gynecological surgery.Methods: A retrospective analysis was carried out for the study period 2015-2019 of all patients who had undergone subtotal or total hysterectomy, or radical hysterectomy or salpingectomy, salpingo-oophorectomy, or oophorectomy, and subsequently had a urinary tract injury.Results: In a total of 2068 patients, 25 urinary tract injuries occurred (1.21%), including 21 urinary bladder lesions (1.02%) and four ureteral injuries (0.19%). The incidence of urinary tract injuries was 3% in oncologic procedures and 0.86% in procedures for benign disease. Nineteen injuries (76%) were diagnosed intraoperatively, and six injuries (24%) were clinically diagnosed after surgery. All of the patients had uneventful postoperative renal ultrasound examinations.Conclusion: Routine postoperative renal ultrasonography was not capable of diagnosing urinary tract injuries after gynecologic surgery. Routine postoperative renal ultrasound examinations should, therefore, not be performed after gynecologic operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal states, e.g., emotions, cognitive states, or desires, are often verbalized by figurative means, in particular by embodied metaphors involving human senses, such as touch, taste, and smell. The present paper presents a database for German metaphorical expressions conveying internal states with human senses as their source domains. 168 metaphorical expressions from the source domains of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and temperature combined with literal equivalents were collected and rated by 643 adults. The agreement between the metaphor and an equivalent literal expression, as well as emotional valence, arousal, and familiarity values were assessed using a 7-point Likert scale. Between the metaphorical expressions and their equivalents, familiarity, but not valence or arousal differed significantly while agreement ratings indicated high similarity in meaning. The novel database offers carefully controlled stimuli that can be used in both empirical metaphor research and research on internal state language. Using part of the stimuli in a sentence completion experiment revealed a significant preference for literal over metaphorical expressions that cannot be attributed to higher familiarity levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) with isolated deletion of chromosome 5q (MDS del5q) is a distinct subtype of MDS with quite favorable prognosis and excellent response to treatment with lenalidomide. Still, a relevant percentage of patients do not respond to lenalidomide and even experience progression to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). In this study, we aimed to investigate whether global DNA methylation patterns could predict response to lenalidomide. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis using Illumina 450k methylation arrays was performed on n=51 patients with MDS del5q who were uniformly treated with lenalidomide in a prospective multicenter trial of the German MDS study group. To study potential direct effects of lenalidomide on DNA methylation, 17 paired samples pre- and post-treatment were analyzed. Our results revealed no relevant effect of lenalidomide on methylation status. Furthermore, methylation patterns prior to therapy could not predict lenalidomide response. However, methylation clustering identified a group of patients with a trend towards inferior overall survival. These patients showed hypermethylation of several interesting target genes, including genes of relevant signaling pathways, potentially indicating the evaluation of novel therapeutic targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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For the investigation of molecular processes underlying diseases of the bovine mammary gland, primary bovine mammary epithelial cells (pbMEC) are used. They are known to contribute to the innate immune system of the bovine mammary gland. The functionality of pbMEC depends on the maintenance of in vivo characteristics. So far, the optimization of pbMEC culture conditions was intended in a variety of experiments. For this purpose, most of the studies used stable cell lines or primary cells obtained from udder biopsies of slaughtered animals. By contrast, within our study, pbMEC of healthy and first lactating Brown Swiss cows were non-invasively isolated from fresh milk. The non-invasively isolated pbMEC were cultivated on the extracellular matrix-like scaffold Matrigel® Further, they were challenged with different compositions of proliferation media, containing lactogenic hormones and/or the essential amino acid l-lysine. Changes in expression levels of genes coding for milk proteins and for components of the janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK-STAT) and mTOR pathways were analyzed by RT-qPCR. The secreted proteins were analyzed by LC-MS/MS measurements. We showed for the first time the establishment of a physiologically functional 3D cell culture model of pbMEC isolated from fresh milk. This represents a primary cell culture model system, based on non-invasive cell collection, that can be used to unravel physiological processes in an unbiased manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying host parasite interactions and their implications for evolution and ecology recently received increasing attention, particularly with regard to host physiology and immunity. Here we assess variation of urinary neopterin (uNEO), a marker of cellular immune activation and iummunosenescence, in response to age and anthelmintic treatment in semi-free ranging Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). Urinary NEO levels were measured via enzyme-immunoassay from 179 urine samples of 43 individuals between 5-29 years of age. Efficiency of treatment was assessed by Mc Master flotation on repeated faecal samples, including 18 untreated individuals as control group. We used linear mixed models with age and parasite status as main effects, controlling for sex and physical condition, assessed through urinary C-Peptide-levels, with social group and ID as random factors. Urinary NEO levels significantly increased with age, suggesting that changes in aging Barbary macaque immune responses are consistent with immunosenescence described in human and nonhuman primates and can be detected via uNEO measurements. Anthelmintic treatment, however, had no influence on uNEO levels, potentially due to quick reinfections or attenuated immune responses in repeated infections. We conclude that uNEO is a potential non-invasive marker for immune function and particularly immunosenescence in wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]