Search

Background: The availability and popularity of laptops, tablet PCs and smartphones in private and work environments offers considerable potential for reasonably integrating blended learning formats into structured medical learning environments. The promising educational principle of the flipped classroom (FC) provides the opportunity to effectively combine e-learning and face-to-face teaching within a single framework. However, similar to most blended learning formats, the FC requires a solid groundwork of structured digitized learning content. As rearranging a whole curriculum is intense and time consuming, physicians occupied simultaneously in clinical practice and teaching may be confronted with a lack of time during this process., Methods: We developed two straightforward approaches to transforming a pre-existing, lecture-based otolaryngology curriculum into interactive videos within a Moodle learning management system. Special attention was given to reducing individual working time for medical professionals. Thus, while one approach was mainly guided by a medical professional to control the content-related quality of video processing, we investigated an alternative approach outsourcing work to a technician. Afterwards, the working time was analysed and compared. The resulting videos were revised with the H5P plugin for moodle to adjust the content where necessary., Results: We identified a fast-track approach for creating structured e-learning content suitable for flipped-classroom-based lectures, other blended learning formats, or even providing a whole curriculum online. The alternative approach significantly reduced working time for medical professionals but did not impair the content-related quality significantly., Conclusions: The use of H5P interactive tools via Moodle LMS provides a major procedural benefit by allowing the easy adjustment of pre-existing video material into suitable online content. Reasonably outsourcing work to technicians can significantly reduce the working time of medical professionals without decreasing the quality of learning content. The presented workflow can be used as a flexible approach for flipped classroom frameworks or other blended learning strategies where interactive videos are applicable.

Osteoarthritis is a painful, chronic disease with widespread burden on patients, communities, health and social care systems. Conservative therapies, such as nonpharmacological interventions, systemic drug treatment and intra-articular therapies are used before resorting to surgery; nonetheless, disease control often remains inadequate. Recent advances in osteoarthritis management have aimed to provide greater variety of treatment options. Here, we summarize a targeted literature review evaluating efficacy and safety of intra-articular therapies for osteoarthritis. Injections of intra-articular therapies directly into the joint avoid conventional barriers to joint entry, increase bioavailability and lower systemic toxicity. Intra-articular corticosteroids and hyaluronic acid are established United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA)/European Medicines Agency (EMA)-approved treatments; however, concerns exist regarding effect duration, safety, effectiveness across populations and heterogeneity. Newer therapies, such as autologous blood products and mesenchymal stem cells, are in development. Benefits of autologous blood products (e.g. platelet-rich plasma, autologous conditioned serum) include an expected improved safety profile and direct targeting of osteoarthritis-related pathophysiology. Autologous conditioned serum is cell-free and manufactured by a standardized process, whereas platelet-rich plasma composition and characteristics can vary. Currently, only limited efficacy comparisons between these biological treatments can be drawn; long-term clinical and safety studies are needed to increase the efficacy evidence base and earn consideration in treatment frameworks., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement: Peter Wehling is CEO and founder of Orthogen AG; William Maixner is a board member and consultant for Orthogen AG; Jana Wehling is an employee of Zentrum für Molekulare Medizin und Orthopädie; Christopher Evans is a supervisory board member for Orthogen AG and scientific advisory board member for TissueGene Inc.

Materials that interact in a controlled manner with viruses attract increasing interest in biotechnology, medicine, and environmental technology. Here, we show that virus-material interactions can be guided by intrinsic material surface chemistries, introduced by tailored surface functionalizations. For this purpose, colloidal alumina particles are surface functionalized with amino, carboxyl, phosphate, chloropropyl, and sulfonate groups in different surface concentrations and characterized in terms of elemental composition, electrokinetic, hydrophobic properties, and morphology. The interaction of the functionalized particles with hepatitis A virus and phages MS2 and PhiX174 is assessed by virus titer reduction after incubation with particles, activity of viruses conjugated to particles, and imaged by electron microscopy. Type and surface density of particle functional groups control the virus titer reduction between 0 and 99.999% (5 log values). For instance, high sulfonate surface concentrations (4.7 groups/nm(2)) inhibit attractive virus-material interactions and lead to complete virus recovery. Low sulfonate surface concentrations (1.2 groups/nm(2)), native alumina, and chloropropyl-functionalized particles induce strong virus-particle adsorption. The virus conformation and capsid amino acid composition further influence the virus-material interaction. Fundamental interrelations between material properties, virus properties, and the complex virus-material interaction are discussed and a versatile pool of surface functionalization strategies controlling virus-material interactions is presented., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The current opinion on the toxicity of nanomaterials converges on a size-dependent phenomenon showing increasing toxicity with decreasing particle sizes. We demonstrate that SiO2 particles have no or only a mild effect on the viability of five bacterial strains, independently from the particle size. A two-hour exposure to 20 mg L(-1) of 15, 50 and 500 nm sized SiO2 particles neither alters bacterial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels nor reduces the number of colony forming units (CFU). Additionally, we tested the effect of Al2O3-coated LUDOX-CL (ACS 20) with a primary particle size of 20 nm. In contrast, these particles caused a significant reduction of ATP levels and CFU. Fluorescence microscopy revealed that ACS 20 induced a pronounced agglomeration of the bacteria, which led to underestimated counts in regard of CFU. Bactericide effects as indicated by decreased ATP levels can be explained by bactericide additives that are present in the ACS 20 suspension., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The sequence database of HLA class I genes is mainly derived from mRNA analysis. Little is known about the non-coding sequences of the different class I alleles. In this study we have determined the sequence of the 1st through 3rd introns of the majority of HLA-A and -B alleles. The few published sequences emerged to contain substantial errors. The introns turned out to be highly polymorphic with a variability of 14.6% in the 1st intron decreasing to 6.2% in the 3rd intron. Against all expectations, this variability is not characterised by random point mutations but by a highly systematic diversity reflecting the ancestral relationship of the HLA alleles. The variability is arrested on the level of the serological diversity. The striking conservation within each ancestral lineage suggests that point mutations have been negatively selected. This finding could be explained by the evolutionary pressure on base order, promoting the potential to extrude single-strand stem-loops from supercoiled duplex DNA, which is believed to be important for combination. Moreover, the GC content was found to be as high as 78% in the 1st and 2nd introns and 55% in the 3rd intron. These CpG islands are directly involved in the exchange of short stretches of DNA in unequal crossing-over events. Additionally, conversion between different class I sequences is facilitated by regions of strong homology, stabilizing the pairing of variable regions. All these observations indicate the potential of a substantial contribution of introns to the recombinational activity of class I genes. The exclusive clustering of CpG islands in the 1st and 2nd introns restricts the gene conversion events to the regions of the 2nd and 3rd exons and therefore protects the conservation of the 5 flanking region and the 3 part of the gene. Since there are less diversification forces acting on introns they may be more conserved in a trans-species manner than exons. Therefore, they could provide the answer for the controversy regarding intra- or trans-species evolution.