Search

Ulcerative colitis is one of the IBDs. Its etiology and pathogenesis remain undefined with an interaction between environmental, genetic and immunological factors is the most accepted explanation. Several recent studies have examined microRNA expression in the peripheral blood and tissues from IBD patients. The study aims at assessing the expression of serum miR-16 in ulcerative colitis patients and its correlation with disease extent, activity and severity. It included 30 treatment naïve ulcerative colitis patients of different presentations. Serum miR-16 expression was assessed using reverse transcriptase quantitative real time PCR (RT-qPCR), and then correlated with that of a group of 20 healthy subjects to assess its role in diagnosis of ulcerative colitis. Also, it was correlated with disease extent (proctitis, left sided colitis, extensive colitis) and disease activity and severity indices (Truelove and Witts criteria, fecal calprotectin and UCEIS). Thirty ulcerative colitis patients were enrolled, 53% had mild, 37% had moderate, while 10% had severe disease. Concerning endoscopic extent, 8 had proctitis, 14 had left sided colitis and 8 had extensive colitis. Serum expression of miR-16 in the 30 patients were compared to that of the healthy control subjects. The patients’ group showed median serum miR-16 expression of 1.91, 1.13 for the control group with a significant difference between both groups. Correlation between serum miR-16 expression with disease extent, activity and severity showed no significant relation. From the current study we can conclude that increased serum expression of miR-16 is associated with ulcerative colitis despite no significant relation to disease activity extent or severity. Resumo A colite ulcerativa é uma das DII. Sua etiologia e patogênese permanecem indefinidas; a interação entre fatores ambientais, genéticos e imunológicos é a explicação mais aceita. Vários estudos recentes avaliaram a expressão de microRNA no sangue e tecidos periféricos em pacientes com DII. O presente estudo teve como objetivo avaliar a expressão do miR-16 sérico em pacientes com colite ulcerativa e sua correlação com a extensão, atividade e gravidade da doença. Foram incluídos 30 pacientes de colite ulcerativa, com diferentes apresentações, que ainda não haviam sido submetidos a nenhum tipo de tratamento. A expressão sérica de miR-16 foi avaliada usando transcrição reversa seguida de reação em cadeia da polimerase quantitativa (RT-qPCR) e, em seguida, correlacionada com a de um grupo de 20 indivíduos saudáveis para avaliar seu papel no diagnóstico de colite ulcerativa. Além disso, foi feita uma correlação com a extensão da doença (proctite, colite do lado esquerdo, colite extensa) e com os índices de atividade e gravidade da doença (critérios de Truelove e Witts, calprotectina fecal e UCEIS). Trinta pacientes com colite ulcerativa foram incluídos no estudo, classificada como leve em 53%, moderada em 37% e grave em 10%. Quanto à extensão endoscópica, oito apresentavam proctite, 14 apresentavam colite do lado esquerdo e oito apresentavam colite extensa. A expressão sérica de miR-16 nos 30 pacientes foi comparada à dos indivíduos controle saudáveis. No, grupo de pacientes, a expressão sérica de miR-16 foi de 1,91 (grupo controle: 1,13), uma diferença estatisticamente significativa entre os dois grupos. Não foi observada relação significativa entre a expressão sérica de miR-16 e a extensão, atividade e gravidade da doença. A partir do presente estudo, pode-se concluir que o aumento da expressão sérica do miR-16 está associado à colite ulcerativa, apesar de não haver relação significativa com a extensão ou gravidade da atividade da doença.

Background Cancer colon is one of the leading causes of death and MiRNAs are incorporated in biological pathways that affect tumorigenesis as proved by multiple studies. The present study aimed to investigate whether miR-17-3p is elevated in the plasma free samples of colon cancer patients in correlation with other tumor markers (CEA, CA19.9). Results MiRNA 17-3P plasma free sample levels were significantly elevated in the plasma free samples of colon cancer patients compared with healthy controls (P < 0.001); on the other hand, serum levels of CA19.9 were significantly higher in colon cancer patients compared to healthy controls while serum levels of CEA were found to be of no statistical significance. Conclusion The detection miRNA-17-3p may be considered of clinical value for the detection of colon cancer; also, CA19.9 detection was found to significantly increase the sensitivity and specificity of a colon cancer diagnosis.

Cancer is one of the most feared and aggressive diseases in the world and is responsible for more than 9 million deaths universally. Staging cancer early increases the chances of recovery. One staging technique is RNA sequence analysis. Recent advances in the efficiency and accuracy of artificial intelligence techniques and optimization algorithms have facilitated the analysis of human genomics. This paper introduces a novel optimized deep learning approach based on binary particle swarm optimization with decision tree (BPSO-DT) and convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify different types of cancer based on tumor RNA sequence (RNA-Seq) gene expression data. The cancer types that will be investigated in this research are kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA), lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC), lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC). The proposed approach consists of three phases. The first phase is preprocessing, which at first optimize the high-dimensional RNA-seq to select only optimal features using BPSO-DT and then, converts the optimized RNA-Seq to 2D images. The second phase is augmentation, which increases the original dataset of 2086 samples to be 5 times larger. The selection of the augmentations techniques was based achieving the least impact on manipulating the features of the images. This phase helps to overcome the overfitting problem and trains the model to achieve better accuracy. The third phase is deep CNN architecture. In this phase, an architecture of two main convolutional layers for featured extraction and two fully connected layers is introduced to classify the 5 different types of cancer according to the availability of images on the dataset. The results and the performance metrics such as recall, precision and F1 score show that the proposed approach achieved an overall testing accuracy of 96.90%. The comparative results are introduced, and the proposed method outperforms those in related works in terms of testing accuracy for 5 classes of cancer. Moreover, the proposed approach is less complex and consume less memory.

Inflammatory bowel diseases are gaining more interest in the past few years. Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic disease that requires accurate follow-up for a good treatment plan. Colonoscopy alone cannot be efficient to detect disease extent and has a high risk of perforation in acute severe UC and toxic megacolon. Computed tomographic enterocolonography (CTE) is widely used now to detect intramural, extra-intestinal involvement and intestinal complications. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate CTE in the assessment of the degree of activity of UC.This cross-sectional study was carried on 50 UC patients, divided into 36 males and 14 females presented at the Gastroenterology Unit, Alexandria Main University, Faculty of Medicine. Assessment of UC activity was done to all patients on three levels; the ulcerative colitis disease activity index for the clinical level, ulcerative colitis endoscopic index of severity by endoscopy and pathologically by degree of neutrophilic invasion, crypt abscess or cryptitis, presence of oedema and mucosal surface ulceration, then CTE was done and the findings were compared with the histopathological findings. Bowel wall thickening in CTE was divided into: normal (3 mm, score 0), mild (3-6 mm, score 1), moderate (6-9 mm, score 2) and severe (9 mm, score 3). Mesenteric hyperaemia, mucosal hyper enhancement and enlarged pericolic lymph nodes were recorded.CTE findings in the form of bowel wall thickening and hyper enhancement were found in 74% of active cases and were correlated with all histopathological findings investigated in this study with high statistical significance except in chronic stages, whereas lymph node enlargement and mesenteric hyperaemia did not show statistical significance with disease activity.CTE is a good tool for diagnosing disease activity in UC.

Type II mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC) is a systemic vasculitis usually associated with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The present trial was performed to investigate the efficacy of therapy with pegylated interferon alfa-2a (PEG-IFN alfa-2a) plus ribavirin in patients with HCV-related MC vasculitis and evaluate the factors associated with clinical remission of MC. A total of 46 consecutive patients with HCV-related Type II MC received PEG-IFN alfa-2a (standard dose 180 mg/week) subcutaneously plus oral ribavirin (800–1,200 mg/day) for 48 weeks. The response to treatment was analyzed by comparing clinical, immunologic, and virologic parameters at the initial evaluation with those observed at the end of follow-up. Logistic regression was used to assess the factors associated with clinical remission. A total of 22 patients (48%) had a sustained virologic response and were complete clinical responders. Serum cryoglobulin disappeared in 26 of 46 patients (56%), and complement levels normalized in 70% of the patients. In univariate analysis, factors associated with complete clinical response were early virologic response at 4 weeks [OR 1.4 (95% CI 0.1–17.1)], proteinuria [OR 1.4 (95% CI 0.2–8.2)] and the fibrosis score [OR 1.09 (95% CI 0.6–1.9)], peripheral neuropathy [OR 0.9 (95% CI 0.1–6.5)], arthralgia [OR 0.7 (95% CI 0.1–3.9)], sicca syndrome [OR 0.6 (95% CI 0.1–3.2)], cryoglobulin [OR 0.2 (95% CI 0.07–1.09)], and purpura [OR 0.1 (95% CI 0.01–1.3)]. In multivariate analysis, only cryoglobulinemia was independently associated with complete clinical response. No patient had side effects for which discontinuation of therapy was required. The results indicated that treatment with PEG-IFN alfa-2a plus ribavirin can achieve a complete clinical response in patients with HCV-related MC. Complete clinical response correlates with the eradication of HCV.

Background: The hepatitis C pandemic has been systematically studied and characterized in North America and Europe, but this important public health problem has not received equivalent attention in other regions. Aim: The objective of this systematic review was to characterize hepatitis C virus (HCV) epidemiology in selected countries of Asia, Australia and Egypt, i.e. in a geographical area inhabited by over 40% of the global population. Methodology: Data references were identified through indexed journals and non-indexed sources. In this work, 7770 articles were reviewed and 690 were selected based on their relevance. Results: We estimated that 49.3‐64.0 million adults in Asia, Australia and Egypt are anti-HCV positive. China alone has more HCV infections than all of Europe or the Americas. While most countries had prevalence rates from 1 to 2% we documented several with relatively high prevalence rates, including Egypt (15%), Pakistan (4.7%) and Taiwan (4.4%). Nosocomial infection, blood transfusion (before screening) and injection drug use were identified as common risk factors in the region. Genotype 1 was common in Australia, China, Taiwan and other countries in North Asia, while genotype 6 was found in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. In India and Pakistan genotype 3 was predominant, while genotype 4w as found in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Conclusion: We recommend implementation of surveillance systems to guide effective public health policy that may lead to the eventual curtailment of the spread of this pandemic infection.