Other Medical Sciences Commons^™

E-Cigarettes: An Up To Date Review And Discussion Of The Controversy, Zachary Sanford, Lynne J. Goebel Md

Internal Medicine

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) present a novel method for nicotine delivery that is reportedly advantageous when compared to traditional cigarette usage. Manufacturers and consumers claim reduced chemical exposure, decreased symptom profiles, and efficacy in smoking reduction and cessation greater than conventional nicotine replacement therapies (NRT). However these products present new challenges and concerns to legislators, clinicians, and public health advocates. Questions of authority in state and federal legislation, establishing product quality control, assessing long-term studies on e-cigarettes and quantifying usefulness in harm reduction represent only a portion of the many unanswered topics being discussed. The purpose of this article is to …

Comparative Analysis Of The Distribution Of Segmented Filamentous Bacteria In Humans, Mice And Chickens, Yeshi Yin, Yu Wang, Liying Zhu, Wei Liu, Ningbo Liao, Mizu Jiang, Baoli Zhu, Hongwei Yu, Charlie Xiang, Xin Wang

Hongwei Yu

Segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB) are indigenous gut commensal bacteria. They are commonly detected in the gastrointestinal tracts of both vertebrates and invertebrates. Despite the significant role they have in the modulation of the development of host immune systems, little information exists regarding the presence of SFB in humans. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution and diversity of SFB in humans and to determine their phylogenetic relationships with their hosts. Gut contents from 251 humans, 92 mice and 72 chickens were collected for bacterial genomic DNA extraction and subjected to SFB 16S rRNA-specific PCR detection. The results …

Safety Of Infliximab In Children With Ibd: The Experience Of An Academic Center In Wv, Michael Northcutt Md, Awni Al-Subu Md, Brooke Bella Rn, Yoram Elitsur Md

Biochemistry and Microbiology

BACKGROUND: The immune-modulating drug, infliximab, is approved for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) treatment in children. Chronic therapy with infliximab is associated with the development of early and delayed infusion reactions. We reviewed our experience with infliximab treatment and its side effects in a cohort of children diagnosed with IBD who were treated in our clinic.

METHODS: A retrospective analysis of all IBD children treated with infliximab in our center from 2006-2011 was performed. The demographic, chronological and clinical data were recorded. The infliximab infusion was given at 5mg/ kg according to a standard protocol after pre-treatment with low dose …

An Investigation Of Nurbs-Based Deformable Image Registration, Travis J. Jacobson

Theses and Dissertations

Deformable image registration (DIR) is an essential tool in medical image processing. It provides a means to combine image datasets, allowing for intra-subject, inter-subject, multi-modality, and multi-instance analysis, as well as motion detection and compensation. One of the most popular DIR algorithms models the displacement vector field (DVF) as B-splines, a sum of piecewise polynomials with coefficients that enable local shape control. B-splines have many advantageous properties in the context of DIR, but they often struggle to adequately model steep local gradients and discontinuities. This dissertation addresses that limitation by proposing the replacement of conventional B-splines with a generalized formulation …