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Introduction: Positron emission tomography with computed tomography ( 18 F-FDG PET/CT) is a nuclear medicine diagnostic method which, unlike other technological modalities that asses anatomical features, detects increased glucose metabolism inside the cells, thus is very helpful in diagnosing cardiovascular infection and inflammation and also in therapy planning., Aim: Aim of this study was to assess the significance of 18 F-FDG PET/CT in detection of an active disease in patients with infection and inflammation of cardiovascular system., Material and Methods: In this cohort retrospective study 73 cardiovascular patients (56.9±15.3 years; 33 male and 40 female) with persistent symptoms of inflammatory syndrome were referred to 18 F-FDG PET/CT in order to evaluate active disease. Biochemical blood analyses (erytrocite sedimentation, CRP, leukocytic formula), CT, MRI, ultrasound were performed in all the patients. Out of 73 patients, 7 had a second 18 F-FDG PET/CT examination (62.1±12.3 years; 6 men and 1 woman) with a previous pathological PET/CT finding after which the therapy was changed. The degree of metabolic activity was analyzed visually and quantitatively using the maximal standardized uptake value (SUV max ). 18 F-FDG PET/CT findings were considered positive in case of higher focal glucose accumulation in projection of heart and diffuse uptake in blood vessels' wall than accumulation in surrounding tissue and liver., Results: Vasculitis was diagnosed in 36 patients (49,3%), endocarditis in 23 (31,5%) and graft inflammation in 14 (19,2%). The results were compared to the gold standard, biopsy of the blood vessel and histopathological verification during surgical treatment, or clinical follow up. Forty nine patients with the sights of an increased FDG uptake were considered true positive (TP) (SUV max 5.7±2.9). In 21 patients 18 F-FDG uptake was physiological and they were considered true negative (ТN). Two who used corticosteroid therapy which decreases inflammation, were false negative (FN), and only 1 false positive (FP) finding in the region of recent iatrogenic vein injury. Sensitivity of this method was 96.08±, specificity 95.45±, positive predictive value 98.0±, negative predictive value 91.3± and accuracy 95.89±., Conclusion: Our results indicate that 18 F-FDG PET/CT could be useful diagnostic method for the detection of sights of metabolically active disease in patients with persistent symptoms of infection and inflammation of cardiovascular system, as well as in monitoring therapy response.

In this paper, the development of reversed-phase liquid chromatographic method for the analysis of dabigatran etexilate mesilate and its ten impurities supported by quality by design (QbD) approach is presented. The defined analytical target profile (ATP) was the efficient baseline separation and the accurate determination of the investigated analytes. The selected critical quality attributes (CQAs) were the separation criterions between the critical peak pairs because the mixture complexity imposed a gradient elution mode. The critical process parameters (CPPs) studied in this research were acetonitrile content at the beginning of gradient program, acetonitrile content at the end of gradient program and the gradient time. Plan of experiments was defined by Box-Behnken design. The experimental domains of the three selected factors x1--content of the acetonitrile at the start of linear gradient, x2--content of the acetonitrile at the end of linear gradient and x3--gradient time (tG) were [10%, 30%], [48%, 60%] and [8 min, 15 min], respectively. In order to define the design space (DS) as a zone where the desired quality criteria is met providing also the quality assurance, Monte Carlo simulations were performed. The uniform error distribution equal to the calculated standard error was added to the model coefficient estimates. Monte Carlo simulation included 5000 iterations in each of 3969 defined grid points and the region having the probability π ≥ 95% to achieve satisfactory values of all defined CQAs was computed. As a working point, following chromatographic conditions suited in the middle of the DS were chosen: 22% acetonitrile at the start of gradient program, 55.5% acetonitrile at the end of gradient program end and the gradient time of 11.5 min. The developed method was validated in order to prove its reliability., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper deals with partitions of a discrete set S of points in a d-dimensional space, by h parallel hyperplanes. Such partitions are in a direct correspondence with multilinear threshold functions which appear in the theory of neural networks and multivalued logic. The characterization (encoding) problem is studied. We show that a unique characterization (encoding) of such multilinear partitions of S = {0, 1,..., m-1}d is possible within theta(h x d2 x log m) bit rate per encoded partition. The proposed characterization (code) consists of (d + 1) x (h + 1) discrete moments having the order no bigger than 1. The obtained bit rate is evaluated depending on the mutual relations between h, d, and m. The optimality is reached in some cases.