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Background: Volanesorsen is an antisense oligonucleotide that targets hepatic apolipoprotein C-III synthesis and reduces plasma triglyceride concentration. The aim of this study was to explore the safety and efficacy of volanesorsen in patients with multifactorial chylomicronaemia syndrome. Methods: The COMPASS trial was a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase 3 study done at 38 international clinical sites in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, UK, and USA. Eligible patients were aged 18 years or older with multifactorial severe hypertriglyceridaemia or familial chylomicronaemia syndrome, who had a BMI of 45 kg/m 2 or less and fasting plasma triglyceride of 500 mg/dL or higher. Patients were randomly assigned (2:1) with an interactive response system using an allocation sequence and permuted block randomisation to receive subcutaneous volanesorsen (300 mg) or a matched volume of placebo (1·5 mL) once a week for 26 weeks. After 13 weeks of treatment, dosing was changed to 300 mg of volanesorsen or placebo every 2 weeks for all patients, except those who had completed 5 months or more of treatment as of May 27, 2016. Participants, investigators, sponsor personnel, and clinical research staff were all masked to the treatment assignments. The primary outcome was percentage change from baseline to 3 months in fasting triglyceride in the full analysis set (all patients who were randomly assigned and received at least one dose of study drug and had a baseline fasting triglyceride assessment). This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02300233 (completed). Findings: Between Feb 5, 2015, and Jan 24, 2017, 408 patients were screened for eligibility. 294 were excluded and 114 randomly assigned to receive either volanesorsen (n=76) or placebo (n=38). One patient in the volanesorsen group discontinued before receiving the study drug. The total number of dropouts was 28 (four in the placebo group and 24 in the treatment group). Volanesorsen reduced mean plasma triglyceride concentration by 71·2% (95% CI −79·3 to −63·2) from baseline to 3 months compared with 0·9% (−13·9 to 12·2) in the placebo group (p

In twenty-first-century virtual assistant is playing a very crucial role in day to day activities of human. According to the survey report of Clutch in 2019, 27% of the people are using the AI-powered virtual assistant such as: Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Cortana, Apple Siri, etc., for performing a simple task, people are using virtual assistant designed with natural language processing. In this research paper, we have studied and analyzed the working model and the efficiency of different virtual assistants available in the market. We also designed an intelligent virtual assistant that could be integrated with Google virtual services and work with the Google virtual assistant interface. A comparative analysis of the traffic and message communication with length of conversation for approximately three days is taken as input to calculate the efficiency of the designed virtual assistant.

The term "granulocytic sarcoma" refers to an extramedullary collection of immature myeloid cells; rarely, it may precede peripheral blood or bone marrow involvement, presenting as a diagnostic challenge. The present communication deals with four cases of granulocytic sarcoma. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) was performed for all the cases and a diagnosis of granulocytic sarcoma was suspected. Subsequently, a complete blood count was performed which revealed blasts in the peripheral blood and a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was confirmed on bone marrow examination. Here, we emphasize the utility of FNAC for making the correct diagnosis of this entity in cases where AML was previously not suspected. DOI:10.21276/APALM.1587

In this paper, we elaborate the segmentation of the infected portion of pome fruits. An adaptive thresholding method is applied on pears. Other segmentation methods such as OTSU, region gro...

Distal radius fracture (DRF) is a common injury of the upper extremity. Owing to the favourable functional and radiological outcomes, volar-locked plating has attained immense acceptance in treating both extra- and intra-articular DRFs. This prospective study was designed to correlate between clinical and radiological outcome of post-operative extra-articular DRFs. A total of 100 subjects were enrolled in the study as per the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Majority population with DRFs were females. In patients that underwent plating: wrist dorsiflexion was >15° in 6% and >20° in 94%, wrist volar flexion was >15° in 8% and >20° in 92%; supination was >40° in 4%, >50° in 10% and >60° in 86%; pronation was >40° in 6%, >50° in 12% and >60° in 82%; mean (SD) union time was 9.56 (1.67) weeks. In patients that underwent wiring: wrist dorsiflexion was >15° in 24% and >20° in 76%; wrist volar flexion was >15° in 24% and >20° in 76%; supination was >40 in 14%, >50° in 36% and >60° in 50%; pronation was >40° in 12%, >50° in 34% and >60° in 54%; mean (SD) union time was 10.29 (1.25) weeks. Grip strength is quite good irrespective of the type of treatment received. Treatment using the k-wires takes more time for individuals to return to their normal activities compared to the plating method, and is commonly associated with complications.

Indian economy is mainly dependant on agriculture as it gives employment to 60% of the population and contributes around 17% to the GDP, therefore, disease identification and management is extremely essential for the farmers in order to harvest a higher percentage of utilizable fruits, which are fit for consumption. Diseases in fruits are the cause of huge agricultural losses. Manual monitoring of fruits is not very reliable as it totally depends on the perception of the naked eye and also not feasible to have specialists in the remote areas where the fruits grow. Therefore, an automatic disease detection system for apples using image processing techniques has been proposed so that the extent of the disease can be known and loss of yield can be controlled. For image segmentation, k-means clustering has been used. Thirteen features have been extracted from the segmented image using gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). Multi-class support vector machine (SVM) is used for disease identification and classification. The results are experimentally validated and classification accuracy is achieved up to 98.387% as compared to other existing algorithms.

Background: The aim of our clinical trial was to assess and compare the antiplaque and anti-inflammatory potential of a probiotic mouthwash with 0.2% chlorhexidine and saline. Materials and Methods: A randomized parallel group study was designed for a period of 4 weeks on 45 systemically healthy subjects between 20 and 30 years having chronic gingivitis. The study population was divided into three groups. Group A - 15 subjects were advised experimental (probiotic) mouthwash. Group B - 15 subjects were advised positive control (chlorhexidine) mouthwash and Group C - 15 subjects into a negative control group (normal saline). Oral prophylaxis was done for all groups at baseline. After the proper oral hygiene instructions, all the three groups were instructed to rinse their mouth with 10 ml of their respective mouthrinse, undiluted for 1 min twice daily, 30 min after brushing. Clinical parameters such as plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), and oral hygiene index simplified (OHI-S) were assessed at baseline, 2 weeks and 4 weeks, respectively. Results: At day 28, the PI, GI, and OHI-S were significantly reduced by all treatment modalities ranking probiotic and chlorhexidine is greater than saline. Conclusion: The probiotic mouthrinses tested was effectively used as an adjunct to mechanical plaque control in the prevention of plaque and gingivitis. Thus, the probiotic mouthrinse has a great therapeutic potential.

Aim: To evaluate the relative antimicrobial efficacy of five different commonly used antimicrobial agents with regard to reduction in the number of Enterococcus faecalis and Escherichia coli as compared to normal saline. An agar disk diffusion in vitro method was used to test the efficacy of the root canal irrigants against these two microorganisms. The root canal irrigants used were: 5.25% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), 10% citric acid, 17% ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), 3% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), 0.2% cetrimide and normal saline (as control). Materials and methods: The sample size consisted of 120 agar plates, divided into two groups: groups I and II. Group I consisted of 60 blood agar plates for assessment of E. faecalis and group II consisted of 60 MacConkey agar plates for assessment of E. coli. On each agar plate, 6 circular cellulose nitrate paper disks were placed, on which the inoculum of the respective microorganism was poured with a micropipette. After incubation, these paper disks were removed and put in test tubes containing the particular root canal irrigants, and were vortexed for 60 seconds.The microbial count was then assessed using a microbial colony counter. Results: Results showed that in the group I (E. faecalis), maximum reduction was achieved with cetrimide, followed by NaOCl, H2O2, citric acid and then EDTA. In group II (E. coli), maximum reduction was achieved with NaOCl, followed by cetrimide, H2O2, citric acid and then EDTA. How to cite this article: Kaushik N, Rehani U, Agarwal A, Kaushik M, Adlakha V. Antimicrobial Efficacy of Endodontic Irrigants against Enterococcus Faecalis and Escherichia Coli: An in vitro study. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2013;6(2):178-182.

We present a device for visually impaired persons (VIPs) that delivers contextual audio assistance for physical objects and tasks. In initial observations, we found ubiquitous use of audio-assistance technologies by VIPs for interacting with computing devices, such as Android TalkBack. However, we also saw that devices without screens frequently lack accessibility features. Our solution allows a VIP to obtain audio assistance in the presence of an arbitrary physical interface or object through a chest-mounted device. On-board are camera sensors that point towards the user's personal front-facing grasping region. Upon detecting certain gestures such as picking up an object, the device provides helpful contextual audio information to the user. Textual interfaces can be read aloud by sliding a finger over the surface of the object, allowing the user to hear a document or receive audio guidance for non-assistively-enabled electronic devices. The user may provide questions verbally in order to refine their audio assistance, or to ask broad questions about their environment. Our motivation is to provide sensemaking faculties that creatively approximate those of non-VIPs in tasks that make VIPs ineligible for common employment opportunities.

KnowWhat is our solution to help speed up mid-field sensemaking by visually impaired persons (VIPs). Our prototype combines a spectacle mounted camera, passive fiducial marker based tagging of the environment and 3D spatial audio to build a novel interaction technique. We present qualitative results of experiments to evaluate our solution.

Osteopetrosis is a rare metabolic disease.1 Dental abnormalities may be attributed to the pathological changes in osteopetrosis. Patients with osteopetrosis are especially susceptible to osteomyelitis of mandible.1 A 13-year-old girl presented with complaint of jaw swelling on left side. The radiograph of left mandible (lateral oblique view) showed small sequestrum with irregularity and erosions of the man-dibular cortical margins. This case report aims at diagnosis and treatment of osteopetrosis with superadded mandibular osteomyelitis―a are entity.

Periodontal diseases in children and adolescents comprise mainly of gingivitis. Gingivitis is an inflammation involving the gingival tissues next to the teeth. Marginal gingivitis is the most common form of periodontal disease and starts in early childhood. However, severe gingivitis is relatively uncommon in children, although a large population has a mild, reversible type of gingivitis. The major etiologic factors associated with gingivitis and more significantly periodontal diseases are uncalcified and calcified bacterial plaque. The gingival tissues in children are different from those in adults. Due to these differences in the structure between the gingival tissues of the child and the adult, even the clinical features and disease manifestations differ according to the age of an individual. It has been observed in earlier studies that children with a deciduous dentition seem to respond to plaque formation with less gingivitis than adults with a permanent dentition. Thus, in this study, the occurrence of gingivitis in response to plaque was studied and compared in the deciduous, mixed and permanent dentitions.

Background: Treatment of Achilles tendon rupture in young active patient remains controversial. Open primary repair remains the mainstay of treatment with prolonged rehabilitation and high wound complication rate (20%). In compound injuries it becomes the default treatment. Newer techniques are being tried to decrease re-rupture rate, decrease local complications and facilitate early rehabilitation. Modified gift box technique of open repair, which has shown higher strength of repair in in-vitro studies and good clinical results in the hands of its inventor. The aim of our study was to evaluate the clinical results of this technique in young active patients with compound Achilles tendon injury.Methods: This is a retrospective study. The parameters recorded at follow up included general demography, ability to single toe raise (on neutral, incline, decline), toe walking for 40 feet, and pain on VAS scale. Achilles tendon total rupture score and modified Rupp score were administered.Results: Out of the 8 patients included in the study, 7 patients had unilateral tear and 1 patient had bilateral tear. The mean age was 27 yrs (20-35) and mean duration of follow up was 17.4 months (08-24 months). Single toe raise and toe walking for 40 ft. was possible in all patients. Two patients complained of grade 2 pain on VAS Scale. The ATRS score was 97.1 (94-99) and modified Rupp score was 28.3 (26-29). Conclusions: Modified gift box technique gives excellent results in young active patients with compound Achilles tendon injury with no re-rupture and return of pre-injury activity.

Facial trauma in a child can be a greatly distressing experience for the parents as well as the child, causing uncontrollable crying in the child and panic and fear in the parents. Facial injuries in children are less common than in adults. This case report describes the management of symphysial fracture of the mandible in an 18-month-old girl. The fracture was reduced under general anesthesia and then stabilized with an acrylic cap splint, utilizing circummandibular wiring.

A child born with cleft lip and palate may experience difficulties while feeding. Obtaining a good seal of the oral cavity can be difficult due to the incomplete facial and palatal structures. Nasal regurgitation and choking are common in infants with cleft palate because of inability of the palate to separate the nasal and oral cavities. The case presented here is a 3-day-old neonate born with cleft lip and palate, assisted with a new feeding appliance made with ethylene vinyl acetate using pressure moulding technique in biostar machine for proper feeding.