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Background/Aim. Contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is a common complication after the percutaneous coronary intervention, associated with a prolonged hospital stay, increased medical costs, and risk of adverse clinical outcomes. The aim of this study was to compare changes in levels of serum creatinine (sCr) and cystatin C (sCyC) 24 h after coronary angiography as an early indicator of CI-AKI. Methods. The study included 45 patients with chronic renal failure grade I–III scheduled for coronary angiography. Levels of sCr and sCyC were measured a day before and 24 h after coronary angiography. CI-AKI was defined as a 25% and 10% increase of sCr and sCyC levels from baseline within 24 h from contrast media exposure, in the absence of alternative causes. Results. Mean sCr and sCyC concentra-tions were 86.4 ± 22.6 μmol/L and 1.18 ± 0.52 mg/dL, respectively before contrast administration, and 90.6 ± 24.1 μmol/L and 1.24 ± 0.65 mg/dL, respectively 24 h after contrast media exposure. sCr-based CI-AKI occurred in 4 patients (8.89%) and sCyC-based CI-AKI was detected in 19 patients (42.22%) after the contrast procedure (p < 0.001). Conclusion. sCyC level measured 24 h after contrast media exposure is a more sensitive indicator of CI-AKI than sCR level.

Background/Aim. Oxidative stress is an important risk factor for the development of cardiovascular atherosclerotic diseases in the population of patients treated with regular hemodialysis. Bioincompatibility of the dialysis membrane and increased concentration of endotoxin in the hemodialysis solution are two main factors that can trigger oxidative stress. This paper was intended to examine the effect of a vitamin E-coated membrane on oxidative stress during a single session of on-line hemodiafiltration. Methods. Twenty-four patients undergoing hemodiafiltration with vitamin E-coated polysulfone dialysis membrane (Leoceed 21H) were examined, followed by a polysulfone dialysis membrane treatment without vitamin E (FX800). The following parameters of oxidative stress were measured: superoxide anion radical (O2-), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), thiobarbutyric acid reactive substances (TBARS), nitric oxide (NO2-), catalase (CAT), superoxide dizmutase (SOD), and reduced glutathione (GSH) activity. Statistical analysis included the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Student-t test and Wilcoxon test. Results. On-line hemodiafiltration using a high-flux polysulfone vitamin E-coated membrane led to significant reduction of TBARS concentration and SOD activity, while the on-line hemodiafiltration session using a high-flux polysulfone membrane that is not vitamin E-coated induced a significant increase in H2O2 concentration in the serum and a decrease in SOD activity. There was no statistical significance among the other parameters of oxidative stress. Conclusion. A single session of on-line hemodiafiltration using a vitamin E-coated polysulfone membrane significantly affects oxidative stress. After a single session of on-line hemodiafiltration using a vitamin E-coated membrane, the concentration of TBARS has significantly decreased. The decreased activity of superoxide dismutase could be a consequence of an increased loss of microelements during an on-line hemodiafiltration session using a high-flux polysulfone membrane. Patient selection, continuous on-line hemodiafiltration using a vitamin E-coated polysulfone membrane over a 3–6 month period and increased antioxidant protection capacity could possibly reduce the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in patients treated by hemodialysis.

Introduction. Kidney failure in multiple myeloma is some-times initial symptomatology and a very serious complication with an unfavorable effect on the course and prognosis of the disease. Multiple myeloma is a disease characterized by the proliferation of plasmocytes in the bone marrow, and in rare cases, it can be extramedullary in various organs and systems. Pulmonary plasmacytoma localization is a rare extramedullary localization, especially when it represents one of the initial manifestations of multiple myeloma. Case report. We present a patient with progressive acute kidney failure who has started hemodialysis treatment. On chest radiography, a homogeneous shadow was observed along the left chest wall, and the multislice computed tomography (MSCT) pointed to the tumor formation in the pulmonary parenchyma in the projection of the left upper pulmonary lobe with signs of pleural infiltration, intercostal muscles, and V rib destruction. Laboratory examination indicated the presence of Bence-Jones proteinuria in the urine sample in addition to anemia syndrome and azotemia with hyperuricemia. After bronchoscopy and needle biopsy, diffuse infiltration of mature plasma cells was demonstrated in the cytological and histopathological findings of the lungs. The histopathological finding of bone marrow biopsy indicated multiple myeloma of Lambda type with infiltration of plasma cells – about 70%. The hematologist determined a diagnosis of multiple myeloma BJ lambda III BCS, with extramedullary lung infiltration and acute kidney failure. Further treatment was continued according to the hematological protocol while performing intermittent hemodialysis. Conclusion. Sometimes, extremely rarely, and in completely asymptomatic patients with massive pulmonary infiltration observed initially, the differential diagnosis may also represent an extramedullary presentation of multiple myeloma, which should be considered.

Introduction. Polycystic kidney disease is a hereditary kidney disease characterized by the occurrence of cysts (fluid-filled enlargements) in cortex or medula of the kidney, and is inherited in an autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive manner. In addition to multiple cysts in kidneys, there may be many extra-renal manifestations (cysts of the liver, pancreas, lungs, heart, etc.), among which the most serious one is intracranial aneurysms. Case report. A 57-year-old female patient with polycystic kidney disease and stage IV renal failure was hospitalized at our clinic due to decreased renal function, the development of urinary tract infections, headaches and unregulated blood pressure despite the usual treatment. This patient also had a number of associated diseases: obesity, diabetes mellitus (the insulindependent type), hypothyroidism, and depression syndrome. After better regulation of blood pressure, resolved urinary tract infections and improved renal function, there were still persistent headaches (resulting in the excessive use of analgesics). With adequate preparation, multislice computed tomography (MSCT) angiography of blood vessels of the head was performed. As a result, we diagnosed the saccular intracranial aneurysm (IA) with anterior localization. Regarding the symptoms, age and comorbidity, digital subtraction angiography (DSA) was performed, and showed saccular IA (5.2 mm × 4 mm), with wide neck affecting both middle cerebral artery branches (MCA). During the procedure the stent was placed, which filled the aneurysm with spirals, cutting it off from circulation. After the successful procedure and without further complications, the patient no longer had headaches and blood pressure was maintained within the required limits with stable parameters of chronic renal failure. Conclusion. The case of the patient with polycystic kidney disease, stage IV chronic renal failure, with a number of comorbidities (headache, obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hypothyroidism) and diagnosed with symptomatic intracranial aneurysm was successfully solved with a multidisciplinary approach, emphasizing the importance of teamwork in daily practice.

Introduction. The thyroid gland is a rare site for metastatic lesions from non-thyroid cancers. Due to the fact that achieving a diagnosis of thyroid gland metastasis from breast cancer prior to operation is challenging, the diagnosis thereof is mainly based on a pathological biopsy and immunohistochemical staining. The aim of this study was to present a rare case of thyroid gland metastasis from lobular breast cancer. Case outline. The patient was a 33-year-old female who had already had a five-year history of lobular cancer of the right breast and was thereafter found to have two suspicious tumors in the left breast, as well as a thyroid mass diagnosed as metastatic breast carcinoma. Conclusion. Patients who have a thyroid lesion and a history of malignancy are at a higher risk for metastasis and require additional caution during diagnosis and treatment.

Introduction. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is derived from renal tubular epithelial cells and represents approximately 3.8% of all malignancies in adults. The incidence of renal cell carcinoma has been growing steadily and ranging from 0.6 to 14.7 for every 100,000 inhabitants. Patients with end-stage renal disease and acquired cystic kidney disease are at increased risk of developing RCC while undergoing dialysis treatment or after renal transplantation. Case report. We presented 3 patients undergoing hemodialysis, with acquired cystic kidney disease accompanied by the development of RCC. In all the patients tumor was asymptomatic and discovered through ultrasound screening in 2 patients and in 1 of the patients by post-surgery pathohistological analysis of the tissue of the kidney excised using nephrectomy. All the three patients had organ-limited disease at the time of the diagnosis and they did not require additional therapy after surgical treatment. During the follow- up after nephrectomy from 6 months to 7 years, local recurrence or metastasis of RCC were not diagnosed. Conclusion. Acquired cystic kidney disease represents a predisposing factor for the development of renal cell carcinoma in dialysis patients and requires regular ultrasound examinations of the abdomen aimed at early diagnosis of malignancies. Prognosis for patients with endstage renal disease and RCC is mostly good because these tumors are usually of indolent course.

Introduction. Immunoglobulin D (IgD) myeloma is a rare disease, about 2% of all myelomas, even rarer when accompanied with another multiple myeloma in biclonal gammopathy. We presented a case of biclonal gammopathy - associated manifestation of IgD myeloma and light chain disease in a patient who initially had renal failure. Case report. 37-year-old male approximately one month before hospitalization began to feel malaise and fatigue along with decreased urination. Laboratory analysis revealed azotemia. A dialysis catheter was placed and hemodialysis started. The patient was then admitted to our hospital for further tests and during admission, objective examination revealed pronounced paleness with hepatosplenomegaly and hypertension (170/95 mmHg). Laboratory analysis showed erythrocyte sedimentation rate 122 mm/h, expressed anemic syndrome (Hb 71 g/L) and renal failure dialysis rank: creatinine 1,408 μmol/L, urea31.7 mmol/L. There was two M components in serum protein electrophoresis: IgD lambda and free light chain lambda. Proteinuria was nephrotic rank (5.4 g/24 h), whose electrophoresis revealed 2 M components - massive in α 2 fraction of 71%; 7% in the discrete β fraction, beta 2M /serum 110 mg/L, in urine 1.8 mg/L - extremely high; IgL kappa / lambda index 1 : 13 (reference value ratio 2 : 1). The findings pointed to double myeloma disease: IgD myeloma and Bence Jones lambda myeloma. Bone biopsy confirmed IgD myeloma lambda 100% infiltration medulla predominantly plasmablasts. The treatment continued with hemodialysis 3 times per week with chemotherapy protocol bortezomib, doxorubicin, dexamethasone. After 4 cycles of chemotherapy, there was a decrease of IgD, λ - light chains, reduction in proteinuria (1.03 g/24 h), so hemodialysis was reduced to once per week. Six months after treatment initiation the patient underwent autologous bone marrow transplantation. In a 2-year follow-up period double myeloma disease showed complete remission. Conclusion. The presented rare form of double myeloma disease with initial renal insufficiency underscores the importance of careful observation and team-work that can alter the course of this serious disease.

Introduction. Multiple myeloma is a hemathological malignancy characterized by the clonal proliferation of plasma cells in the bone the marrow. Extramedullary dissemination of multiple myeloma is uncommon. In several cases only, the multiple myeloma malignant plasma cells had diseminated to the lung parenchyma. Case report. We presented a case of multiple myeloma with lung plasmacytoma, in a 79-year-old patient, hospitalized for febrility and infiltrative mass in the right lung. Two months before the patient was admitted, because of developing terminal renal failure, hemodialysis treatment had started three times a week. Since then, the patient was oliguric, but because of febrility and hemoptysis that appeared, at first he was treated with dual antibiotic therapy which resulted in temporary improvement of his general condition, but pleural effusion remained. After thoracocentesis, followed by myelogram, the multiple myeloma diagnosis was established. Conclusion. In patients of middle and older age, with general weakness, exhaustion, loss of weight, renal failure which progresses to the end stage rapidly, if symptoms of respiratory tract occur, consider this uncommon disease - extramedullary dissemination of multiple myeloma.

Introduction. Renal artery stenosis (RAS) is narrowing of one or both renal arteries or their branches. Clinically significant stenosis involves narrowing of the lumen, which is approximately 80%. The two most common causes of its occurrence are atherosclerosis and fibromuscular dysplasia. Percutaneous transluminal renal angioplasty (PTRA) with stent implantation is an effective treatment modality that leads to lower blood pressure and improvement of kidney function. Case report. We presented 4 patients with significant stenosis of one or both renal arteries followed by the development of arterial hypertension and renal insufficiency. The causes of RAS were atherosclerosis in two patients and fibromuscular dysplasia in one patient. One of the patients had renal artery stenosis of transplanted kidney that developed 9 month after transplantation. In all the patients, in addition to clinical signs, doppler screening suspected the existence of significant renal artery stenosis. The definitive diagnosis was made by applying computed tomographic angiography (CTA) of renal arteries in 3 of the patients and in 1 patient by percutaneus selective angiography. All the patients were treated by application of PTRA with stent implantation followed by improvement/normalization of blood pressure and kidney function. Conclusion. Application of PTRA with stent implantation is an effective treatment of significant stenosis of one or both renal arteries followed by renal insufficiency.

Background. In countries without a national organization for retrieval and distribution of organs of the deceased donors, problem of organ shortage is still not resolved. In order to increase the number of kidney transplantations we started with the program of living unrelated - spousal donors. The aim of this study was to compare treatment outcome and renal graft function in patients receiving the graft from spousal and those receiving ghe graft from living related donors. Method. We retrospectively identified 14 patients who received renal allograft from spousal donors between 1996 and 2009 (group I). The control group consisted of 14 patients who got graft from related donor retrieved from the database and matched than with respect to sex, age, kidney disease, immunological and viral pretransplant status, the initial method of the end stage renal disease treatment and ABO compatibility. In the follow-up period of 41 ± 38 months we recorded immunosuppressive therapy, surgical complications, episodes of acute rejection, CMV infection and graft function, assessed by serum creatinine levels at the beginning and in the end of the follow-up period. All patients had pretransplant negative cross-match. In ABO incompatible patients pretransplant isoagglutinine titer was zero. Results. The patients with a spousal donor had worse HLA matching. There were no significant differences between the groups in surgical, infective, immunological complications and graft function. Two patients from the group I returned to hemodialysis after 82 and 22 months due to serious comorbidities. Conclusion. In spite of the worse HLA matching, graft survival and function of renal grafts from spousal donors were as good as those retrieved from related donors.

Background: Lupus nephritis (LN) is one of the most severe manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). There are increased studies examining the role of different markers that would facilitate diagnosis, LN activity monitoring, relapse occurrence, and the right time to introduce maintenance therapy. We aimed to examine the importance of determining the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), systemic immuneinflammatory index (SII) and systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI) in LN, comparing their significance with other standard parameters of active disease. Methods: The clinical examination included 66 patients (34 with active and 32 with LN in remission) and 23 healthy controls. The investigated parameters were CRP, CBC, creatinine, albumin, GFR, C3, C4, ANA, anti-ds DNA Ab, in urine: sediment analysis, SLEDAI/r, proteinuria 24h and Up/cre. We determined the derived markers: NLR, PLR, SIRI, and SII and their correlation with other parameters of active disease. Results: Comparing the group with active LN with LN in remission and the control group, a statistically significant difference was obtained for CRP (p=0.004) and RBW and haemoglobin, albumin, C3, ANA and anti-ds DNA Ab (p

Electroencephalography (EEG) serves as a diagnostic technique for measuring brain waves and brain activity. Despite its precision in capturing brain electrical activity, certain factors like environmental influences during the test can affect the objectivity and accuracy of EEG interpretations. Challenges associated with interpretation, even with advanced techniques to minimize artifact influences, can significantly impact the accurate interpretation of EEG findings. To address this issue, artificial intelligence (AI) has been utilized in this study to analyze anomalies in EEG signals for epilepsy detection. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are AI techniques specifically designed to handle sequential data, making them well-suited for precise time-series tasks. While AI methods, including RNNs and artificial neural networks (ANNs), hold great promise, their effectiveness heavily relies on the initial values assigned to hyperparameters, which are crucial for their performance for concrete assignment. To tune RNN performance, the selection of hyperparameters is approached as a typical optimization problem, and metaheuristic algorithms are employed to further enhance the process. The modified hybrid sine cosine algorithm has been developed and used to further improve hyperparameter optimization. To facilitate testing, publicly available real-world EEG data is utilized. A dataset is constructed using captured data from healthy and archived data from patients confirmed to be affected by epilepsy, as well as data captured during an active seizure. Two experiments have been conducted using generated dataset. In the first experiment, models were tasked with the detection of anomalous EEG activity. The second experiment required models to segment normal, anomalous activity as well as detect occurrences of seizures from EEG data. Considering the modest sample size (one second of data, 158 data points) used for classification models demonstrated decent outcomes. Obtained outcomes are compared with those generated by other cutting-edge metaheuristics and rigid statistical validation, as well as results' interpretation is performed., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision., (Copyright © 2023 Pilcevic, Djuric Jovicic, Antonijevic, Bacanin, Jovanovic, Zivkovic, Dragovic and Bisevac.)

Background/aims: Immune response against Helicobacter pylori is important for the course and outcome of infection. We conducted study looking for the difference in anti H. pylori IgG and IgA between patients with intestinal type of gastric cancer, superficial and atrophic gastritis., Methodology: For this study, 133 patients infected with H. pylori were enrolled: 50 with superficial gastritis, 42 with atrophic gastritis and 41 with gastric cancer. Anti H. pylori IgG and IgA ELISA tests were performed. The difference in antibody titers of IgG and IgA, frequency of IgA > IgG ratio and combination of low IgG and IgA > IgG ratio were analyzed., Results: The patients with gastritis had higher titer of IgG that the patients with gastric cancer (p < 0.01). The patients with superficial gastritis had higher titer of IgA than the patients with gastric cancer (p < 0.05). IgA > IgG ratio is more frequent in patients with gastric cancer than in the patients with superficial gastritis (p < 0.01). Low IgG and IgA > IgG is more frequent in the patients with gastric cancer than in the patients with gastritis (p < 0.01)., Conclusions: The patients with gastric cancer elicit different anti H. pylori IgG and IgA response than the patients with superficial and atrophic gastritis. Low IgG and IgA predominance seems characteristic for gastric cancer.

Background/aims: Helicobacter pylori elicits a strong local and systemic humoral immune response, but it is not able to eliminate bacteria. Immune response may be important for the course of infection that may lead to different gastroduodenal disease. In order to investigate differences in systemic humoral immune response between patients with different gastroduodenal diseases, we conducted clinical and serological studies., Methodology: From 1999 to 2001 we enrolled 80 patients with dyspeptic symptoms: 26 with gastritis, 12 with duodenal ulcer, 29 with gastric cancer and 13 with gastric lymphoma. In all patients during diagnostic work-up we performed ELISA test with Helicobacter pylori-specific IgG and IgA. We investigated difference in stimulation of different immunoglobulin classes in patients with different gastroduodenal diseases, particularly benign and malignant. We estimated significance of differences with Mann-Whitney and Fisher exact probability test., Results: All patients enrolled in the study were seropositive. Patients with gastritis had statistically significant higher level of IgG than patients with gastric cancer (p=0.0001), and gastric lymphoma (p=0.006). Patients with duodenal ulcer had statistically significant higher level of IgG than patients with gastric cancer (p=0.02), and gastric lymphoma (p=0.046). IgA level was significantly higher in patients with gastritis than in patients with gastric cancer (p=0.03). IgA>IgG ratio was significantly more frequent in patients with gastric cancer and gastric lymphoma than in patients with gastritis and duodenal ulcer (p=0.0002)., Conclusions: Result of our study suggested that Helicobacter pylori elicits different systemic humoral immune response in patients with gastritis and duodenal ulcer than in patients with gastric cancer and gastric lymphoma at least in intensity of stimulation of different immunoglobulin classes.