Evaluation of gene expression in urinary sediment has been considered as a promising non-invasive approach for biomarker identification of kidney diseases. Nonetheless, there are several challenges in extraction of RNA from this valuable source of biomarkers, mostly because of the factors that have influence on quality of isolated RNA such as low cellular content. Accordingly, we compared the q...

INTRODUCTION The functions of the healthy brain can be studied in two main ways. Firstly, the changes in the brain’s state can be measured using techniques such as EEG or functional MRI. Secondly, the activity of the brain can be disrupted through the use of brain stimulation. The famous experiments of Wilder Penfield and colleagues in the 1950s showed the power of brain stimulation in people w...

Objective To assess the relation between invasive dental procedures and infective endocarditis associated with oral streptococci among people with prosthetic heart valves.Design Nationwide population based cohort and a case crossover study.Setting French national health insurance administrative data linked with the national hospital discharge database.Participants All adults aged more than 18 y...

In Singapore, 1 in 5 pregnancies occur in mothers > 35 years old and genetic diseases, such as thalassaemia, are common. Current methods for the diagnosis of aneuploidy and monogenic disorders require invasive testing by amniocentesis, chorion villus biopsy or fetal blood sampling. These tests carry a procedure-related risk of miscarriage that is unacceptable to many couples. Development of non...

Current prenatal diagnosis uses non-invasive procedures of maternal serum screening and ultrasound exam to evaluate the risk of chromosomal abnormalities and invasive procedures of chorionic villus sampling and amniocentesis for the diagnosis of cytogenomic abnormalities and gene mutations. The discovery of cell free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in maternal blood prompted the application of massive paral...

Liver biopsy is a very common, but invasive procedure for diagnosing liver disease. However, such a biopsy may result in severe complications and in some cases even death. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to develop a non-invasive method which would provide the same amount of information on staging of the disease and also the location of pathologies. This thesis describes the implementat...

Abstract Introduction Stapled anopexy is a modern technique to treat symptomatic grade 3 and grade 4 internal haemorrhoids. It has advantage of early recovery, less pain, and short procedure time as compared to conventional haemorrhoidectomy. Frequency of post anopexy bleeding per rectum requiring reoperation is 1.5% to 3.3% and staple line is identified to be the most common site. To date no c...