In 1977, 5-aminosalicylic acid (5-ASA) was discovered as a therapeutically active moiety of sulfasalazine (SASP) and was launched for topical and oral therapy of ulcerative colitis (UC) in 1984. As a first-step, delivery systems had to be developed to protect 5-ASA against absorption in the upper gastrointestinal tract, resulting in different and competing strategies (azo compounds, controlled ...

Monocular deprivation (MD) during the critical period for the development of visual cortex causes a loss of binocular response of neurons and a shift to the open eye, a normal ocular dominance (OD) shift. However, when MD is combined with chronic inactivation of the visual cortex by muscimol, the OD distribution of the neurons shifts to the deprived eye (reverse OD shift). We have previously sh...

For a computer aided detection system of retinal lesions, optic disc (OD) detection is the first and the most importance. Since the OD is once detected then other clinical importance regions such as fovea or macula can easily be determined, and the OD shape is often used to evaluate abnormal retinal features for diagnosis of abnormalities such as hypertensive retinopathy. In this paper, an appr...

Optic Disc (OD) localization is an important pre-processing step that significantly simplifies subsequent segmentation of the OD and other retinal structures. Current OD localization techniques suffer from impractically-high computation times (few minutes/image). In this work, we present an ultrafast technique that requires less than a second to localize the OD. The technique is based on reduci...

PURPOSE To examine Chinese neonatal infants with both cycloplegic and noncycloplegic retinoscopy and to compare the distribution of refractive errors for the two techniques. METHODS Cycloplegic retinoscopy was performed by two experienced pediatric ophthalmologists on 81 neonatal infants randomly selected from a group of 185 neonates who had undergone noncycloplegic retinoscopy. All infants w...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Endotracheal tube (ETT) selection in pediatric patients is mainly done with the age, height, or weight-based formula. We compared ultrasound assessment of the subglottic area to predict the outer diameter of the ETT, with that of modified Cole's formula. The aim of the study is to compare the appropriateness of uncuffed ETT selection based on modified Cole's formula with tha...

Introduction: Introduction: Few studies have investigated the distribution of stress around implants. In this study the distribution of stress in bones around implants was investigated in five overdenture (OD) treatment designs including OD-1, OD-2, OD-3, OD-4 and OD-5. Materials and methods: The Catia modeling software was used in order to simulate the tooth/implant model and bone. First, the ...

BACKGROUND Determining if a kidney from a marginal donor is likely to elicit a strong and specific immune response, leading to an increased risk of acute rejection, is of importance in renal transplantation. METHODS In this study, we analysed the effect of extended criteria donor (ECD) on the incidence of biopsy-proven acute rejection (BPAR) and the effect of immunological risk factors on gra...

PURPOSE Long-acting β2-agonists (LABAs) have demonstrated efficacy in patients with COPD in clinical trials. The purpose of this study was to assess the comparative efficacy of all available dosages of all LABA monotherapies using a network meta-analysis. METHODS A systematic literature review identified 33 randomized controlled trials of LABA monotherapies (salmeterol 50 μg twice daily [BID]...

OBJECTIVE We investigated the effects of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) and/or 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) on the proliferation and metastasis of human nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cell line CNE2Z and the underlying mechanisms involved. METHODS Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) CNE2Z cells were randomly divided into four groups: Group A: control group; Group B: 5-FU group; Group C: HBO2 group; Group D: 5-...