INTRODUCTION AND AIMS Adrenal insufficiency (AI) is common in patients with cirrhosis. We aimed to assess the presence of AI in stable patients with cirrhosis using the gold-standard insulin tolerance test (ITT) and to propose an algorithm for screening AI in these patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS We studied 40 stable patients with cirrhosis. We determined the basal total (BTC) and peak cortiso...

Solvothermal reactions of mixed ligands H(3)BTC and macrocyclic oxamide complexes (ML, M = Cu, Ni) with M(ClO(4))(2)·6H(2)O (M = Co, Zn, Ni and Cd) afford six new complexes, including [M'(4)(BTC)(2)(ML)(2)(OH)(2)(H(2)O)(2)]·2H(2)O (M' = Co, M = Ni, for (1); M' = Zn, M = Ni, for (2); M' = Zn, M = Cu, for (3)), [Ni(3)(BTC)(2)(NiL)(2)(H(2)O)(6)]·2CH(3)OH·2H(2)O (4), [Cd(4)(BTC)(2)(HBTC)(NiL)(4)(H(...

Advanced biliary tract cancer (BTC) has a poor prognosis and limited treatment options. The PI3K/Akt/mTOR signalling pathway is hyperactivated in a subset of BTCs, and clinical activity of the mTOR inhibitor everolimus has been observed in some patients with BTC. The goal of this study was to identify biomarkers predictive of everolimus response. Twenty BTC cell lines were assessed for everolim...

The effect of feeding benzylselenocyanate (BSC) and its sulfur analogue, benzylthiocyanate (BTC), 2 wk before, during, and until 1 wk after carcinogen administration (initiation phase) on intestinal carcinogenesis induced by azoxymethane (CAS:25843-45-2) was studied in male F344 rats. Weanling rats were raised on a semipurified diet (AIN-76A diet; control diet). Beginning at 5 wk of age, groups...

OBJECTIVES Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and biliary tract cancers (BTC) are often diagnosed late and at an advanced stage. Population-based screening programmes do not exist and diagnosis is primarily dependent on symptom recognition. Recently symptom-based cancer decision support tools (CDSTs) have been introduced into primary care practices throughout the UK to support general prac...

BACKGROUND Biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a rare cancer in Europe and North America, characterized by wide geographic variation, with high incidence in some areas of Latin America and Asia. MATERIALS AND METHODS BTC mortality and incidence have been updated according to recent data, using joinpoint regression analysis. RESULTS Since the 1980s, decreasing trends in BTC mortality rates (age-st...

An optimized procedure was designed for the preparation of the microporous metal-organic framework (MOF) [Cu3(btc)2] (BTC=benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylate). The crystalline material was characterized by X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, SEM, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, N2 sorption, thermogravimetry, and IR spectroscopy of adsorbed CO. CO adsorbs on a small number of Cu2O impurities, and ...

Bulk Transport Capacity (BTC) is a measure of a network’s ability to transfer significant quantities of data with a single congestionaware transport connection (e.g., TCP). The intuitive definition of BTC is the expected long term average data rate (bits per second) of a single ideal TCP implementation over the path in question. However, there are many congestion control algorithms (and hence t...

The block truncation coding (BTC) algorithm for image compression has the advantages of low computation load and less memory requirement. In this paper, an adaptive image compression algorithm using multilevel BTC is proposed. An input image is partitioned into blocks with variable sizes, and the gray values of each block are adaptively quantized to be one, two, or four levels according to loca...

The sensing properties of the paddlewheel-type metal dimer (M-BTC: M = Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pd) toward SO2 gas were theoretically investigated using density functional theory (DFT) at M06-L level theory. Single-point calculations carried M06 to correct energetic HOMO–LUMO energy gap. O-bound adsorption complex on center paddlewheels is found be thermodynamically favorable than S-bound ones. tren...