Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a gastrointestinal disease believed to be causally related to perturbations to the intestinal microbiota. When standard treatment has failed, intestinal microbiota transplantation (IMT) is an alternative therapy for patients with CDI. IMT involves infusing intestinal microorganisms (in a suspension of healthy donor stool) into the intestine of a sick pat...

The conversion rate of cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease is 1 to 25% per year. Early detection of cognitive impairment will thus become a major concern, particularly when pharmacological intervention for preventing or delaying conversion will prove effective. If simple carotid artery intima media thickness (IMT) measurements were to predict cognitive impairment, IMT could become one o...

Inflammatory pseudotumor is a term given to different neoplastic and nonneoplastic entities that have a common histological appearance, which comprises spindle cell proliferation with a prominent chronic inflammatory cell infiltrate. Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is an uncommon lesion with distinctive clinical, pathological and molecular features and is considered to be pseudotumor f...

Background and Purpose B-mode ultrasound is a widely used technique for the clinical and epidemiological assessment of carotid atherosclerosis. This article describes the relation between arterial intimal-medial thickness (IMT) at different sites within the extracranial carotid artery. Methods IMT was measured by B-mode real-time ultrasound as an index of atherosclerotic involvement in the extr...

OBJECTIVES The etiology of Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor(IMT) is contentious. In this study, we used computed tomography (CT) to examine tonsillar IMT and further analyzed the etiology of this entity. METHODOLOGY We presented CT features of left tonsillar IMT and reviewed the English-language literature published between 1984 and 2011. RESULTS To our knowledge, there are only six publi...

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a rare entity that most commonly involves the lung. However, an IMT of the kidney is extremely rare. The etiology and pathogenesis of IMT remain unknown. The present study describes the case of a 48-year-old female who presented asymptomatically. Imaging investigations revealed a mass in the left kidney and a pathological examination of the nephrectom...

Increased carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in individuals without hypertension might indicate other factors promoting the atherosclerotic process that are often simultaneously clustered in individuals. The present study tested the hypothesis that carotid IMT predicts new onset of hypertension in the normotensive subjects.A total of 867 participants were enrolled from our yearly physical che...

The role of flavonoids in CVD is still unclear. In this cross-sectional study we assessed the relation between the intakes of twenty-six flavonoids from five subclasses: flavonols, flavones, flavanones, flavan-3-ols and anthocyanidins, and the mean common carotid artery intima-media thickness (CCA-IMT). The study population consisted of 1380 middle-aged eastern Finnish men for whom the mean CCA...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE An increase in intima-media thickness (IMT) in the common carotid artery (CCA) is commonly used as a marker of atherosclerosis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between IMT in the CCA and atherosclerosis in the carotid bifurcation. METHODS 182 consecutive patients (mean age, 67 years) referred for carotid duplex scanning were included. We me...

The Carotid Atherosclerosis Italian Ultrasound study (CAIUS), a multicenter, double-blind clinical trial, performed in 305 asymptomatic, moderately hypercholesterolemic patients, clearly demonstrated beneficial effects of pravastatin on the carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) progression. The database of the CAIUS study was examined in order to investigate the presence of a relationship, if an...