Recently, two studies have shown that an ELISPOT assay using mononuclear cells (MCs) compartmentalised in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is an accurate and rapid rule-out or rule-in test for tuberculosis meningitis (TBM) in conjunction with other rapid tests [1, 2]. However, these two studies had limitations: the majority (94%) of enrolled patients were infected with HIV in one study [2], and th...

Tracheobronchomalacia (TBM) is defined as the condition where the airway lumen narrows more than 50 percent. The acquired TBM usually occurs in adults; however, the prevalence of TBM in asthma is unknown. We report two cases of severe asthma in elderly patients that could not be controlled with higher medication use. Case 1 was a 70-year-old woman with sever persistent asthma for 10 years, pres...

For high-accuracy template-based-modeling of CASP7 targets, we have applied a procedure based on the rigorous optimization of score functions at three stages: multiple alignment, chain building, and side-chain modeling. We applied the conformational space annealing method to a newly developed consistency based score function for multiple alignment. For chain building, we optimized the MODELLER ...

Twelve cases of tracheobronchomalacia (TBM) cases were reviewed: five were pediatric, and seven were adult, two of which were due to relapsing polychondritis (RPC). In pediatric TBM, the malacic segments were short. Resection of the malacic segment in one case and laryngotracheoplasty with autologous costal cartilage in one case were unsuccessful. However, aortopexy gained good results. Two cas...

We introduce Thurstonian Boltzmann Machines (TBM), a unified architecture that can naturally incorporate a wide range of data inputs at the same time. Our motivation rests in the Thurstonian view that many discrete data types can be considered as being generated from a subset of underlying latent continuous variables, and in the observation that each realisation of a discrete type imposes certa...

Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is a devastating form of tuberculosis that occurs predominantly in children and in immunocompromised adults. To study the pathogenesis of TBM, a rabbit model of acute mycobacterial central nervous system infection was set up (8-day study). Inoculation of live Mycobacterium bovis Ravenel intracisternally induced leukocytosis (predominantly mononuclear cells), high pr...

This prospective study was done over seven years from 1996 to 2003 to investigate the chest computed tomography scan findings along with other radiologic examinations that included chest roentgenography and cranial computed tomography in children with tuberculous meningitis (TBM). Chest roentgenography demonstrated abnormal findings in 32 cases (43%) (hilar adenopathy, 32%; miliary pattern, 18%...

Tensor-based morphometry (TBM) is an analysis technique where anatomical information is characterized by means of the spatial transformations between a customized template and observed images. Therefore, accurate inter-subject non-rigid registration is an essential prerrequisite. Further statistical analysis of the spatial transformations is used to highlight some useful information, such as lo...

To study the efficiency of Polymerase Chain Reaction for the diagnosis of clinically suspected tuberculous meningitis, a rapid molecular technique was established. The conventional bacteriological methods rarely detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in CSF and are of limited use in diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis (TBM). This double blind study was, therefore, directed to the molecular analysis ...

We present a novel persistent homological sparse network analysis framework for characterizing white matter abnormalities in tensor-based morphometry (TBM) in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Traditionally TBM is used in quantifying tissue volume change in each voxel in a massive univariate fashion. However, this obvious approach cannot be used in testing, for instance, if the change in one vo...