PURPOSE The consumers' preferences are not considered in developing or implementing new medical technologies. Furthermore, little efforts are made to investigate their demands. Therefore, their preferred surgical method and the factors affecting that preference were investigated in pancreatic surgery. METHODS Six-hundred subjects including 100 medical personnel (MP) and 500 lay persons (LP) w...

Fifty-five fall-born, Simmental-crossbred, male calves were allotted at birth to one of five treatments: bulls castrated at 5 mo and implanted from birth to slaughter (ST); bulls implanted from birth to slaughter (BI-BS); bulls implanted from birth to weaning (BI-BW); bulls implanted from weaning to slaughter (BI-WS) and non-implanted control bulls (CB). Implanted calves received 36 mg of zeran...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Liver stiffness (LS) measurement by means of transient elastography (TE) is accurate to predict fibrosis stage. The effect of antiviral treatment and virologic response on LS was assessed and compared with untreated patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC). METHODS TE was performed at baseline, and at weeks 24, 48, and 72 in 515 patients with CHC. RESULTS 323 treated (62.7%) ...

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic splenectomy (LS) has been proposed as a substitute to open splenectomy (OS) in the treatment of immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). The aim of this study was to compare two cohorts of patients with ITP who underwent OS or LS. PATIENTS AND METHODS From February 1990 to January 1997, 27 patients underwent OS and 22 LS. Perioperative characteristics, outcomes, and comp...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between tissue elasticity before and after antiviral therapy and shear wave as well as strain elastography. METHODS FibroScan and real-time tissue elastography were performed before and after antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis C, and treatment efficacy and elastographic findings were comparatively analyzed. Elasticity was evaluated by measuring l...

Background: Osteoporosis is a chronic disease that contributes substantially to decrease physical activity and decline in the quality of life. Osteoporosis can be diagnosed easily with the use of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) equipment. The aim of this study was to investigate the magnitude of bone loss on proximal femur and lumbar spine LS in pre- and post-menopausal women f...

Background Small-bowel capsule endoscopy (CE) is a prime modality for evaluation of the small bowel. The Lewis score (LS) and the Capsule Endoscopy Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CECDAI) are validated endoscopic indices for quantification of small-bowel inflammation on CE. It is unclear whether these indexes are interchangeable for the evaluation of mucosal inflammation in established Crohn's ...

ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) is a key allosteric enzyme in plant starch biosynthesis. Plant AGPase is a heterotetrameric enzyme that consists of large (LS) and small subunits (SS), which are encoded by two different genes. Computational and experimental studies have revealed that the heterotetrameric assembly of AGPase is thermodynamically weak. Modeling studies followed by the mutage...

The present study explored differences in sensitivity to purinergic agonists, protons, and capsaicin in lumbosacral (LS) and thoracolumbar (TL) sensory neurons that innervate the rat urinary bladder. The majority of LS neurons (93%) were sensitive to alpha,beta-methyleneATP (alpha,beta-metATP) compared with 50% of TL neurons. Based on inactivation kinetics, a slowly desensitizing current evoked...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study was to evaluate the presence and levels of interferon-gamma inducible protein-10 (IP-10) in the plasma and skin of pediatric localized scleroderma (LS) patients compared to those of healthy pediatric controls and to determine if IP-10 levels correlate to clinical disease activity measures. METHODS The presence of IP-10 in the plasma was analyzed using a ...