POSTPARTUM PHLEBECTOMY

Saphenous vein ligation and stripping was performed on 27 patients in the immediate postpartum period without complications. Doing the operation at this time saves time and money. Technically it is easier to do postpartum than during pregnancy, and the patients have less postoperative discomfort than is usual with phlebectomy at other times.     

Drug2ways: Reasoning over causal paths in biological networks for drug discovery

Elucidating the causal mechanisms responsible for disease can reveal potential therapeutic targets for pharmacological intervention and, accordingly, guide drug repositioning and discovery. In essence, the topology of a network can reveal the impact a drug candidate may have on a given biological state, leading the way for enhanced disease characterization and the design of advanced therapies. Network-based approaches, in particular, are highly suited for these purposes as they hold the capacity to identify the molecular mechanisms underlying disease. Here, we present drug2ways, a novel methodology that leverages multimodal causal networks for predicting drug candidates. Drug2ways implements an efficient algorithm which reasons over causal paths in large-scale biological networks to propose drug candidates for a given disease. We validate our approach using clinical trial information and demonstrate how drug2ways can be used for multiple applications to identify: i) single-target drug candidates, ii) candidates with polypharmacological properties that can optimize multiple targets, and iii) candidates for combination therapy. Finally, we make drug2ways available to the scientific community as a Python package that enables conducting these applications on multiple standard network formats.     

The destruction of spores of Bacillus subtilis by the combined effects of hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light

Ultraviolet light irradiation of bacterial spores in the presence of hydrogen peroxide has been shown to produce synergistic kills when compared with ultraviolet light (u.v.) and hydrogen peroxide used sequentially. This use in combination has been patented for the commercial sterilization of packaging before filling with UHT-processed products. Previous results have shown that lamps producing u.v. light with a maximum output at about 254 nm were extremely effective. Results obtained using a Synchrotron radiation source to produce a narrow band of irradiation now shows that the greatest kill of spores of Bacillus subtilis in the presence of hydrogen peroxide is obtained with radiation at ˜270 nm. Such results suggest that the action of the u.v. light is not directly on the spore DNA but may be related to the production of free hydroxyl radicals from hydrogen peroxide.