Exposure to anesthetic gases and Parkinson’s disease: a case report

Background

The administration of anesthetics determines depression of the central nervous system and general anesthesia by inhalation may cause an environmental pollution of the operating rooms. It may therefore conceive a possible occupational etiology of Parkinson's Disease (PD).

Case presentation

In a Caucasian male aged 59 years, PD was diagnosed by brain scans with a presynaptic radioactive tracer of the dopaminergic system. Family history was negative for Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor. He was a smoker, a moderate consumer of coffee and alcohol, and never exposed to pesticides/metals. For 30 years (since the age of 29 until today), he worked as an anesthesiologist in private clinics in the Veneto (Northern Italy), exposed to anesthetic gases. The time elapsed from first exposure to onset of disease is 22 years, fulfilling the requirement of the induction/latency period. A literature search demonstrated unacceptable levels of anesthetic gases in public hospitals of the Veneto region from 1990 to 1999. This exposure was presumably high also in private hospitals of the region until at least 2007, when an overexposure to sevoflurane was repeatedly measured in this patient. The association between occupational exposure to anesthetic gases and risk of Parkinson’s disease was supported by a case-control study (reporting a two-fold increase in the risk of PD associated with a clinical history of general anesthesia) and a cohort study comparing mortality from PD between US anesthesiologists and internists (showing a statistically significant excess (p=0.01) in anesthesiologists compared to internists). Numerous recent mechanistic studies (in vitro essays and in vivo short-term studies) strengthened the association between exposure to anesthetic gases (nitrous oxide, halothane, isoflurane, levoflurane) and PD.

Conclusion

In view of the limited evidence of human studies and the sufficient evidence of experimental studies, the high exposure to anesthetic gases could have induced PD in the subject under study.

     

Australia’s vanishing fleas (Insecta: Siphonaptera): a case study in methods for the assessment and conservation of threatened flea species

While invertebrate conservation is attracting increased funding and interest, research remains heavily skewed towards ‘flagship’ insect groups like bees and butterflies. This has resulted in a knowledge gap relating to less popular but equally imperilled groups like fleas. Methods for the risk assessment of host specific parasites were used to determine the conservation status of all host specific flea species distributed in Australia. The results indicated one species apparently extinct, two critically endangered, two endangered, and three vulnerable. Based on these results, novel methods for the conservation of threatened fleas are outlined, including the concepts of holistic conservation and the cryptic loss effect.     

Energetics of child’s organism: Qualitative and quantitative specifics

The review summarizes data on the age-related transformations of energy metabolism observed in the human ontogeny from birth to maturity. It is shown that elevated level of basal energy consumptions of a child is not associated with the activity of growth processes. Upon maturing the body structures, qualitative changes of metabolic processes are observed, which generally lead to economizing and expanding the functional range. At the same time, the specialized structures (brown adipose tissue) that ensure energy dissipation and are thereby involved in maintaining homeostasis are usually retained even in adults. It is assumed that the increased metabolic rate in childhood forms the body’s resistance due to the “gyroscopic effect” and thus allows safely overcoming the most strained and important stages of ontogeny.     

It’s a wrap: encapsulation as a management tool for marine biofouling

Encapsulation of fouled structures is an effective tool for countering incursions by non-indigenous biofoulers. However, guidelines for the implementation of encapsulation treatments are yet to be established. This study evaluated the effects of temperature, biomass, community composition, treatment duration and the biocide acetic acid on biofoulers. In laboratory trials using the model organisms Ciona spp. and Mytilus galloprovincialis, increasing the temperature or biomass speeded up the development of a toxic environment. Total mortality for Ciona spp. occurred within 72 and 24 h at 10 and 19°C, respectively. M. galloprovincialis survived up to 18 days, with high biomass increasing mortality at 10°C only. In a field study, three-month-old and four-year-old communities were encapsulated with and without acetic acid. Mortality took up to 10 days for communities encapsulated without acetic acid, compared to 48 h with acetic acid. The insights gained from this study will be useful in developing standardised encapsulation protocols.     

Masson’s tumor of the kidney: a case report

Background

Intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia (known also as Masson’s tumor) is a benign vascular lesion that commonly occurs in the skin and is rarely found in solid organs, especially in the kidney. In what follows, we will look into the first case of an unexpectedly diagnosed Masson’s tumor of the kidney presenting as a suspicious renal cyst.

Case presentation

A 61-year-old Arab man presented with a left renal cyst, incidentally revealed by ultrasonography. The laboratory values were unremarkable. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated a 38 mm left renal midportion Bosniak IV cyst. Our patient underwent a radical nephrectomy. Histopathology revealed the diagnosis of intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia. There was no recurrence detected after 9 years of follow-up.

Conclusions

Renal intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia is a rare benign tumor which can mimic a suspicious renal mass on radiological findings. Thus, this entity should be considered more often in the thick of the diagnostic possibilities in order to avoid unnecessary nephrectomies.

     

Testing predictions from flight mechanical theory: a case study of Cory’s shearwater and Audouin’s gull

Predictions from flight mechanical theory concerning optimal flight speeds were tested in the field in two Mediterranean seabirds, the Cory’s shearwater Calonectris diomedea and the Audouin’s gull Larus audouinii. Both species were commuting off the coast of Isola di San Pietro, 6 km south-west of the coast of Sardinia. Heading and airspeed were obtained by vector calculation of flight tracks and measured wind. The Cory’s shearwater used a mixture of gliding and active flight. At low wind speeds the proportion of active flight was large but it decreased with increasing wind speed. The mean airspeed was 12.0 m s^–1, which is not significantly different from minimum power speed (V _mp) in active flight or the speed for best glide (V _bg) used in gliding flight. However, the shearwaters showed a significant response to wind increment/decrement, indicating that they were not flying at V _mp, which should be unaffected by head and tailwind. Furthermore, shearwaters can potentially reduce induced drag by the ground effect while flying close to the sea surface at weak winds, which leads to a reduction in characteristic flight speed. We suspect that the predictions for gliding flight are most valid for shearwaters at moderate to high wind speeds, when they should be maximising distance by using V _bg. Audouin’s gulls used active flight exclusively, with a mean airspeed of 11.3 m s^–1 that was significantly different from the predicted V _mp. Interestingly, though, the gulls did not show any significant wind response, indicating that they were flying close to their true V _mp when foraging along the coast. Received: 17 May 2000 / Received in revised form: 21 November 2000 / Accepted: 8 January 2001     

Usefulness of core needle biopsy for the diagnosis of thyroid Burkitt’s lymphoma: a case report and review of the literature

Background

Thyroid lymphomas are an exceptional finding in patients with thyroid nodules. Burkitt’s lymphoma is one of the rarest and most aggressive forms of thyroid lymphomas, and its prognosis depends on the earliness of medical treatment. Given the rarity of this disease, making a prompt diagnosis can be challenging. For instance, fine-needle aspiration (FNA) cytology, which is the first-line diagnostic test that is performed in patients with thyroid nodules, is often not diagnostic in cases of thyroid lymphomas, with subsequent delay of the start of therapy.

Case presentation

Here we report the case of a 52-year-old woman presenting with a rapidly enlarging thyroid mass. Thyroid ultrasonography demonstrated a solid hypoechoic nodule. FNA cytology was only suggestive of a lymphoproliferative disorder and did not provide a definitive diagnosis. It is core needle biopsy (CNB) that helped us to overcome the limitations of routine FNA cytology, showing the presence of thyroid Burkitt’s lymphoma. Subsequent staging demonstrated bone marrow involvement. The early start of an intensive multi-agent chemotherapy resulted in complete disease remission. At 60 months after the diagnosis, the patient is alive and has not had any recurrence.

Conclusions

Clinicians should be aware that thyroid Burkitt’s lymphoma is an aggressive disease that needs to be treated with multi-agent chemotherapy as soon as possible. To diagnose it promptly, they should consider to order/perform a CNB in any patient with a rapidly enlarging thyroid mass that is suspicious for lymphoma.

     

Sustainable Forestry and Local People: The Case of Hainan’s Li Minority

On the island of Hainan, China, the provincial government has recently committed itself to sustainable development, which requires the integration of social, environmental, and economic factors in decision making. However, while Hainan’s recent Eco-province designation establishes environmental and economic factors as the basis of policy development, it overlooks the equally important social component of sustainability, in which social needs and values are key considerations. This paper presents the results of a study on Hainan in 2002, with government officials, forestry workers, and the Li, an indigenous minority group, and places the province’s situation within the context of both the larger changes underway in China, and the theory and practice of sustainable forestry. The research results show that the government of Hainan has not yet been able to manage both social welfare and environmental and economic issues, demonstrating the difficulty of implementing sustainable forestry and of balancing short- with long-term goals. The inclusion of Li communities in forestry-related decision making could reduce tensions between local communities and forestry management and also improve the sustainability of the government’s forestry practices.

Towards the quantitative characterisation of piglets’ robustness to weaning: a modelling approach

Weaning is a critical transition phase in swine production in which piglets must cope with different stressors that may affect their health. During this period, the prophylactic use of antibiotics is still frequent to limit piglet morbidity, which raises both economic and public health concerns such as the appearance of antimicrobial-resistant microbes. With the interest of developing tools for assisting health and management decisions around weaning, it is key to provide robustness indexes that inform on the animals’ capacity to endure the challenges associated with weaning. This work aimed at developing a modelling approach for facilitating the quantification of piglet resilience to weaning. A total of 325 Large White pigs weaned at 28 days of age were monitored and further housed and fed conventionally during the post-weaning period without antibiotic administration. Body weight and diarrhoea scores were recorded before and after weaning, and blood was sampled at weaning and 1 week later for collecting haematological data. A dynamic model was constructed based on the Gompertz–Makeham law to describe live weight trajectories during the first 75 days after weaning, following the rationale that the animal response is partitioned in two time windows (a perturbation and a recovery window). Model calibration was performed for each animal. Our results show that the transition time between the two time windows, as well as the weight trajectories are characteristic for each individual. The model captured the weight dynamics of animals at different degrees of perturbation, with an average coefficient of determination of 0.99, and a concordance correlation coefficient of 0.99. The utility of the model is that it provides biologically meaningful parameters that inform on the amplitude and length of perturbation, and the rate of animal recovery. Our rationale is that the dynamics of weight inform on the capability of the animal to cope with the weaning disturbance. Indeed, there were significant correlations between model parameters and individual diarrhoea scores and haematological traits. Overall, the parameters of our model can be useful for constructing weaning robustness indexes by using exclusively the growth curves. We foresee that this modelling approach will provide a step forward in the quantitative characterisation of robustness.     

Flight dynamics of Cory’s shearwater foraging in a coastal environment

Flight dynamics theories are influenced by two major topics: how birds adapt their flight to cope with heterogeneous habitats, and whether birds plan to use the wind field or simply experience it. The aim of this study was to understand the flight dynamics of free-flying Cory’s shearwaters in relation to the wind characteristics on the coastal upwelling region of continental Portugal. We deployed recently miniaturised devices—global positioning system loggers to collect precise and detailed information on birds’ positions and motions. Prevalent winds were blowing from the north-east and adults used those winds by adjusting their flight directions mainly towards north-west and south-west, flying with cross and tail winds, respectively, and avoiding head winds. This is confirmation that Cory’s shearwaters use a shear soaring flying strategy while exploiting the environment for food: adults foraged mainly with cross winds and their ground speed was not constant during all foraging trips as it changed dynamically as a result of the ocean surface shear winds. During travelling phases, ground speed was strongly influenced by the position of the bird with regard to the wind direction, as ground speed increased significantly with increasing tail wind component (TWC) values. Adults appear to choose foraging directions to exploit ambient wind, in order to improve shear soaring efficiency (cross winding) and exploit diurnal changes in tail wind strength to maximise commuting efficiency. We report, for the first time, precise ground speed values (GPS-derived data) and computed actual flight speed values (using TWC analysis) for Cory’s shearwater.     

A case of Kartagener’s syndrome: Importance of early diagnosis and treatment

Kartagener’s syndrome is a very rare congenital malformation comprising of a classic triad of sinusitis, situs inversus and bronchiectasis. Primary ciliary dyskinesia is a genetic disorder with manifestations present from early life and this distinguishes it from acquired mucociliary disorders. Approximately one half of patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia have situs inversus and, thus are having Kartagener syndrome. We present a case of 12 year old boy with sinusitis, situs inversus and bronchiectasis. The correct diagnosis of this rare congenital autosomal recessive disorder in early life is important in the overall prognosis of the syndrome, as many of the complications can be prevented if timely management is instituted, as was done in this in this case.     

Molecular and morphological evidence for a new subspecies of Fazila’s Lycian Salamander Lyciasalamandra fazilae in South-west Anatolia

A new subspecies of the Fazila’s Lycian Salamander Lyciasalamandra fazilae is described based on material from ten localities in the Köyce?iz, Ortaca and Dalaman area in south-western Turkey. It is distinguished from the nominotypical subspecies by differences in the colouration pattern, morphometry and the mitochondrial molecular marker 16S rRNA. The distribution area of the new subspecies is located mainly in the western part of Dalaman River except for two seemingly intermediate populations (?erefler and Sarsala-Kap?karg?n). New localities for the species are reported.     

The current status of evidence for and against postnatal oogenesis in mammals: a case of ovarian optimism versus pessimism?

Whether or not oogenesis continues in the ovaries of mammalian females during postnatal life was heavily debated from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. However, in 1951 Lord Solomon Zuckerman published what many consider to be a landmark paper summarizing his personal views of data existing at the time for and against the possibility of postnatal oogenesis. In Zuckerman's opinion, none of the evidence he considered was inconsistent with Waldeyer's initial proposal in 1870 that female mammals cease production of oocytes at or shortly after birth. This conclusion rapidly became dogma, and remained essentially unchallenged until just recently, despite the fact that Zuckerman did not offer a single experiment proving that adult female mammals are incapable of oogenesis. Instead, 20 years later he reemphasized that his conclusion was based solely on an absence of data he felt would be inconsistent with the idea of a nonrenewable oocyte pool provided at birth. However, in the immortal words of Carl Sagan, an "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Indeed, building on the efforts of a few scientists who continued to question this dogma after Zuckerman's treatise in 1951, we reported several data sets in 2004 that were very much inconsistent with the widely held belief that germ cell production in female mammals ceases at birth. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the magnitude of the paradigm shift being proposed, this work reignited a vigorous debate that first began more than a century ago. Our purpose here is to review the experimental evidence offered in recent studies arguing support for and against the possibility that adult mammalian females replenish their oocyte reserve. "Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."-Plato (427-347 BC).     

Narcolepsy due to Parkinson’s disease with a decrease in cerebrospinal-fluid orexin: a case report

Sleep and Biological Rhythms - A 57-year old man became affected by excessive daytime sleepiness. Thereafter, he had difficulty in moving his left limbs and began to walk slowly. He had no...     

Transient synchronization following invasion: revisiting Moran’s model and a case study

Synchrony in forest insect outbreaks is important because the resulting regionalized outbreak dilutes the regulating effects of natural enemies, reduces the landscape’s ability to buffer the disturbance, exacerbates the economic burden on individual stakeholders, and overwhelms the logistical abilities of managers to suppress populations and mitigate impacts. Understanding the process of synchronization of dynamics is therefore a crucial aspect of understanding outbreak dynamics. We studied the second-order log-linear (autoregressive) model to ask what patterns of synchronization across invasion fronts may be expected from Moran’s model. Generally, we show that the time to synchronization in the log-linear model is a complex function of a number of parameters of which the overall strength of regulation, the strength of delayed statistical density dependence, and the relaxation time seem to be of particular importance. Interestingly, while environmental correlation is the crucial determinant of the magnitude of asymptotic synchrony, it does not appear to influence the transient process of synchronization. However, synchronization proceeds much more quickly among weakly periodic populations than among populations that are strongly periodic. As a case study, we investigate synchronization following colonization by gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) populations located along the species’s expanding invasion front in northeastern USA. Data consisted of more than 100 years of county quarantine records and 30 years of detailed defoliation maps. We found that the dynamics of new populations tended to be initially out of synch with the broadly synchronized outbreaks within the established range. However, the outbreak dynamics of these new populations lock on to the regional patterns very quickly—within 10–15 years of invasion. Focusing on parameters that produce periodicity comparable to that seen in real gypsy moth populations, we discuss how the observed synchronization compares to that predicted by the log-linear model. While our results are equivocal, the synchronization appears to be surprisingly rapid, so more mechanistic models may be needed to explain the synchronization observed in this case study.

Mitochondrial DNA and Alzheimer’s disease: a first case–control study of the Tunisian population

Molecular Biology Reports - Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in humans and presents a major health problem throughout the world. The etiology of AD is...     

Metaheuristics and Pontryagin’s minimum principle for optimal therapeutic protocols in cancer immunotherapy: a case study and methods comparison

Journal of Mathematical Biology - In this paper, the performance appropriateness of population-based metaheuristics for immunotherapy protocols is investigated on a comparative basis while the goal...