Till Finlands folk

Helsingfors 1917

Tuberous sclerosis: literature review and case report

Tuberous sclerosis (TS) or Bourneville"s disease is a rare, multisystemic genetic disorder. It involves alterations to ectodermal and mesodermal cell differentiation and proliferation, causing benign hamartomatous tumors, neurofibromas and angiofibromas in the brain and other vital organs including the kidney, heart, eyes, lungs, skin and mucosa. It also affects the central nervous system and produces neurological dysfunctions such as seizures, mental retardation and behavior disorders. Tuberous (rootshaped) growths develop in the brain, and calcify over time, becoming hard and sclerotic, hence the name given to the disease. Although inheritance is autosomal dominant, 60-70% of cases occur through spontaneous mutations. The disease is related to some mutations or alterations in two genes, named TSC1 and TSC2. Discovered in 1997, TSC1 is located on chromosome 9q34 and produces a protein called hamartin. TSC2, discovered in 1993, is located on chromosome 16p13 and produces a protein called tuberin. The prevalence of the disease is 1/6000-10,000 live newborns, and it is estimated that there are 1-2 million sufferers worldwide. This paper presents a literature review and a family case report of a mother and two of her daughters with oral features of TS

Erupted odontomas: a report of three cases and review of the literature

Introduction: Odontomas are benign odontogenic tumors composed of enamel, dentine, cement and pulp tissue. They are usually clinically asymptomatic, but often associated with tooth eruption disturbances. In exceptional cases the odontoma erupts into the mouth. The present study reports three cases of odontomas erupted into the oral cavity and reviews the literature. Clinical cases: The first case was an 11-year-old girl with impacted 4.6 associated to a radiopaque mass measuring about 2 cm in diameter. The histological diagnosis was complex odontoma. A clinical and radiological follow-up of 4.6 was carried out until its spontaneous eruption. The second case was a 26-year-old male presenting a hard, yellowish-brown mass located distal to the upper left second molar. Computed tomography confi rmed the presence of a radiopaque lesion, and the histopathological study confirmed a complex odontoma. The third patient was a 27-year-old male reporting tongue irritation due to tooth eruption in the inferior lingual region. A periapical radiograph revealed a mixed radiopaque lesion associated to impacted 3.2. The histological report in this case indicated a compound odontoma. Discussion: Odontomas erupting into the oral cavity are rare. The first case was published in 1980, and since then only 17 cases have been reported in the literature. Eight of the 17 cases were complex odontomas; the rest were compound odontomas. Pain, swelling and infection were the most common symptoms, and 13 cases presented an impacted tooth associated with the lesion

Vironsusia Suomen maisemassa : ihmissusi uskomusperinteessä ja kaunokirjallisuudessa

Summary: Werewolves in folk beliefs and literature

Citizenship education in Switzerland before, during and after the First World War

Citizenship education was intensively discussed during the 1910s. Patriotic ideals and the love of the fatherland were described with diligence in teachers' journals. After the outbreak of the World War I, Swiss teachers reacted immediately to the new circumstances and published lessons in their weekly teacher journals for every day of school for different grade levels. These lessons comprised current events and civic education as well as didactical instructions for the teacher. In pupils' essays, citizens are often depicted as religious members of society who are industrious and hardworking, whereas in the journals, religious aspects are related to peace but not to citizenship education. As a multilingual and neutral country, Switzerland struggled with major domestic problems due to the cultural conflict between the French- and the German-speaking regions, especially during wartime. However, teachers promoted unity from the beginning. Therefore, changes and continuities during this decade concerning citizenship education are of crucial research interest. The practical sections of teachers' journals, including lessons and didactical instructions, and pupils' essays provide insight into what happened in the classrooms. Which forms of national identity and citizenship were taught in classrooms before, during and shortly after WW1 in public schools in Switzerland? How did pupils describe the current issues of war and citizenship?

Automatic target validation based on neuroscientific literature mining for tractography.

Target identification for tractography studies requires solid anatomical knowledge validated by an extensive literature review across species for each seed structure to be studied. Manual literature review to identify targets for a given seed region is tedious and potentially subjective. Therefore, complementary approaches would be useful. We propose to use text-mining models to automatically suggest potential targets from the neuroscientific literature, full-text articles and abstracts, so that they can be used for anatomical connection studies and more specifically for tractography. We applied text-mining models to three structures: two well-studied structures, since validated deep brain stimulation targets, the internal globus pallidus and the subthalamic nucleus and, the nucleus accumbens, an exploratory target for treating psychiatric disorders. We performed a systematic review of the literature to document the projections of the three selected structures and compared it with the targets proposed by text-mining models, both in rat and primate (including human). We ran probabilistic tractography on the nucleus accumbens and compared the output with the results of the text-mining models and literature review. Overall, text-mining the literature could find three times as many targets as two man-weeks of curation could. The overall efficiency of the text-mining against literature review in our study was 98% recall (at 36% precision), meaning that over all the targets for the three selected seeds, only one target has been missed by text-mining. We demonstrate that connectivity for a structure of interest can be extracted from a very large amount of publications and abstracts. We believe this tool will be useful in helping the neuroscience community to facilitate connectivity studies of particular brain regions. The text mining tools used for the study are part of the HBP Neuroinformatics Platform, publicly available at http://connectivity-brainer.rhcloud.com/.

Quality of life after pulmonary embolism: Prospective validation of the German version of the PEmb-QoL questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: The Pulmonary Embolism Quality of Life questionnaire (PEmb-QoL) is a 40-item questionnaire to measure health-related quality of life in patients with pulmonary embolism. It covers six 6 dimensions: frequency of complaints, limitations in activities of daily living, work-related problems, social limitations, intensity of complaints, and emotional complaints. Originally developed in Dutch and English, we prospectively validated a German version of the PEmb-QoL. METHODS: A forward-backward translation of the English version of the PEmb-QoL into German was performed. German-speaking consecutive adult patients aged ≥18 years with an acute, objectively confirmed pulmonary embolism discharged from a Swiss university hospital (01/2011-06/2013) were recruited telephonically. Established psychometric tests and criteria were used to evaluate the acceptability, reliability, and validity of the German PEmb-QoL questionnaire. To assess the underlying dimensions, an exploratory factor analysis was performed. RESULTS: Overall, 102 patients were enrolled in the study. The German version of the PEmb-QoL showed a good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.72 to 0.96), item-total (0.53-0.95) and inter-item correlations (>0.4), and test-retest reliability (intra-class correlation coefficients 0.59-0.89) for the dimension scores. A moderate correlation of the PEmb-QoL with SF-36 dimension and summary scores (0.21-0.83) indicated convergent validity, while low correlations of PEmb-QoL dimensions with clinical characteristics (-0.16-0.37) supported discriminant validity. The exploratory factor analysis suggested four underlying dimensions: limitations in daily activities, symptoms, work-related problems, and emotional complaints. CONCLUSION: The German version of the PEmb-QoL questionnaire is a valid and reliable disease-specific measure for quality of life in patients with pulmonary embolism.

Is high dose rate brachytherapy reliable and effective treatment for prostate cancer patients? A review of the literature.

The intrinsic physical and radiobiological characteristics of High Dose Rate Brachytherapy (HDR-BT) are well suited to the treatment of prostate cancer. HDR-BT was initially used as a boost to external beam brachytherapy, but has subsequently been employed as the sole treatment, which is termed HDR monotherapy. This review summarizes the clinical outcomes and toxicity results of the principal studies and discusses the radiobiological basis supporting its use.