A CMOS wireless biomolecular sensing system-on-chip based on polysilicon nanowire technology.

As developments of modern societies, an on-field and personalized diagnosis has become important for disease prevention and proper treatment. To address this need, in this work, a polysilicon nanowire (poly-Si NW) based biosensor system-on-chip (bio-SSoC) is designed and fabricated by a 0.35 µm 2-Poly-4-Metal (2P4M) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process provided by a commercialized semiconductor foundry. Because of the advantages of CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) technologies, the poly-Si NW biosensor is integrated with a chopper differential-difference amplifier (DDA) based analog-front-end (AFE), a successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC), and a microcontroller to have better sensing capabilities than a traditional Si NW discrete measuring system. In addition, an on-off key (OOK) wireless transceiver is also integrated to form a wireless bio-SSoC technology. This is pioneering work to harness the momentum of CMOS integrated technology into emerging bio-diagnosis technologies. This integrated technology is experimentally examined to have a label-free and low-concentration biomolecular detection for both Hepatitis B Virus DNA (10 fM) and cardiac troponin I protein (3.2 pM). Based on this work, the implemented wireless bio-SSoC has demonstrated a good biomolecular sensing characteristic and a potential for low-cost and mobile applications. As a consequence, this developed technology can be a promising candidate for on-field and personalized applications in biomedical diagnosis.

Evaluation of documented drug interactions and contraindications associated with herbs and dietary supplements: a systematic literature review.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The use of herbs and dietary supplements (HDS) alone or concomitantly with medications can potentially increase the risk of adverse events experienced by the patients. This review aims to evaluate the documented HDS-drug interactions and contraindications. METHODS: A structured literature review was conducted on PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, tertiary literature and Internet. RESULTS: While 85 primary literatures, six books and two web sites were reviewed for a total of 1,491 unique pairs of HDS-drug interactions, 213 HDS entities and 509 medications were involved. HDS products containing St. John's Wort, magnesium, calcium, iron, ginkgo had the greatest number of documented interactions with medications. Warfarin, insulin, aspirin, digoxin, and ticlopidine had the greatest number of reported interactions with HDS. Medications affecting the central nervous system or cardiovascular system had more documented interactions with HDS. Of the 882 HDS-drug interactions being described its mechanism and severity, 42.3% were due to altered pharmacokinetics and 240 were described as major interactions. Of the 152 identified HDS contraindications, the most frequent involved gastrointestinal (16.4%), neurological (14.5%), and renal/genitourinary diseases (12.5%). Flaxseed, echinacea, and yohimbe had the largest number of documented contraindications. CONCLUSIONS: Although HDS-drug interactions and contraindications primarily concerned a relatively small subset of commonly used medications and HDS entities, this review provides the summary to identify patients, HDS products, and medications that are more susceptible to HDS-drug interactions and contraindications. The findings would facilitate the health-care professionals to communicate these documented interactions and contraindications to their patients and/or caregivers thereby preventing serious adverse events and improving desired therapeutic outcomes.

Successful control of bleeding from gastric antral vascular ectasia (watermelon stomach) by laser photocoagulation.

We report a case of gastric antral vascular ectasia in a patient with primary biliary cirrhosis in whom chronic blood loss was a major problem. She required repeated blood transfusions that were complicated by reactions and still had persistent anaemia. She was treated with laser phototherapy in the form of quadrantic photocoagulation with a neodynium yttrium-aluminium-garnet laser. This greatly improved the endoscopic appearance of the gastric lesions and effectively controlled blood loss. She required no further transfusions. Bleeding recurred after 11 months which was controlled by further laser photocoagulation.

Probable Crohn's colitis mimicking ischaemic colitis in a young adult.

The features on barium enema of ischaemic colitis is characteristic and the radiological sign of "thumb printing" thought to be almost pathognomonic of the condition. We report a case of inflammatory bowel disease, probably Crohn's disease mimicking these radiological features. This has not to our knowledge been previously documented.