Isolation and characterisation of N-benzyl tadalafil as a novel adulterant in a coffee-based dietary supplement.

A new tadalafil analogue was detected via high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-diode array detection (DAD) during routine screening of health foods suspected of adulteration with erectile dysfunction drugs. The UV absorption spectrum of the unknown was almost identical to that of tadalafil. The analogue was purified by preparative HPLC and structural elucidation carried out by mass spectrometric and NMR spectroscopic experiments. The spectral data revealed that this tadalafil analogue bears a benzyl group instead of the methyl group. The isolated compound was identified as N-benzyl tadalafil. Considering the risk it poses to public health, this new PDE-5 analogues for ED should be included on the inspection list for illegal products.

Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity.

The mental contents of perception and imagery are thought to be encoded in hierarchical representations in the brain, but previous attempts to visualize perceptual contents have failed to capitalize on multiple levels of the hierarchy, leaving it challenging to reconstruct internal imagery. Recent work showed that visual cortical activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be decoded (translated) into the hierarchical features of a pre-trained deep neural network (DNN) for the same input image, providing a way to make use of the information from hierarchical visual features. Here, we present a novel image reconstruction method, in which the pixel values of an image are optimized to make its DNN features similar to those decoded from human brain activity at multiple layers. We found that our method was able to reliably produce reconstructions that resembled the viewed natural images. A natural image prior introduced by a deep generator neural network effectively rendered semantically meaningful details to the reconstructions. Human judgment of the reconstructions supported the effectiveness of combining multiple DNN layers to enhance the visual quality of generated images. While our model was solely trained with natural images, it successfully generalized to artificial shapes, indicating that our model was not simply matching to exemplars. The same analysis applied to mental imagery demonstrated rudimentary reconstructions of the subjective content. Our results suggest that our method can effectively combine hierarchical neural representations to reconstruct perceptual and subjective images, providing a new window into the internal contents of the brain.

Adult-onset hypophosphatemic osteomalacia associated with Sjogren syndrome: Clinical case report.

RATIONALE: Hypophosphatemic osteomalacia (HO) is a metabolic bone disease, exhibiting different etiologies such as genetic mutation, tumor induction, dysimmunity, or renal disease. Sjogren's syndrome (SS) is a connective tissue disorder commonly involving exocrine glands; however kidney involvement is also encountered, leading to abnormal phosphorus metabolism, even HO. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 47-year-old female patient presented progressively worsening pain in the chest wall, back and bilateral lower extremities as well as muscle weakness was referred to our department. DIAGNOSES, INTERVENTIONS AND OUTCOMES: Due to the laboratory test results, radiographic findings and pathologic results, she was diagnosed with adult-onset HO associated with SS. She was then treated with alkalinization, steroids, neutral phosphate, calcium supplements together with activated vitamin D. So far, she recovered uneventfully with relieved pain and increased serum phosphorus level. LESSONS: HO may be secondary to renal tubular acidosis of SS patients, and it might be a diagnostic challenge when the kidney involvement in SS is latent and precede the typical sicca symptoms.

Unusual Uptake of Radioiodine in a Subcutaneous Lipoma in a Patient With Differentiated Thyroid Cancer.

A 68-year-old man underwent adjuvant radioiodine therapy for follicular variant papillary thyroid carcinoma. Post-therapeutic whole-body I scan showed abnormal radioiodine uptake on the right side of back. SPECT/CT localized this abnormal activity from a small subcutaneous lesion with fat density between the right 10th and 11th rib. Under ultrasound-guided autopsy, the lesion was confirmed as lipoma.