Importance of 1H-MR spectroscopy of the brain to identify the minimal hepatic encephalopathy in different patients with liver cirrhosis: A prospective study.

Objectives: Liver cirrhosis patients commonly progress to minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) with cognitive impairment and raised blood ammonia and proinflammatory cytokines levels. This study aims to identify the subjects of MHE in patients with liver cirrhosis by hydrogen 1 magnetic resonance (1H-MR) spectroscopy of the brain, serum proinflammatory cytokines, and neuropsychiatric tests. Materials and Methods: This prospective was carried out on 100 patients of liver cirrhosis without overt hepatic encephalopathy (HE) and compared with 100 healthy controls in a tertiary care hospital in Northeast India between September 2017 and October 2019. The psychometric hepatic encephalopathy score (PHES) neuropsychological tests, cranial MRIwith 1H-MR spectroscopy, and estimation of serum interleukin 6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) were done. The PHES scores and serum proinflammatory markers levels were correlated with the conventional and 1H-MR spectroscopy findings of the brain. Results: The mean PHES score in the case group was -7.58±3.43 (standard deviation [SD]) and the control group was -3.41 ± 3.87 (SD). Patients with Child-Pugh class A (n = 8) had a PHES score of -8.7 ± 2.5 (SD), class B (n = 42) -7.62 ± 3.7 (SD), and class C (n = 50) had a score of -7.36 ± 3.3 (SD). The mean value of IL-6 and TNF-α in the case group was 219 ± 180 (SD) pg/mL and 99 ± 118 (SD) pg/mL and the control group was 67.4 ± 77 (SD) pg/mL and 57.5 ± 76 (SD) pg/mL. Globus pallidus T1-weighted hyperintensities on the visibility scale with a visibility score of 0 were observed in 39 cases, a score of 1 in 38 cases, and a score of 2 in 23 cases. Increased glutamate/glutamine/creatine (Glx/Cr) ratio was identified in the case group on MR spectroscopy as compared to the control (0.95 ± 0.24 vs. 0.31 ± 0.19, P < 0.0005), a decrease of myoinositol/creatine (mI/Cr) ratio (0.11 ± 0.13 vs. 0.30 ± 0.12, P < 0.0005), and increase choline/creatine (Cho/Cr) ratio (0.69 ± 0.26 vs. 0.61 ± 0.20, P < 0.0005). There was a statistically significant difference in Glx/Cr, mI/Cr and Cho/Cr ratio between the case and control groups with P < 0.0005. Conclusion: Predicting the development of MHE in established cases of liver cirrhosis using non-invasive modalities like PHES, IL-6, TNF-α levels, and 1H-MR spectroscopy plays an important role in further progression to overt HE and coma.

Serum Small Extracellular Vesicles Proteome of Tuberculosis Patients Demonstrated Deregulated Immune Response.

PURPOSE: Detailed understanding of host pathogen interaction in tuberculosis is an important avenue for identifying novel therapeutic targets. Small extracellular vesicles (EVs) like exosomes that are rich in proteins, nucleic acids and lipids, act as messengers and may show altered composition in disease conditions. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: In this case control study, small EVs are isolated from serum of 58 subjects (all male, 33 (15-70) in years) including drug naïve active tuberculosis (ATB: n = 22), non-tuberculosis (NTB: n = 18), and healthy subjects (n = 18). Serum small EVs proteome analysis is carried out using isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) experiments and an independent sample (n = 36) is used for validation. RESULTS: A set of 132 and 68 proteins are identified in iTRAQ-I (ATB/Healthy) and iTRAQ-II (ATB/NTB) experiments, respectively. Four proteins (KYAT3, SERPINA1, HP, and APOC3) show deregulation (log2 -fold change > ±0.48, p < 0.05) in ATB with respect to healthy controls and Western blot data corroborated mass spectrometry findings. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: These important proteins, involved in neutrophil degranulation, plasma heme scavenging, kynurenine, and lipid metabolism, show deregulation in ATB patients. Identification of such a protein panel in circulating small EVs besides providing novel insights into their role in tuberculosis may prove to be useful targets to develop host-directed therapeutic intervention.

Seroprevalence of Cysticercus Antibodies in Japanese Encephalitis Patients in Upper Assam, India: A Hospital Based Study.

INTRODUCTION: Co-infection of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Cysticercosis is attributed mainly to the common epidemiological features between the two diseases. Not much is known about the clinical implications of one infection over the other. AIM: The study aimed at establishing whether JE-Cysticercosis co-infection is prevalent in the Upper Assam districts and to explore additional details about such co-infections both clinically and epidemiologically. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study was a retrospective cross-sectional hospital based study conducted between July 2013 and June 2014 and included 272 Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) patients. Out of this, 137 JE positive and 135 non-JE Acute encephalitis patients were taken as cases and controls respectively. The diagnosis of JE and Cysticercosis was established by ELISA. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: EpiInfo ver. 7 was used for statistical analysis. Chi-square was used and p-value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. RESULTS: The association of Cysticercosis with JE was found to be statistically significant (14.6%, p = 0.0019) in the cases with reference to the controls (3.7%). Moreover, the co-infections were found to be more common in case of adults (19.32%, p = 0.0360); with males having a greater odds (5.25, p = 0.0008) of harbouring the parasite as compared to females. CONCLUSION: The study proves that the association of Cysticercosis and JE holds true in this region.