Adv Exp Med Biol
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Significant advances, especially in microbiologic diagnostics and brain imaging, have broadened our understanding of the etiology, pathogenesis, and natural history of acute encephalitis. In some instances this had led to specific therapies and preventive measures. The clinical hallmark of acute encephalitis is the triad of fever, headache, and altered mental status. ⋯ Beyond this there is another robust but not exhaustive list (Table 2) of important considerations in the differential diagnosis. These include infectious agents (bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and amebic) as well as non-infectious etiologies (parainfectious, post-infectious, autoimmune, neoplastic, cerebrovascular, systemic, and other conditions). The challenge for the clinician is to rapidly hone the list and make critical management decisions by considering the specific features of the setting of the patient's illness, host susceptibility, clinical and neurologic findings, and results of laboratory and imaging studies.
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Mast cells play an important role in the lung in both health and disease. Their primary role is to initiate an appropriate program of inflammation and repair in response to tissue damage initiated by a variety of diverse stimuli. ⋯ A key goal is the development of treatments which attenuate adverse mast cell function when administered chronically to humans in vivo. Such therapies may offer a novel approach to the treatment of many life-threatening diseases.
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Adequate reliability of algorithms and computations of modern medical systems software is a matter of concern because the system software is in charge of satisfying safety requirements of the system environment, i.e., the patient. This chapter aims to present a framework for specifying the behavior of the Continuous Infusion Insulin Pump (CIIP) safety-critical medical system that satisfies diabetic's safety requirements.
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Vaccination is most often studied from a scientific, clinical, or epidemiological perspective, and rightly so, for vaccines are meant to improve health outcomes. But these are not the only lenses through which the effects of vaccination programs can be understood. This chapter provides an economic perspective on vaccination programs, detailing in particular a new line of inquiry that makes a case for the importance of vaccination to achieving national economic aims. ⋯ The chapter begins with a look at recent research that demonstrates powerful links that run from population health to economic well-being. Second, it discusses how knowledge of the economic benefits of health fundamentally transforms how we understand the value of vaccination. And third, it provides evidence for the scale of the returns that countries receive when they invest in immunization programs - returns that have not been fully captured by traditional economic analyses.
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Adult stem cells, especially isolated from bone marrow, have been extensively investigated in recent years. Studies focus on their multiple plasticity oftransdifferentiating into various cell lineages and on their potential in cellular therapy in regenerative medicine. In many cases, there is the need for tissue engineering manipulation. ⋯ We show that one intraperitoneal injection of microencapsulated bone marrow stem cells can prolong the survival of liver failure rat models with 90% of the liver removed surgically. In addition to transdifferentiation, bone marrow stem cells can act as feeder cells. For example, when coencapsulated with hepatocytes, stem cells can increase the viability and function of the hepatocytes in vitro and in vivo.