Colon Gland Research Articles

Inulin alleviates GenX-induced intestinal injury in mice by modulating the MAPK pathway, cell cycle, and cell adhesion proteins

GenX, a substitute for perfluorooctanoic acid, has demonstrated potential enterotoxicity. The enterotoxic effects of GenX and effective interventions need further investigation. In the present study, the mice were administered GenX (2 mg/kg/day) with or without inulin supplementation (5 g/kg/day) for 12 weeks. Histopathological assessments revealed that GenX induced colonic gland atrophy, inflammatory cell infiltration, a reduction in goblet cell numbers, and decreased mucus secretion. Furthermore, a significant decrease in the protein levels of ZO-1, occludin, and claudin-5 indicated compromised barrier integrity. Transcriptomic analysis identified 2645 DEGs, which were mapped to 39 significant pathways. The TGF-β, BMP6, and β-catenin proteins were upregulated in the intestinal mucosa following GenX exposure, indicating activation of the TGF-β pathway. Conversely, the protein expression of PAK3, CyclinD2, contactin1, and Jam2 decreased, indicating disruptions in cell cycle progression and cell adhesion. Inulin cotreatment ameliorated these GenX-induced alterations, partially through modulating the MAPK pathway, as evidenced by the upregulation of the cell cycle and cell adhesion proteins. Collectively, these findings suggested that GenX exposure triggered intestinal injury in mice by activating the TGF-β pathway and disrupting proteins crucial for the cell cycle and cell adhesion, whereas inulin supplementation mitigated this injury by modulating the MAPK pathway.

Gut mucosa alterations after kidney transplantation: a cross sectional study.

Kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) rely on immunosuppressants like mycophenolate to prevent organ rejection. However, mycophenolate often causes intestinal symptoms and inflammation in various organs, including the skin and the colon. While KTRs have an increased risk for skin cancer, the risk of colorectal cancer is not increased. Elucidating the histological alterations in the colon of KTRs and comparing these changes with known skin alterations would help understand how immunosuppressants influence cancer development and progression. Whole slide images from gut biopsies (Non-transplanted subjects n = 35, KTRs n = 49) were analyzed using the ImageJ and R programming environment. A total of 22,035 epithelial cells, 38,870 interstitial cells, 3465 epithelial cell mitoses, and 7477 endothelial cells, each characterized by multiple microscopy parameters, from a total of 1788 glands were analyzed. The large database was subsequently analyzed to verify the changes of inflammatory milieu in KTRs and in cancer. KTRs without colon-cancer showed a significantly higher density of interstitial cells in the colon compared to non-transplanted patients. Moreover, the increase in interstitial cell number was accompanied by subtle modifications in the architecture of the colon glands, without altering the epithelial cell density. We could not identify significant structural modifications in cancer samples between KTRs and non-transplanted patients. Our findings demonstrate an increased number of resident interstitial cells in the colon of KTRs, as in other patients treated with mycophenolate. These changes are associated with subtle alterations in the architecture of colon glands.

Sanguinarine alleviates ulcerative colitis in mice by regulating the Nrf2/NF-κB pathway

To investigate the mechanism of sanguinarine (SA) for alleviating ulcerative colitis (UC) induced by dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) in mice. Male C57BL/6 mouse models of 3.5% DSS-induced UC were randomized for treatment with 1, 5 and 10 mg/kg SA by gavage, 400 mg/kg sulfasalazine by gavage, or 10 mg/kg SA combined with intraperitoneal injection of 30 mg/kg ML385 (a Nrf2 inhibitor). The changes in intestinal inflammation was assessed by monitoring weight changes, disease activity index (DAI) score, colon length measurement, and HE staining. After the treatments, the colon tissues were collected for detection of malondialdehyde (MDA) content using colorimetry, mRNA expressions of inflammatory factors using RT-qPCR, and the expressions of Nrf2, HO-1, Keap-1, p-p65, p65, occludin, and ZO-1 proteins were detected using Western blotting. SA treatment obviously alleviated weight loss, colon length shortening and DAI score increase and ameliorated structural destruction of the colon glands and colonic crypts in mice with DSSinduced UC. SA intervention significantly decreased the levels of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 mRNA and lowered ROS and MDA levels in the colon tissue of UC mice. The mouse models receiving SA treatment showed significantly increased expressions of Nrf2, HO-1, occludin and ZO-1 and lowered expressions of Keap-1 and P-P65 in the colon tissue without significant changes of p65 expression, and these changes were SA dose-dependent. Treatment with ML385 obviously attenuated the effect of highdose SA for improving UC in the mouse models. SA can improve UC-like enteritis in mice possibly by activating the Nrf2 pathway and inhibiting the NF-κB pathway in the colon tissue.

Underlying Mechanism of Fluoride Inhibits Colonic Gland Cells Proliferation by Inducing an Inflammation Response.

The integrity of colonic gland cells is a prerequisite for normal colonic function and maintenance. To evaluate the underlying injury mechanisms in colonic gland cells induced by excessive fluoride (F), forty-eight female Kunming mice were randomly allocated into four groups and treated with different concentrations of NaF (0, 25, 50, and 100 mg F-/L) for 70 days. As a result, the integrity of the colonic mucosa and the cell layer was seriously damaged after F treatment, as manifested by atrophy of the colonic glands, colonic cell surface collapse, breakage of microvilli, and mitochondrial vacuolization. Alcian blue and periodic acid Schiff staining revealed that F decreased the number of goblet cells and glycoprotein secretion. Furthermore, F increased the protein expression of TLR4, NF-κB, and ERK1/2 and decreased IL-6, interfered with NF-κB signaling, following induced colonic gland cells inflammation. The accumulation of F inhibited proliferation via the JAK/STAT signaling pathway, as characterized by decreased mRNA and protein expression of JAK, STAT3, STAT5, PCNA, and Ki67 in colon tissue. Additionally, the expression of CDK4 was up-regulated by increased F concentration. In conclusion, excessive F triggered colonic inflammation and inhibited colonic gland cell proliferation via regulation of the NF-κB and JAK/STAT signaling pathways, leading to histopathology and barrier damage in the colon. The results explain the damaging effect of the F-induced inflammatory response on the colon from the perspective of cell proliferation and provide a new idea for explaining the potential mechanism of F-induced intestinal damage.

Enhanced Medical Image Segmentation using Transfer Learning with Res101_UNet: Experimental Insights and Comparative Performance Analysis

Throughout the past few decades, artificial intelligence and machine learning have seen a lot of active research in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, and speech processing. As a result, deep learning models became state-of-the-art for computer vision tasks such as object detection, classification, segmentation, and other allied tasks. Of course, the fruits of this research are extended to the design of robust and reliable digital health systems as well as other applications in the healthcare sector. Many clinical applications require the automatic segmentation of medical images. Recent deep learning-based approaches have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in medical image segmentation tasks. In addition to their ability to automatically extract features and generalize over large amounts of data, transfer learning based deep learning models have proven to be handy for data scared areas like medical domains. In this research, we investigate and demonstrate the efficacy of a DCNN-based transfer learning model -Res101_Unet, which has been trained and/or fine-tuned to execute tumor tissue segmentation tasks in MRI, CT, PET, and X-RAY pictures of medical organ scans with little data. For our experimental study, we employed two image datasets: 'Liver Tumor' and 'Gland Colon Cancer', both obtained from the Kaggle portal. This experimental setup includes an Open-Source segmentation model API. Our findings indicate that domain similarity-based transfer learning can be used to data-scarce sectors. We achieved 98.47% accuracy and a IoU score of 0.9891 on Liver Tumor data and 0.6956 accuracy and a IoU score of 0.7043 on gland colon dataset.

MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 are first expressed in the colon glands after a single dose of azoxymethane (AOM).

Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-2 (TIMP-2) and membrane-type 1-matrix metalloproteinase (MT1-MMP) are always expressed during the cancer process. The aim was to identify which regions of the colon mucosa MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 begin to express themselves, as well as to establish their expression in relation to cell proliferation and mucin production. After intraperitoneal injection of 15 mg/kg of azoxymethane (AOM) at 4, 12, and 20 weeks, histological sections of the middle segment of the rat colon mucosa were evaluated by immunohistochemistry for cell proliferation and expression of MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 and histochemistry for mucin. As a result, a single dose of AOM initially increased the intensity of MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 expression in the conjunctive cells and glands, concurrently with alterations in the distribution of the mucin produced in the gland of the large intestine mucosa and cell proliferation. As a result, at 4 and 12 weeks, a single dose of AOM initially stimulated the expression of MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 in the conjunctive cells and glands with greater intensity. Changes in the cell proliferation and distribution of the mucin produced in the large intestine mucosa gland were observed. We conclude that MT1-MMP and TIMP-2 were first and strongly expressed in all cells of the colon glands, concurrently with an increase in cell proliferation and a diffuse dispersion of mucin, indicating the onset of the dysplasia process following a single dosage of AOM.

Automating Ground Truth Annotations for Gland Segmentation Through Immunohistochemistry

Microscopic evaluation of glands in the colon is of utmost importance in the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease and cancer. When properly trained, deep learning pipelines can provide a systematic, reproducible, and quantitative assessment of disease-related changes in glandular tissue architecture. The training and testing of deep learning models require large amounts of manual annotations, which are difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to obtain. Here, we propose a method for automated generation of ground truth in digital hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)–stained slides using immunohistochemistry (IHC) labels. The image processing pipeline generates annotations of glands in H&E histopathology images from colon biopsy specimens by transfer of gland masks from KRT8/18, CDX2, or EPCAM IHC. The IHC gland outlines are transferred to coregistered H&E images for training of deep learning models. We compared the performance of the deep learning models to that of manual annotations using an internal held-out set of biopsy specimens as well as 2 public data sets. Our results show that EPCAM IHC provides gland outlines that closely match manual gland annotations (Dice = 0.89) and are resilient to damage by inflammation. In addition, we propose a simple data sampling technique that allows models trained on data from several sources to be adapted to a new data source using just a few newly annotated samples. The best performing models achieved average Dice scores of 0.902 and 0.89 on Gland Segmentation and Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Gland colon cancer public data sets, respectively, when trained with only 10% of annotated cases from either public cohort. Altogether, the performances of our models indicate that automated annotations using cell type–specific IHC markers can safely replace manual annotations. Automated IHC labels from single-institution cohorts can be combined with small numbers of hand-annotated cases from multi-institutional cohorts to train models that generalize well to diverse data sources.

Mucin levels in glands of the colonic mucosa of rats with diversion colitis subjected to enemas containing sucralfate and n-acetylcysteine alone or in combination.

To evaluate the tissue content of neutral and acidic mucins, sulfomucins and sialomucins in colonic glands devoid of intestinal transit after enemas containing sucralfate and n-acetylcysteine alone or in combination. Sixty-four rats underwent intestinal transit bypass. A colonic segment was collected to compose the white group (without intervention). After derivation, the animals were divided into two groups according to whether enemas were performed daily for two or four weeks. Each group was subdivided into four subgroups according to the substance used: control group: saline 0.9%; sucralfate group (SCF): SCF 2 g/kg/day; n-acetylcysteine group (NAC): NAC 100 mg/kg/day; and SCF+NAC group: SCF 2 g/kg/day + NAC 100 mg/kg/day.Neutral and acidic mucins were stained by periodic acid-Schiff and alcian-blue techniques, respectively. The distinction between sulfomucins and sialomucin was made by the high alcian-blue iron diamine technique. The content of mucins in the colonic glands was measured by computerized morphometry. The inflammatory score was assessed using a validated scale. The results between the groups were compared by the Mann-Whitney's test, while the variation according to time by the Kruskal-Wallis' test (Dunn's post-test). A significance level of 5% was adopted. There was reduction in the inflammatory score regardless of the application of isolated or associated substances. Intervention with SCF+NAC increased the content of all mucin subtypes regardless of intervention time. The application of SCF+NAC reduced the inflammatory process of the colonic mucosa and increased the content of different types of mucins in the colonic glands of segments excluded from fecal transit.

Periodontitis Promotes the Progression of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Inducing Macrophage M2 Polarization

To investigate the role of periodontitis in the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and to determine whether periodontitis microorganisms induce M2 macrophage (M2) polarization and promote tumor progression. The tumor tissues of OSCC patients with periodontitis and those without periodontitis were collected and immunohistochemistry tests were done to validate the trend of changes in M2 macrophages. A mouse model of OSCC accompanied by periodontitis was established by treating mice with drinking water containing four antibiotics for three consecutive days, applying in the mouths of the mice a coat of bacteria collected from the saliva of patients with periodontitis once every other day for five times, and injecting in their buccal mucosa OSCC cells (SCC7). We observed the effect of periodontitis on the development of OSCC, analyzed the M2 macrophage content in the tumor tissues, and analyzed salivary microbiota structure, and examined the pathological changes in the spleen and colon tissues of the mice. Finally, we collected saliva from patients with periodontitis, co-cultured it with mice peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and SCC7 cells, and examined M2 macrophage percentage by flow cytometry. Immunohistochemical findings from the clinical samples showed that M2-polarized macrophages in OSCC patients with periodontitis were more enriched (27.01%±2.12%) compared with those of OSCC patients without periodontitis (17.00%±3.66%). The OSCC mice with periodontitis (PO group) had tumors of larger size and lower survival rate than OSCC mice (O group) did. Furthermore, the expression rate of Ki67-positive cells (35.49%±5.00%) was significantly higher than that of O group (23.89%±4.13%) ( P<0.05). According to the results of flow cytometry, M2 macrophage expression (24.97%±4.41%) in PO group was higher than that of O group (5.75%±0.52%) ( P<0.05). In addition, qPCR results showed that gene expression of M2 macrophage-related factors, Arg1, IL-10, and CD206, showed an overall upward trend. Immunohistochemistry results showed that the positive expression of M2 macrophages was significantly increased in the PO group (21.82%±4.16%) compared to that of the O group (9.64%±0.60%) ( P<0.05). Mice in the PO group showed changes in their oral flora structure, exhibiting increased bands and diversity. The white pulp in their spleen tissue decreased and the boundary of the red pulp became indistinct with severe bleeding. The morphology of the colon glands was abnormal and the U-shaped crypt was damaged rather seriously. According to the results of cell experiment, when co-culturing PBMC with SCC7 cells, the presence of periodontitis microorganisms increased the polarization of M2 macrophages (71.00%±0.66%). Periodontitis promotes the development of OSCC by inducing M2 polarization in tumor-associated macrophages. Hence, periodontitis treatment holds important values for OSCC patients.

Bioinformatics-based analysis of PTGIS gene expression and clinical significance in colon adenocarcinoma

Objective:To analyze the expression of PTGIS in colon adenocarcinoma and its relationship with clinical prognosis using multiple databases. Methods:By mining the data of Timer and GEPIA databases on PTGIS studies, the changes of its expression level in colon adenocarcinoma were analyzed. The GEPIA database was used to analyze the relationship between PTGIS expression levels and survival prognosis of colon adenocarcinoma patients. the Linked Omics database was used to analyze the correlation between PTGIS gene expression and clinicopathological features of colon adenocarcinoma. The Genecards database was used to collect proteins related to PTGIS gene, and the STRING data platform was used to construct protein interactions network of PTGIS-related proteins and analyze the physiological process of protein enrichment. Results:The study of Timer database and GEPIA database regarding the differential expression of PTGIS genes in colon adenocarcinoma and normal tissues of colon glands showed that the expression of PTGIS genes in colon adenocarcinoma tissues was significantly lower than that in normal tissues of colon glands (P &lt; 0.05). The overall survival rate of patients with low PTGIS gene expression was significantly higher than that of patients with high PTGIS gene expression, and the prognosis of patients with low PTGIS gene expression was better (P &lt; 0.05), according to the survival analysis of the GEPIA database. PTGIS gene expression levels were lower in colon adenocarcinoma stages I and IV and higher in colon adenocarcinoma stages II and III. Twenty-five proteins related to PTGIS were collected through Genecards database, including LSS, SIGMAR1,FDFT1,etc. The results of their related protein enrichment analysis showed that they were mainly enriched in Cholesterol biosynthetic process,B cell chemotaxis and other biological processes. Conclusion:PTGIS gene is lowly expressed in colon adenocarcinoma and its expression level correlates with survival prognosis. PTGIS gene can provide bioinformatics guidance for the later laboratory experiments.

Berberine alleviates intestinal barrier dysfunction in glucolipid metabolism disorder hamsters by modulating gut microbiota and gut-microbiota-related tryptophan metabolites.

Barberry plants can be considered as useful additives and functional compounds in various industries, especially in the food industry. Berberine (BBR), the most important functional compound in the barberry roots, has recently been used to treat obesity, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. Gut microbiota and the intestinal barrier play an important role in the development of glucolipid metabolism disorders (GLMDs). However, the association of gut microbiota metabolism disorder and the intestinal barrier dysfunction effect of BBR in GLMDs remains elusive. The results showed that administration of BBR could increase the number of colonic glands and goblet cell mucus secretion, improve the intestinal barrier function, and reduce the serum glycolipid level in GLMD hamsters. Interestingly, BBR was metabolized into 12 metabolites by gut microbiota, and the main metabolic pathways were oxidation, demethylation, and hydrogenation. In addition, BBR significantly improved the species diversity and uniformity of gut microbiota and promoted the proliferation of beneficial microbiota. Furthermore, the levels of tryptophan metabolites, such as indole, indole-3-acetamide, indole-3-acetaldehyde, indole-3-pyruvic acid, and indole-3-acetic acid were significantly altered by BBR. Both the intestinal tight junction proteins and intestinal immune factors were altered by BBR. BBR could alleviate intestinal barrier dysfunction of GLMDs by modulating gut microbiota and gut-microbiota-related tryptophan metabolites, which may be one of the pharmacological mechanisms for the treatment of GLMDs. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

S2130 Rectal Xanthoma: A Rare Clinical Finding

Introduction: Xanthomas are localized lipid deposits within an organ system. They are more commonly found as cutaneous lesions and less likely to appear in the gastrointestinal tract. The incidence of gastrointestinal xanthomas is not well documented, but the vast majority of authors agree they occur more frequently in the stomach. Colonic xanthomas are rare and usually incidental endoscopic findings. There are several case reports that present gastrointestinal xanthomas, however a small subset of these cases are located in the rectum. Here we present a case of rectal xanthoma and discuss its macroscopic and microscopic features. Case Description/Methods: A 55-year-old female with a recent diagnosis of atrophic metaplastic autoimmune gastritis presents for colonoscopy. Per chart review, patient had a normal colonoscopy in 2012. During the colonoscopy in 2022, one 10 mm sessile polyp was resected in the cecum; pathology returned as hyperplastic polyp. In the rectum was an area concerning for a submucosal lesion, encompassing about one quarter of the rectal circumference. Overlying it was an area of mucosa with hues of yellow which was biopsied. Pathology showed fragments of colonic mucosa with mild chronic inactive inflammation with histiocytic aggregate and focal surface glandular hyperplasia suggestive of xanthoma. Lipid panel available from 2019 showed LDL 100 with other levels within normal range (Figure). Discussion: Colorectal xanthomas are intestinal lesions with aggregates of lipid laden macrophages called foamy histiocytes. These cells are distributed in the lamina propria, between the colonic glands and muscularis mucosa. Unlike cutaneous xanthomas, gastrointestinal xanthomas are not associated with dyslipidemia. There has been a reported case of colonic xanthomas presenting as submucosal masses in the rectum and sigmoid. In a case series of 28 patients with colorectal xanthomas, 23 were sessile and 5 were pedunculated. Twelve xanthomas appeared reddish in color, 5 were white, and 2 were of a yellow hue. The relationship between colorectal xanthomas and malignancy is unclear. Of the 28 colorectal xanthomas, 4 hyperplastic lesions were found within the xanthoma, while 4 adenomas and 2 adenocarcinomas were found adjacent to xanthomas. Chronic injury is believed to be associated with the cause of colorectal xanthomas. In our case, a sigmoidoscopy with EUS is planned to rule out a submucosal mass. Adding case reports to the literature will help assess potential correlation with polyps and malignancies.Figure 1.: (Top) Rectum with appearance of submucosal lesion and localized area of yellow hue in mucosa (bottom) Foamy histiocytes confined to the lamina propria.

Intestinal schistosomiasis with colonic polyps

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic infection which commonly affects the intestine. Colonic polyps associated with intestinal schistosomiasis are not commonly reported in young people. Our case report describes a 20-year-old man from North-Central Nigeria who presented with recurrent passage of loose, mucoid, bloody stool, and weight loss. His biochemical profile and stool tests were unremarkable. A colonoscopy showed multiple ulcers and polyps with ulcerated surfaces in the transverse and sigmoid colon. Histopathology revealed islands of colonic-type mucosa containing numerous benign colonic glands in a densely inflamed lamina propria containing lymphocytes, eosinophils, and histiocytes, with numerous ova and calcified parasite bodies of Schistosoma. The patient was treated with praziquantel and showed marked clinical improvement.

Effect of vitamin B17 on experimentally induced colon cancer in adult male albino rat.

Colon cancer is considered to be the third most common cancer worldwide. At diagnosis of colon cancer, 3.7-11% developed bone metastasis. Diet based strategies are important for prevention and treatment of colon cancer. This study investigated the effect of vitamin B17 on a DMH induced rat model of colon cancer. Eighty young adult male albino rats were divided into five groups: group I (control group), group II (vitamin B17), group III (colon cancer), group IV (protected) and group V (treated). Distal colon sections were prepared for light and scanning electron microscopic examination. Lumbar vertebrae specimens were prepared for light microscopic study. Morphometric and statistical analysis were done. In comparison with the control, both colon cancer and treated groups showed invasion of the colonic tissue by pleomorphic branching colonic glands of variable shapes and sizes lined with dysplastic elongated hyperchromatic nuclei with frequent mitotic figures or stratified multi-layered crowded nuclei with an extremely significant (p < 0.0001) reduction of goblet cell number when compared to the control together with major pathological bone changes were observed in colon cancer and the treated groups. While the protected group showed impressive improvement of all previously mentioned diameters.

Novel variants in the stem cell niche factor WNT2B define the disease phenotype as a congenital enteropathy with ocular dysgenesis

WNT2B is a member of the Wnt family, a group of signal transduction proteins involved in embryologic development and stem cell renewal and maintenance. We recently reported homozygous nonsense variants in WNT2B in three individuals with severe, neonatal-onset diarrhea, and intestinal failure. Here we present a fourth case, from a separate family, with neonatal diarrhea associated with novel compound heterozygous WNT2B variants. One of the two variants was a frameshift variant (c.423del [p.Phe141fs]), while the other was a missense change (c.722 G > A [p.G241D]) that we predict through homology modeling to be deleterious, disrupting post-translational acylation. This patient presented as a neonate with severe diet-induced (osmotic) diarrhea and growth failure resulting in dependence on parenteral nutrition. Her gastrointestinal histology revealed abnormal cellular architecture particularly in the stomach and colon, including oxyntic atrophy, abnormal distribution of enteroendocrine cells, and a paucity of colonic crypt glands. In addition to her gastrointestinal findings, she had bilateral corneal clouding and atypical genital development later identified as a testicular 46,XX difference/disorder of sexual development. Upon review of the previously reported cases, two others also had anterior segment ocular anomalies though none had atypical genital development. This growing case series suggests that variants in WNT2B are associated with an oculo-intestinal (and possibly gonadal) syndrome, due to the protein’s putative involvement in multiple developmental and stem cell maintenance pathways.

Deep Learning in Image Classification using Residual Network (ResNet) Variants for Detection of Colorectal Cancer

Abstract This paper investigates a deep learning method in image classification for the detection of colorectal cancer with ResNet architecture. The exceptional performance of a deep learning classification incites scholars to implement them in medical images. In this study, we trained ResNet-18 and ResNet-50 on colon glands images. The models trained to distinguish colorectal cancer into benign and malignant. We assessed our prototypes on three varieties of testing data (20%, 25%, and 40% of whole datasets). The empirical outcomes confirm that the application of ResNet-50 provides the most reliable performance for accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity value than ResNet-18 in three kinds of testing data. Upon three test assortments, we perceive the best performance value on 20% and 25% test sets with a classification accuracy of above 80%, the sensitivity of above 87%, and the specificity of above 83%. In this research, a deep learning method demonstrates the profoundly reliable and reproducible outcomes for biomedical image analysis.

Suspicion of epizootic Lawsonia intracellularis disease in a group of pileated gibbons (Hylobates pileatus)

Within a month, all five individuals of a pileated gibbon (Hylobates pileatus) family presented the same symptoms: diarrhoea, vomiting and severe apathy. During this first outbreak, three of them died...

Metastatic colon cancer of the small intestine diagnosed using genetic analysis: a case report

BackgroundIntestinal-type adenocarcinoma is widely detected in the gastrointestinal tract, head and neck, lower respiratory and urinary systems. Determining the nature (monoclonal or multicentric) of the intestinal adenocarcinoma is sometimes a diagnostic challenge owing to its occurrence at various locations of the body, especially in the lower gastrointestinal tract. Herein, we successfully diagnosed metastatic colon cancer in the small intestine using tumor protein 53 gene (TP53) mutation analysis.Case presentationAn 83-year-old woman presented with severe abdominal pain and nausea at the emergency department of the hospital. Her history included surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy for colon and breast cancers. Abdominal computed tomography revealed small intestinal dilation, which was associated with the mural nodule detected on fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. Laparoscopy-assisted small bowel resection was performed based on the diagnosis of small bowel obstruction, probably due to recurrence of the colon or breast cancer. Macroscopically, an ulcerated tumor was present in the resected small intestine. Histologically, the cancer cells showed infiltrative growth of colonic dysplastic glands, whose non-specific finding made it difficult to determine the relationship with past colon cancers. Retrospective pathological examination confirmed that the previous breast and colon carcinomas were primary cancers. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the small intestinal and colon cancer cells showed diffuse positive tumor protein 53 (p53) expression. However, the breast cancer cells showed only weakly positive p53 expression. In addition, TP53 mutational analysis detected an identical missense mutation (p.T211I) between the two intestinal cancers. Moreover, further molecular genetic work-up revealed that both small intestinal and colon adenocarcinomas harbored an identical missense mutation (p.G12D) of KRAS gene. In conclusion, the small intestinal cancer in this case was identified as a metastatic adenocarcinoma arising from a past colon cancer.ConclusionsGenetic analyses help in clarifying the identity of the cells in multiple cancer cases. In morphologically indeterminate cases, molecular analysis of common cancer-related genes can be useful for a precise and reproducible diagnosis.

Dense Steerable Filter CNNs for Exploiting Rotational Symmetry in Histology Images.

Histology images are inherently symmetric under rotation, where each orientation is equally as likely to appear. However, this rotational symmetry is not widely utilised as prior knowledge in modern Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), resulting in data hungry models that learn independent features at each orientation. Allowing CNNs to be rotation-equivariant removes the necessity to learn this set of transformations from the data and instead frees up model capacity, allowing more discriminative features to be learned. This reduction in the number of required parameters also reduces the risk of overfitting. In this paper, we propose Dense Steerable Filter CNNs (DSF-CNNs) that use group convolutions with multiple rotated copies of each filter in a densely connected framework. Each filter is defined as a linear combination of steerable basis filters, enabling exact rotation and decreasing the number of trainable parameters compared to standard filters. We also provide the first in-depth comparison of different rotation-equivariant CNNs for histology image analysis and demonstrate the advantage of encoding rotational symmetry into modern architectures. We show that DSF-CNNs achieve state-of-the-art performance, with significantly fewer parameters, when applied to three different tasks in the area of computational pathology: breast tumour classification, colon gland segmentation and multi-tissue nuclear segmentation.

Some Morphological Characteristics of a Glandular Apparatus of Human Colon in Total Dolichomegalocolon and Colonoptosis

The aim of the study was to identify the features of the macro- and microscopic structure, as well as the cellular composition of the intestinal glands in adults with clinically confirmed total dolichomegacolon and colonoptosis. Material and methods. On total preparations of the colon obtained from the corpses of persons 42–87 years old, structural changes of the glandular apparatus were studied in cases with total dolichomegacolon (n=7) and total colonoptosis (n=5), diagnosed postmortem. Microscopic examination was performed on histological preparations stained with methylene blue, with subsequent fixation in a saturated solution of ammonium molybdenum acid, hematoxylin–eosin, and picrofuxin by Van-Gieson. Parametric and nonparametric statistical methods based on the Statistica 6.0 program were used. Data processing included the calculation of arithmetic averages and their errors. Results. The analysis of cell composition of the colon epithelium in total dolichomegacolon revealed a progressive decrease in the number of glands in the proximo-distal direction from 22.5±1.1% in the caecum to 37±0.9% in the rectum. Besides, the length of the glands decreased, on average by 26.5±0.8% for all parts of the large intestine without a pronounced gradient from the caecum to the rectum. According to the decrease in length of the intestinal gland, there was a decrease in the number of epithelial cells forming its walls with a maximum in the descending colon – a decrease of 21.4±1.1%. Structural changes in total colonoptosis were similar in nature and did not significantly differ in large values of reduction of the glandular apparatus. Due to analyzing the cellular component of the colon glands, a multidirectional character of changes in the composition of the glands was noted: a decrease in the percentage of absorption cells on average by 21.1±0.8% and an increase in the proportion of goblet cells by 33.4±1.2% on average, due to a compensatory increase in the amount of mucus in the studied pathological conditions. Conclusion. Actual data on the decrease in the number and change in the structure of the glandular apparatus of all parts of the large intestine of adult people against the background of clinically verified total dolichomegacolon and colonoptosis were obtained. The nature of the identified structural and functional rearrangements is of great importance both for proctological practice and for theoretical and practical medicine in general.