Objective: Reactive thrombocytosis is found in a number of clinical situations including infectious diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). To examine the possible role of interleukin ( IL6) in reactive thrombocytosis and acute phase response in PTB this study measured serum IL6, C reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), albumin concentrations in 62 PTB patients and 20 healthy volunteers. Method: PTB patients were divided into two groups based on thrombocyte counts. Twenty seven PTB patients with normal thrombocyte counts constituted group 1, 35 PTB patients with thrombocytosis constituted group 2, and 20 healthy volunteers constituted group 3. Results: The median IL6 concentration of group 1 was 12.8 pg/ml (95% CI: 12.1 to 56.9 pg/ml) and group 2 was 40.6 pg/ml (95% CI: 67.1 to 168.7 pg/ml). The comparison of IL6 concentrations in the three groups was significant (p = 0.0001). Patients in group 1 had a higher concentration of CRP (p = 0.0001) and lower concentration of albumin (p = 0.002) than group 3 whereas group 2 had higher concentration of CRP (p = 0.003) and lower concentration of albumin (p = 0.002) than group 1. Serum IL6 concentrations were significantly correlated with thrombocyte counts (p = 0.004, r = 0.36), CRP (p = 0.007, r = 0.34), and albumin concentrations (p = 0.005, r = 20.34). IL6 concentrations were significantly correlated with the number of involved zones (p = 0.005, r = 0.35) and acid fast bacilli positivity (p = 0.03, r = 0.27). Patients in group 2 had weight loss (p = 0.004), fever (p = 0.038), and night sweats (p = 0.007) more frequently than group 1. Also, group 2 had more extensive radiological findings (involved zones p = 0.001, bilateral disease p = 0.0001, presence of cavity p = 0.02) than group 1. Conclusions: IL6 might play a contributory part in reactive thrombocytosis and acute phase response in PTB.

TNF-alpha and IL-6 levels did not differ significantly between cachectics and noncachectics. However, significant correlations between IL-6, BMI, and TNF-alpha suggested that these cytokines acted as cofactors in weight loss. Survival was neither influenced by BMI, nor the cytokine levels in the present study. The significant correlation of ESR with TNF-alpha suggested that ESR could provide valuable clue for considerable weight loss in the follow-up of NSCLC patients.

We discuss nuclear physics in the Sakai-Sugimoto model in the limit of a large number Nc of colors and large 't Hooft coupling λ. In this limit the individual baryons are described by classical solitons whose size is much smaller than the typical distance at which they settle in a nuclear bound state. We can thus use the linear approximation outside the instanton cores to compute the interaction potential. We find the classical geometry of nuclear bound states for baryon number up to 8. One of the interesting features that we find is that holographic nuclear physics provides a natural description for lightly bound states when λ is large. For the case of two nuclei, we also find the topology and metric of the manifold of zero modes and, quantizing it, we find that the ground state can be identified with the deuteron state. We discuss the relations with other methods in the literature used to study Skyrmions and holographic nuclear physics. We discuss 1/Nc and 1/λ corrections and the challenges to overcome to reach the phenomenological values to fit with real QCD

Thorax HRCT may be helpful in the diagnosis of HPS by demonstrating the dilated peripheral pulmonary vessels or increased pulmonary artery to bronchus ratios in patients with liver disease and hypoxemia.