Background: A penile median raphe cyst is an uncommon congenital lesion that is formed due to failure of the median raphe to close completely during embryo development. The majority of the cysts are asymptomatic and often go unnoticed. Here, we report acute urinary retention as a very rare complication of a penile median raphe cyst.
Case presentation: A 21-year-old single man presented with a sudden onset of acute urinary retention of one days' duration. Urethral catheterization was done at the Emergency Department and this drained 800 ml of urine. On further questioning, he claimed that he had had a painless nodule at the glans penis since childhood. The swelling increased in size in the past week causing discomfort. He denied any history of genitalia trauma or recent sexual intercourse. On examination, there was a bluish lesion over the ventral aspect of the glans penis measuring about 3 x 2 cm. The lesion was later excised and histopathology revealed a median raphe cyst of the penis.
Conclusion: A penile median raphe cyst is a rare lesion. Acute urinary retention caused by this lesion is very rare.
Background: Anaphylaxis is an acute and life-threatening allergic response. Classically and most commonly, it can be mediated by the crosslinking of allergens to immunoglobulin E (IgE)- high affinity IgE receptor (FcεRI) complex found mostly on mast cells. However, there is another pathway of anaphylaxis that is less well-studied. This pathway known as the alternative pathway is mediated by IgG and its Fc gamma receptor (Fcγ). Though it was not documented in human anaphylaxis, a few studies have found that IgG-mediated anaphylaxis can happen as demonstrated in rodent models of anaphylaxis. In these studies, a variety of soluble mediators were being evaluated and they differ from each study which causes confusion in the suitability, and reliability of choice of soluble mediators to be analyzed for diagnosis or therapeutic purposes. Hence, the objective of this meta-analysis is to identify the potential soluble mediators that are involved in an IgG-mediated anaphylaxis reaction. Methods: Studies related to IgG-mediated anaphylaxis were sourced from five search engines namely PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, Cochrane Library, and Center for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) regardless of publication year. Relevant studies were then reviewed based on specific inclusion factors. The means and standard deviations of each soluble mediator studied were then extracted using ImageJ or Get Data Graph Digitiser software and the data were subjected to meta-analysis. Results: From our findings, we found that histamine, serotonin, platelet activating factor (PAF), β-hexosaminidase, leukotriene C4 (LTC4), mucosal mast cell protease-1 (MMCP-1), interleukins (IL)-4,-6, and-13; tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and macrophage inflammatory protein-1α (MIP-1α) were often being analyzed. Out of these soluble mediators, histamine, PAF, β-hexosaminidase, IL-6, and-13, MIP-1α and TNF-α were more significant with positive effect size and p < 0.001. As study effect was relatively small, we performed publication bias and found that there was publication bias and this could be due to the small sample size studied. Conclusion: As such, we proposed that through meta-analysis, the potential soluble mediators involved in rodent IgG-mediated anaphylaxis to be histamine, PAF, β-hexosaminidase, IL-6 and-13 and MIP-1α, and TNF-α but will require further studies with larger sample size.
Graphene has received tremendous attention among diverse 2D materials because of its remarkable properties. Its emergence over the last two decades gave a new and distinct dynamic to the study of materials, with several research projects focusing on exploiting its intrinsic properties for optoelectronic devices. This review provides a comprehensive overview of several published articles based on density functional theory and recently introduced machine learning approaches applied to study the electronic and optical properties of graphene. A comprehensive catalogue of the bond lengths, band gaps, and formation energies of various doped graphene systems that determine thermodynamic stability was reported in the literature. In these studies, the peculiarity of the obtained results reported is consequent on the nature and type of the dopants, the choice of the XC functionals, the basis set, and the wrong input parameters. The different density functional theory models, as well as the strengths and uncertainties of the ML potentials employed in the machine learning approach to enhance the prediction models for graphene, were elucidated. Lastly, the thermal properties, modelling of graphene heterostructures, the superconducting behaviour of graphene, and optimization of the DFT models are grey areas that future studies should explore in enhancing its unique potential. Therefore, the identified future trends and knowledge gaps have a prospect in both academia and industry to design future and reliable optoelectronic devices.