The utility of breath trace compounds as bio-markers for various physiological conditions has long been exploited for the diagnosis of various diseases. Urea breath tests have been adopted as the gold standard for the detection of Helicobacter pylori which is a primary cause for…
COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) worldwide has a prevalence of 10% in men and 8.5% in women. Exacerbations of COPD account for approximately 10% of all acute medical admissions. Projected prevalence figures suggest that by 2020 COPD will be the third leading cause of…
Liver fibrosis has a range of aetiologies and is a global cause of mortality. A critical effect of liver fibrosis which also increases mortality is portal hypertension. The hepatic stellate cell is accepted as a major progenitor of liver myofibroblasts, which have been shown to …
Nystagmus is a disorder of eye movement characterised by irregular, uncontrolled and repetitive eye movements. It can occur in a broad spectrum of clinical situations and diseases or it may occur in isolation and an inherited disorder. Surprisingly little is known about the unde…
Adequate nutritional status promotes optimal structure and function. In PLWH, few studies on the impact of dietary intake on nutritional and metabolic status have been undertaken. This cross-sectional secondary data analysis examined how different dietary patterns influenced nut…
Objective: There is a general agreement that physical activity (PA) has a beneficial effect on health and those who are more active have a reduced risk of developing many chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease (CHD). However, the amount, type and intensity of PA deemed…
This thesis describes work undertaken by the author at the University of Oxford. It begins by providing an introduction to malaria infection and pathophysiology, and a review of the latest attempts to produce an effective malaria vaccine. It goes on to describe the rationale beh…
Introduction Squamous cell carcinoma of the auricle has an unusually high rate of lymph node metastases when compared to similar tumours at other sites. The lymph nodes affected are close to the base of the skull and in the neck. Development of metastasis carries a poor prognosi…
Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a malignant lymphoma that is diagnosed mostly in young adults, and is the second most common malignancy to affect this age group. This disease is subdivided into two entities with different aetiologies: classical HL (cHL) (~95% of cases) and nodular lymp…
Inflammation involves interactions amongst many different cell types as a defense mechanism of the body. Inflammation is also involved in cardiovascular disease (CVD). The role of long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC n-3 PUFAs) in modulating the inflammatory response h…
Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the clinical methods targeting the human tracheobronchial tree, both for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. For these methods to be effective, a good understanding of the lung structure is necessary. This knowledge can be …
The Ubiquitin Conjugating System (UCS) describes a system in which the 96-amino acid residue Ubiquitin can be selectively covalently linked to intracellular proteins. This endows cells with an indispensable level of regulation to determine protein fate in a wide range of basic c…
The postoperative period is characterized by massive shifts of fluid between body compartments and accumulation of fluid in the extracellular space, which may manifest clinically as central and or peripheral oedema. The incidence of oedema in patients undergoing routine major ab…
Self-management has emerged as an approach to enhance quality of care for patients suffering from long term conditions, and to control costs of health services. So far, however, the effects of this approach as adopted by the Saudi healthcare system in the early 1990s remain uncl…
Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common intraocular malignancy in adults. Despite successful ocular treatment, about 50% of patients succumb to metastatic dissemination, which occurs haematogenously and mainly affects the liver. On the basis of clinical, histopathological and gen…