It is my pleasure to write an editorial for this issue. A total of 11 articles are presented in this issue, which contains a special section of 4 reviews pertaining to recent advances in magnetic resonance (MR) and an article on Celiac disease (CeD). In addition, it has 3 original research papers, two case reports and an invited commentary.

In India, after HIV/AIDS, the major disease that causes morbidity and mortality is malaria. Varying degrees of thrombocytopenia is noted in all cases of malaria. The mechanism of thrombocytopenia is still to be elucidated. Here, we performed an experiment to show that haemozoin (Hz) pigment maybe responsible for the platelet destruction.

Dementia refers to a group of disorders caused by the gradual dysfunction and death of brain cells. This disorder can be described clinically as a syndrome that causes a decline in cognitive domain (i.e., attention, memory, executive function, visual-spatial ability, and language)EEG may play an important role in detecting and classifying dementia because of its significant influence on dementia abnormalities in terms of rhythm activity. An increase in EEG slow wave activity (theta and delta frequencies) together with decreased activity in the alpha frequency band is considered to be typical findingin the various types of dementia.

Migraine is a neurologic disease, often associated with a unilateral throbbing pain, which is categorized under primary headache disorder according to the International headache society (ICHS – 3)beta edition. Vestibular abnormalities are common in migraine. Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential (VEMP) amplitudes can be used as independent quantitative measures of otolith function. VEMP studies on migraine patients may shed new light on its pathophysiology as well as management and prognosis. In this study only p13 and amplitude were considered N23 0r N1 potential was used for only identifying p13.

Preterm neonates has always been a challenge to the anaesthesiologist due to their immature development, physiology and anatomy. In present times we seem to witness a higher incidence of very low birth weight infants (birth weight < 1.5 kg) and extremely low birth weight infants (birth weight < 1 kg) undergoing surgery. The mean survival rates of these neonates born at 24 weeks and 27 weeks are presently 50% and 90% respectively. The common cause of lower urinary tract obstruction in male neonates, is posterior urethral valve (PUV) incidence ranging from 1 in 8000 to 1 in 25,000 live births. Lower than normal doses of anaesthetic drugs are used in preterm infants than term infants considering the altered pharmacokinetics of a preterm, that poses a dilemma. Caudal analgesia, a unique regional technique, provides considerable postoperative analgesia. Ropivacaine, a novel long acting amide local anaesthetic agent, with fewer cardiac and central nervous system toxic effects, provides satisfactory sensory and motor effects.

Choroid plexus papilloma are tumours of the central nervous system occurring in children and usually presents in the first few years of life. Rarely, it has been diagnosed at birth or prenatally. Here, we present a case of choroid plexus papilloma in a foetus of gestational age 20 weeks.

The prevalence of neonatal hearing loss is more than twice the number of other neonatal disorders that are amenable to screening. Other newborn disorders that are screened regularly at birth include congenital hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria, congenital heart defects and severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome .

Magnetic resonance image-guided prostate biopsy (MRGB) is rapidly becoming the standard pathway of prostate cancer detection. MRGB increases detection of clinically signicant prostate cancer while minimizing over-detection of indolent prostate cancers. MRGB includes various techniques and, while there are only a few randomized studies with head-to-head comparison, economic considerations and available resources will contribute to choosing the optimum technique. In this narrative review, we discuss the current perspectives of MRGB in terms of detection rate of various techniques, current controversies in obtaining the cores, management of previous negative MRGB and recent advancements in the technique.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the most widely used non-invasive diagnostic imaging modality. Functional MRI (fMRI), a sub-domain of MRI evaluates task/ condition induced time-varying changes in brain metabolism. The method is sensitive to T2* contrast and is best acquired using ‘Gradient Echo Sequence’. ‘Statistical Parametric Mapping’ is the freely available software, used widely for analysis of fMRI data and the findings are presented in the form of regional brain activations. The technique has deciphered roles of several brain regions corresponding to specific tasks.

Recognizing, understanding and elucidating the pathophysiological mechanism of any disease is of prime importance for clinical research. The ever-evolving omic technology “metabolomics” has the potential to detect quantitatively large number of metabolites in biological fluids or tissues in a single shot. It is a well-established technique for early detection, therapeutic response and to understand the pathophysiology of the disease. Metabolomics being close to phenotype is the global representation of all the upstream (genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic) changes that occur at metabolic level in an individual. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based metabolomics is an information rich analytical technique with a broad spectrum of applications. The advanced statistical and chemometric approaches help dealing with complex and voluminous data so generated and also provides a powerful platform for clinical as well as translational research. The present review focuses on clinical applications of NMR based metabolomics in various diseases such as cancer, diabetes, coronary artery diseases and celiac disease. The NMR based experimental approach and the various pre and post processing steps including predictive modelling, model verification and pathway analysis has also been discussed.

Gallstone disease is affecting a major population and emerging as a prevalent health problem all over the world. Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is often associated with gallstones. The mechanism involved in the formation of different types of gallstones is not completely understood. Several factors are reported to be linked with the variation of stones formation of different disease conditions such as chronic cholecystitis and gallbladder cancer. The pathogenesis of gallstone is quite complicated and still remains elusive. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a tool that may be useful for the analysis of the composition of gallstones of different aetiology. In this review article, we illustrate the studies related to the application of NMR spectroscopy for unveiling the insight associated with gallbladder disease.

Celiac disease (CeD) is an autoimmune enteropathy and is driven by dietary gluten in genetically susceptible individuals with prevalence of around 1% in general population globally. The prevalence of celiac disease in India is comparable to the rest of the world and even within India also, the gap between prevalence in North and South India is getting narrower because of changing dietary patterns. The clinical presentation is diverse with both intestinal and extra-intestinal manifestations and importantly, 30-50% of cases present with non-diarrhoeal celiac disease and lack of awareness regarding them lead to delay in diagnosis and subsequent complications of CeD. The diagnosis of CeD requires clinical features, serology and intestinal biopsy. The only available treatment currently is life long gluten free diet (GFD) which not only ameliorates clinical symptoms but also prevent the complications such as refractory CeD and malignancy. Presently, most of CeD patients are being seen by primary care physicians, therefore more awareness about this disease is required for an early diagnosis and effective management. In this review article, we attempted to provide a thorough review on CeD epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical features and management to help physicians in clinical practice.