Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of A Reverse Transcriptase (Rt) Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay For Detection Hepatitis C Genotypes 1-4 Viruses Under Limited Logistical Conditions

The loop-amplification mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) presents characteristics that overcome the limitations associated with the Current limitations of nucleic acid based technologies (NATs) hinder their use in the low resource settings hence overreliance on serological assays which miss hepatitis C virus (HCV) during the long seroconversion period. The LAMP assay would be ideal for early detection of HCV in routine diagnostics and blood transfusion setups in such settings drastically reducing transmission related transfusion. This study validated and tested a reverse transcriptase-LAMP for HCV detection under limited logistical conditions in a low resource setting. Under stringent laboratory conditions, analytical sensitivity and reproducibility were performed using a panel of HCV positive plasma of genotypes 1a, 1b, mixed 1a/1b, 2b, 3a and 4. Cell culture supernatants of HIV-1 B and plasma samples for Hepatitis B virus were used for specificity testing. Upto 227 plasma including 70 (40 RNA positive and 30 negative) from German patients and 157 (43 RNA positive and 114 negative) from Kenyan patients were tested. Kenyan samples were obtained from 121 sero-positive plasma screened from 1121 participants of various cohorts in Kenya. Although LAMP detected upto 102 IU/mL for genotypes 1a, 1b and 2b, a lower detection threshold was established at 103 IU/mL. Overall sensitivity was 94% (PPV 98%) and specificity was 98% (NPV 96%) for RT-LAMP. Sub optimal detection was noted for genotypes 2b, 3a and 4. Sequence analysis revealed mismatches affecting stringency of primer binding at the F1, B1 and the LB primer targets. RT-LAMP shows potential for early HCV diagnosis and screening in low resource settings. Its robustness is however genotype dependent and can be enhanced by designing primers targeting circulating and suspected genotypes. More studies should be done on the possibility of designing multiplex RT-LAMP primers to capture a wide variety of genotypes. The assay remains simple, rapid, and cost effective for nucleic acid detection and is ideal for use in the limited resource settings.
Synergistic effect of vascular endothelial growth factor and granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor double gene therapy in mouse limb ischemia

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has mostly been tested to treat ischemic diseases, although the outcomes obtained are not satisfactory. Our hypothesis is that the local transient expression of VEGF and stem cell mobilizer granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF) genes in ischemic limbs can complement their activities and be more efficient for limb recovery.
Frequency and Prognostic Value of Cognitive Disorders in Stroke Patients

Background: Stroke is one of the most common diseases to cause cognitive disorders in adults. Aims: To assess the frequency of cognitive deficits in stroke patients and to evaluate the prognostic value of cognitive syndromes for functional recovery. Methods: 200 consecutive patients were examined using a clinical screening battery for cognitive assessment in the second week after their first-ever stroke. 80 were re-examined after a 1-year follow-up. Results: In the post-acute stage, 78% patients were impaired in one or more cognitive domains. The most frequently affected cognitive abilities were attention (48.5%), language (27%), short-term memory (24.5%) and executive functions (18.5%). At the 1-year follow-up, attention deficits were still the most frequent symptom. In contrast, executive dysfunction, aphasia, and long-term memory disorder were significantly less frequent than in the post-acute period. Logistic regression analysis showed that older age, lower score on the Barthel Index, and the presence of executive dysfunction on initial examination were significant predictors of a poor functional outcome at the 1-year follow-up examination. Conclusions: Cognitive-behavioral syndromes are frequent and often chronic consequences of stroke. Executive deficits proved to be the most robust cognitive predictor of poor functional recovery after stroke.
Duloxetine in the treatment of depression: A double-blind placebo-controlled comparison with paroxetine

Context: Major depressive disorder causes significant morbidity and mortality. Current therapies fail to fully treat both emotional and physical symptoms of major depressive disorder. Objective: To evaluate duloxetine, a dual reuptake inhibitor of serotonin and norepinephrine, on improvement of emotional and painful physical symptoms. Design: Randomized, double-blind, evaluation of duloxetine at 40 mg/d (20 mg twice daily) and 80 mg/d (40 mg twice daily) versus placebo and paroxetine 20 mg/d in depressed outpatients. Main Outcome Measures: The primary efficacy measure was the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Visual Analog Scales for pain, Clinical Global Impression of Severity, Patient's Global Impression of Improvement, and Quality of Life in Depression Scale were also used. Safety was evaluated by assessing discontinuation rates, adverse event rates, vital signs, and laboratory tests. Results: Duloxetine 80 mg/d was superior to placebo on mean 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale total change by 3.62 points (95% CI 1.38, 5.86; P = 0.002). Duloxetine at 40 mg/d was also significantly superior to placebo by 2.43 points (95% CI 0.19, 4.66; P = 0.034), while paroxetine was not (1.51 points; 95% CI −0.55, 3.56; P = 0.150). Duloxetine 80 mg/d was superior to placebo for most other measures, including overall pain severity, and was superior to paroxetine on 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale improvement (by 2.39 points; 95% CI 0.14, 4.65; P = 0.037) and estimated probability of remission (57% for duloxetine 80 mg/d, 34% for paroxetine; P = 0.022). The only adverse event reported significantly more frequently for duloxetine 80 mg/d than for paroxetine was insomnia (19.8% for duloxetine 80 mg/d, 8.0% for paroxetine; P = 0.031). Hypertension incidence was not affected by any treatment. Conclusion: Duloxetine therapy was efficacious for emotional and physical symptoms of depression, with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-like profile of side effects.
Cross-Strati fi cationandDifferential RiskbyBreast Cancer Index and Recurrence Score in Women with Hormone Receptor – Positive Lymph Node – Negative Early-Stage Breast Cancer

Purpose: Previous results from the TransATAC study demonstrated that both the Breast Cancer Index (BCI) and the OncotypeDX Recurrence Score (RS) added significant prognostic information to clinicopathologic factors over a 10-year period. Here, we examined cross-stratification between BCI and RS to directly compare their prognostic accuracy at the individual patient level. Experimental Design: A total of 665 patients with hormone receptor–positive (HRþ) and lymph node–negative disease were included in this retrospective analysis. BCI andRS risk groupswere determined using predefined clinical cut-off points. Kaplan– Meier estimates of 10-year risk of distant recurrence (DR) and log-rank tests were used to examine cross-stratification between BCI and RS. Results: As previously reported, both RS and BCI were significantly prognostic in years 0 to 10. BCI provided significant additional prognostic information to theClinical Treatment Score (CTS) plus RS (DLR-c1⁄4 11.09; P < 0.001), whereas no additional prognostic information was provided by RS to CTS plus BCI (DLR-c 1⁄4 2.22; P 1⁄4 0.1). Restratification by BCI of the low and intermediate RS risk groups led to subgroups with significantly different DR rates (P < 0.001 and P 1⁄4 0.003, respectively). In contrast, restratified subgroups created by RS of BCI risk groups did not differ significantly. Conclusions: In this retrospective analysis, BCI demonstrated increased prognostic accuracy versus RS. Notably, BCI identified subsets of RS low and RS intermediate risk patients with significant and clinically relevant rates of DR. These results indicate that additional subsets of women with HRþ, lymph node–negative breast cancer identified by BCI may be suitable candidates for adjuvant chemotherapy or extended endocrine therapy. Clin Cancer Res; 22(20); 5043–8. 2016 AACR. See related commentary by Brufsky and Davidson, p. 4963
Development and validation of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the diagnosis of porcine proliferative enteropathy

The objective of this study was to develop an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a sonicated pure culture of Lawsonia intracellularis as the antigen (So-ELISA). A total of 332 serum samples, consisting of 232 experimentally infected animals and 100 animals naturally infected with L. intracellularis, were used to assess the diagnostic sensitivity. Three hundred and fifty-five sera from uninfected animals were used to determine the diagnostic specificity. The receiver operating characteristic and mean +3 standard deviation of optical density (OD) values from uninfected animals were used for selecting cut-off points. The diagnostic accuracy of So-ELISA was considered to be high as the area under the curve index was 0.991 with 0.0029 standard error. The optimal cut-off for So-ELISA was set at 0.45 OD with 89.8% sensitivity and 99.4% specificity based on a combination of good sensitivity and high specificity. No cross-reactivity was found in sera from pigs exposed to Brachyspira pilosicoli, B. hyodysenteriae, Campylobacter mucosalis, C. jejuni, or C. coli. Inter- and intracoefficient of variation of all control sera tested with So-ELISA was less than 10%. The observed agreements between So-ELISA and the immunoperoxidase monolayer assay tested with experimental challenge animals and field samples were 95.08% with 0.88 kappa and 90.65% with 0.74 kappa value, respectively. So-ELISA was able to detect the seroconversion of infected animals at 2 to 4 weeks after exposure to L. intracellularis. Based on the validation results, So-ELISA could be used as an alternative serology for proliferative enteropathy diagnosis.
Surgical Management of Melanoma

Traditionally, melanoma has been considered by surgeons to be a highly lethal malignancy, always requiring a radical surgical approach for optimal chance of cure. Yet melanoma patients who are now being referred for treatment frequently have small early lesions, and surgeons should develop a flexible attitude about management, limiting the size of their excisions and deferring node dissections in many early cases. An aggressive, radical approach remains appropriate for large lesions, progressively enlarging nodes and locally recurrent but not disseminated disease.
Possible Dissociation Between Insulin Binding and Insulin Action in Isolated Fetal Rat Hepatocytes

To directly examine the relationship between insulin receptors and insulin action in fetal tissue, we compared insulin receptor characteristics and insulin-mediated 14C-glucose incorporation into glycogen, as well as glycogen synthase activity, in freshly isolated hepatocytes from 21-day fetal (F) and adult (A) rats. Viability of hepatocytes was documented by trypan blue exclusion (> 90%), time-dependent 14C-leucine incorporation into protein, and dose-related incorporation of glucose into glycogen. Percent specific binding of 125I-insulin per unit protein was significantly higher in F than A liver plasma membranes (32.2 ± 0.3 versus 18 ± 2.4; P < 0.01) and Scatchard plots revealed twice the number of receptors in F. Similarly, receptor number per cell surface area was threefold higher in F than in A (150 versus 50 sites/μm2). At a fixed medium glucose concentration of 11.2 mM, insulin stimulated 14C-glucose incorporation into glycogen in a dose-related manner in A with an apparent Km of 1.0 ng/ml and Vmax at 5–10 ng/ml corresponding to 30–40% of total receptor occupancy; no effect was obtained in F with insulin up to 100 ng/ml. Net glucose incorporation into glycogen (nmol/106 cells/h) increased progressively with increasing medium glucose concentrations ranging from 1.4 to 27.8 mM; incorporation by F was significantly greater than by A at each glucose concentration. However, whereas insulin at 100 ng/ml significantly augmented net glucose incorporation at each glucose concentration in A, no effect of insulin was apparent in F. Finally, insulin at 10 and 100 ng/ml significantly increased the active (a form) and total (a + b form) glycogen synthase activity in A; the ratio of active to inactive forms (% I) also increased significantly in A. In contrast, there was no demonstrable augmentation by insulin of glycogen synthase activity in F hepatocytes. Thus, insulin-mediated incorporation of glucose into glycogen and insulin-stimulated glycogen synthase activity was not demonstrable in fetal rat hepatocytes despite the presence of an increased number of insulin receptors.
Symptom Dimensions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Implications for the DSM-V

ABSTRACT In the absence of definitive etiological markers of vulnerability or a unitary profile of pathophysiology for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptom dimensions seem to offer a fruitful point of orientation.The complex clinical presentation of OCD can be summarized using a few consistent and temporally stable symptom dimensions. These can be understood as a spectrum of potentially overlapping features that are likely to be continuous with “normal” worries and extend beyond the traditional nosological boundaries of OCD. Although the understanding of the dimensional structure of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) is still imperfect, this quantitative approach to phenotypic traits has the potential to advance our understanding of OCD and may aid in the identification of more robust endophenotypes. Preliminary data suggest that these dimensional phenotypes may be useful in studies of the natural history, genetics, neurobiology, and treatment outcome of OCD. A dimensional approach is not mutually exclusive of other methods to parse the larger spectrum of disorders related to OCD. Thus far, age-of-onset of OCS and the individual's “tic-related” status seem to be particularly useful categorical distinctions. Finally, existing assessment methods are inadequate and new dimensional scales are needed to take full advantage of a dimensional approach in clinical and population-based studies.
Generalised closed-form symbol error rate analysis for Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coded OFDM system

In this paper, the Symbol Error Rate (SER) performance for Orthogonal Space- Time Block Coded (OSTBC) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems over Nakagami-m fading channels is analysed. A novel closed-form SER expression is proposed, which incorporates the Gauss hypergeometric function and Appell hypergeometric function into the conventional Probability Density Function (PDF) approach. The proposed exact closed-form SER expression is a generalised solution since it perfectly captures OSTBCOFDM systems' performances when having different antenna configurations that employ various modulation schemes and which experience various fading conditions. Finally, Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to demonstrate the exact match between the simulation results and the proposed analytical expressions.
Mathematical Modeling of Competition for Light and Nutrients Between Phytoplankton Species in a Poorly Mixed Water Column

MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF COMPETITION FOR LIGHT AND NUTRIENTS BETWEEN PHYTOPLANKTON SPECIES IN A POORLY MIXED WATER COLUMN by Thomas Stojsavljevic The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2014 Under the Supervision of Professor Gabriella Pinter Phytoplankton live in a complex environment with two essential resources forming various gradients. Light supplied from above is never homogeneously distributed in a body of water due to refraction and absorption from biomass present in the ecosystem and from other sources. Nutrients in turn are typically supplied from below. In poorly mixed water columns phytoplankton can be heterogeneously distributed forming various layering patterns. The relationship between the location and the thickness of the layers is an open problem of interest. Here we present three models which study how competition for light and resources can form common layering patterns seen in nature and investigate how the location and thickness of the layer changes when the motility of the phytoplankton is varied. Using this we study the phenomenon of coexistence of multiple phytoplankton species and the presence of species spatial separation.
Chemical genomics approach to identify genes associated with sensitivity to rapamycin in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Rapamycin and its derivatives have now emerged as an attractive therapeutic strategy with both immunosuppressant and antitumor properties. In addition, rapamycin has been proposed as a calorie restriction mimetic to extend the life span of various organisms. The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe) serves as a valuable genetic model system to study the mechanism(s) of drug action as well as to determine genetic contexts associated with drug sensitivity or resistance. Here, we identified genes that when deleted modulate the rapamycin‐sensitive strains in S. pombe. We carried out a chemical genomics screen for rapamycin‐sensitive mutants using the genome‐deletion library which covers 95.3% of all nonessential fission yeast genes and confirmed 59 genes to be rapamycin sensitive. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis showed that strains sensitive to rapamycin are highly enriched in processes regulating tRNA modification and mitochondria as well as other ontologies, including cellular metabolic process, chromatin organization, cell cycle, signaling, translation, transport and other cellular processes. Analysis also showed that components of the Elongator complex are overrepresented in the sensitive strains. Here, the data obtained will provide valuable information for speculation on the actions of rapamycin as well as on TORC signaling, thereby presenting a strategy to enhance sensitivity to rapamycin.
Home treatment for acute psychiatric disorder.

others, particularly elderly people and those on low incomes, who may have the greatest need for health care. '3 Inequalities of access may also result from variations in people's inclination to seek help, which is influenced by culture and geography. Perceived need, for example, has been found to relate inversely to remoteness. '4 How much such barriers to access affect health outcomes in Britain is unknown. A recent study of colorectal cancer in France found that a lower proportion of the rural population than urban populations was treated in specialised health centres and that rural women were diagnosed later and had a worse prognosis than urban women. 15 The costs of providing services in rural areas are usually higher because economies of scale are lacking and travel costs are higher. '6 The NHS does not have a consistent policy about whether to take rurality into account when allocating resources. Scotland and Wales use a sparsity weighting when allocating resources to community health care, but the Department of Health and English health authorities do not. Rurality is taken into account throughout Britain when general practice is funded but not at all when resources for hospital services are allocated. The NHS Management Board, when reviewing the Resource Allocation Working Party formula, acknowledged that some sparsity factor may be justified in allocating resources. It noted the methodological difficulties and concluded that more research was needed. '7 In addition to considering how "need" varies such research should consider how the unit costs of health care differ between rural and urban environments. Deprivation indices, as proxies for health need, are increasingly being used to allocate resources, and it is important that such measures are validated for rural use. Their use in comparing the social problems of urban and rural areas has been criticised on the grounds that most commonly used indices have been designed for urban populations and may fail to capture the real nature of rural deprivation. '8 For example, the meaning of car ownership-a variable frequently incorporated in indices-will differ in rural and urban settings. The relation between self reported morbidity and indices of deprivation has been shown to break down in nonmetropolitan areas. "9 Employment is declining and homelessness increasing faster in rural areas than in towns.20 The popular imagery of the rural idyll has hindered the questioning of received wisdom that life is better in the country than the city. It's time to end the comparative neglect of rural health. IAN SWAT Senior registrar
Non‐invasive measurement of brain viscoelasticity using magnetic resonance elastography

The purpose of this work was to develop magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) for the fast and reproducible measurement of spatially averaged viscoelastic constants of living human brain. The technique was based on a phase‐sensitive echo planar imaging acquisition. Motion encoding was orthogonal to the image plane and synchronized to intracranial shear vibrations at driving frequencies of 25 and 50 Hz induced by a head‐rocker actuator. Ten time‐resolved phase‐difference wave images were recorded within 60 s and analyzed for shear stiffness and shear viscosity. Six healthy volunteers (six men; mean age 34.5 years; age range 25–44 years) underwent 23–39 follow‐up MRE studies over a period of 6 months. Interindividual mean ± SD shear moduli and shear viscosities were found to be 1.17 ± 0.03 kPa and 3.1 ± 0.4 Pas for 25 Hz and 1.56 ± 0.07 kPa and 3.4 ± 0.2 Pas for 50 Hz, respectively (P ≤ 0.01). The intraindividual range of shear modulus data was 1.01–1.31 kPa (25 Hz) and 1.33–1.77 kPa (50 Hz). The observed modulus dispersion indicates a limited applicability of Voigt's model to explain viscoelastic behavior of brain parenchyma within the applied frequency range. The narrow distribution of data within small confidence intervals demonstrates excellent reproducibility of the experimental protocol. The results are necessary as reference data for future comparisons between healthy and pathological human brain viscoelastic data. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.