Course and predictors of excellent response to therapy in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer at long-term follow-up.

Objectives: To investigate the long-term outcomes of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) and the predictive factors for excellent and incomplete responses to therapy on long-term follow-up of patients.

Methods: A retrospective chart review and analysis was carried out at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Demographic, histological, and therapeutic data were collected from patients older than 13 years at the time of diagnosis, with a minimum follow-up of 18 months.

Gaps in Referral to Bariatric Surgery for Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Seen in Endocrinology Clinics.

Objectives: One-third of adults in Canada are overweight and 26.8% experience obesity. Bariatric surgery confers effective weight loss and reduces obesity-related complications, including type 2 diabetes, but remains an underutilized treatment.

Accuracy and efficiency of germline variant calling pipelines for human genome data.

Advances in next-generation sequencing technology have enabled whole genome sequencing (WGS) to be widely used for identification of causal variants in a spectrum of genetic-related disorders, and provided new insight into how genetic polymorphisms affect disease phenotypes. The development of different bioinformatics pipelines has continuously improved the variant analysis of WGS data. However, there is a necessity for a systematic performance comparison of these pipelines to provide guidance on the application of WGS-based scientific and clinical genomics.

Norwegian e-Infrastructure for Life Sciences (NeLS).

The Norwegian e-Infrastructure for Life Sciences (NeLS) has been developed by ELIXIR Norway to provide its users with a system enabling data storage, sharing, and analysis in a project-oriented fashion. The system is available through easy-to-use web interfaces, including the Galaxy workbench for data analysis and workflow execution. Users confident with a command-line interface and programming may also access it through Secure Shell (SSH) and application programming interfaces (APIs).

GSuite HyperBrowser: integrative analysis of dataset collections across the genome and epigenome.

Background: Recent large-scale undertakings such as ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics have generated experimental data mapped to the human reference genome (as genomic tracks) representing a variety of functional elements across a large number of cell types. Despite the high potential value of these publicly available data for a broad variety of investigations, little attention has been given to the analytical methodology necessary for their widespread utilisation.

Findings: We here present a first principled treatment of the analysis of collections of genomic tracks.

Quality of life among adults with beta-thalassemia major in western Saudi Arabia.

Objectives: To assess the quality of life in the thalassemia adult patients and clarify how effective the management is of these patients and whether a change in care is warranted.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, adult thalassemia patients (>18 years) of both genders, attending the day care unit in King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeedah, Saudi Arabia were surveyed using SF-36 questionnaire. Data were collected between October 2012 and December 2012.

Quality of life among children with beta-thalassemia major treated in Western Saudi Arabia.

Objective: To assess the quality of life among children and adolescents with thalassemia major.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). Children and adolescents with beta-thalassemia major who attended the Day Care Unit at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from October 2012 to February 2013 were surveyed.