Appropriateness vs value: Echocardiography in primary care.

Background: Despite efforts targeting the growth of healthcare spending within the United States, the current increase in expenditures remains a widespread systemic issue. The overuse of healthcare testing has previously been identified as a modifiable contributing factor. One such test, echocardiography, has seen a continuous increase in its rate of use.

Impact of troponin testing in noncardiac admissions.

Background: There is little data to support Troponin I (TNI) use in the management of noncardiac patients. We studied the use of TNI in patients on our gastroenterology service, to determine whether there was a change in management as a result of TNI testing.

Methodology: Patients admitted from September 2011 to June 2012 to our gastroenterology service who had TNI performed were included.

The use of transthoracic echocardiography and adherence to appropriate use criteria at a regional hospital.

Background: The sharp increase in health care costs over the past decade has prompted health care providers to reevaluate how diagnostic imaging is utilized. In response to the need for more rational use of imaging services, the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Society of Echocardiography have developed appropriate use criteria (AUC) for transthoracic echocardiography to guide its utilization. Although community and regional hospitals, such as Danbury Hospital, account for 85% of registered hospitals in the United States, very little is known about adherence to the AUC at these institutions.

UV sensitive mutations in histone H3 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that alter specific K79 methylation states genetically act through distinct DNA repair pathways.

Chromatin serves as a regulator of various nuclear processes, with post-translational modifications of histone proteins serving as modulators to influence chromatin function. We have previously shown that histone H3 K79 methylation is important for repair of UV-induced DNA damage in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, acting through multiple repair pathways. To evaluate the potential role of distinct K79 methylation states in DNA repair, we identified four mutations in histone H3 that confer sensitivity to UV, each of which also has a distinct effect on specific K79 methylation states.

Methylation of histone H3 lysine-79 by Dot1p plays multiple roles in the response to UV damage in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Various proteins have been found to play roles in both the repair of UV damaged DNA and heterochromatin-mediated silencing in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In particular, factors that are involved in the methylation of lysine-79 of histone H3 by Dot1p have been implicated in both processes, suggesting a bipartite function for this modification. We find that a dot1 null mutation and a histone H3 point mutation at lysine-79 cause increased sensitivity to UV radiation, suggesting that lysine-79 methylation is important for efficient repair of UV damage.