Characteristics of patients with Wilson disease in the United States: An insurance claims database study.

Background: Wilson disease (WD) is a progressive, potentially fatal degenerative disease affecting the liver and central nervous system. Given its low prevalence, collecting data on large cohorts of patients with WD is challenging. Comprehensive insurance claims databases provide powerful tools to collect retrospective data on large numbers of patients with rare diseases.

Phase errors and statistical analysis of silicon-nitride arrayed waveguide gratings.

We present a statistical analysis of arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs) in the presence of phase errors in the optical waveguides caused by fabrication process variations. Important figures of merit, such as the insertion loss, crosstalk, and non-uniformity, are parameterized as a function of the coherence length, a physical parameter that characterizes the accumulated phase errors in optical waveguides and that can be extracted by measuring variations in the resonant wavelengths of Mach-Zehnder interferometers. A die-level coherence length of 23.

Epidemiology, treatment and burden of Wilson disease in France: A 10-year analysis of the national health insurance database.

Background & Aims: Wilson disease (WD) is a rare hereditary, debilitating disease that is fatal if untreated. Given its low prevalence, collecting longitudinal information on large cohorts of patients is challenging. Analysis of health insurance databases offers an approach to meet this challenge.

Safety of autologous drainage blood reinfusion following total knee arthroplasty prepared with hydrogen peroxide.

In a clinical in vivo study, wound blood collected from an autologous reinfusion drain of patients undergoing elective total knee arthroplasty was examined to investigate if hydrogen peroxide bone surface preparation had an adverse effect on blood destined to be reinfused. The post-operative drain blood of thirty-eight patients was collected after pre-implantation bone preparation being performed either with or without the use of hydrogen peroxide. Filtered drain blood samples were analyzed and mean results for treatment / control groups respectfully were: haemoglobin (g/L) 98.

Downregulation of uPAR confirms link in growth and metastasis of osteosarcoma.

The uPA/uPAR system is involved in tumour progression and metastasis of a variety of cancers. Previously, we have shown that increased expression of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) correlated with malignancy grade in certain sarcomas. A study looking at in vivo inhibition of this system has not been done to date for osteosarcoma.