Identifying Glycemic Variability in Diabetes Patient Cohorts and Evaluating Disease Outcomes.

Glycemic variability (GV) is an obstacle to effective blood glucose control and an autonomous risk factor for diabetes complications. We, therefore, explored sample data of patients with diabetes mellitus who maintained better amplitude of glycemic fluctuations and compared their disease outcomes with groups having poor control. A retrospective study was conducted using electronic data of patients having hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) values with five recent time points from Think Whole Person Healthcare (TWPH).

Perspectives of Nurses Toward Telehealth Efficacy and Quality of Health Care: Pilot Study.

Background: Telehealth nursing, or the delivery, management, and coordination of nursing care services provided via telecommunications technology, is one of the methods of delivering health care to patients in the United States. It is important to assess the service quality of the involved health professionals as well as the telehealth nursing process. The focus of this study is the innovative model of telehealth care delivery by nurses for managing patients with chronic disease while they are living in their own residence.

Forecasting the Spread of Mosquito-Borne Disease using Publicly Accessible Data: A Case Study in Chikungunya.

Mosquito-borne diseases account for multiple public health challenges in our modern world. The international health community has seen a number of mosquito-borne diseases come to the forefront in recent years, including West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, and currently, Zika virus. Predicting the spread of mosquito-borne disease can aid early decision support for when and how to employ public health interventions within a community; however, accurate and fast predictions, months into the future, are difficult to achieve in urgent scenarios, particularly when little information is known about infection rates.

Comprehension and Data-Sharing Behavior of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Test Customers.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate current direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic customers' ability to interpret and comprehend test results and to determine if honest brokers are needed.

Method: One hundred and twenty-two customers of the DTC genetic testing company 23andMe were polled in an online survey. The subjects were asked about their personal test results and to interpret the results of two mock test cases (type 2 diabetes and multiple sclerosis), where results were translated into disease probability for an individual compared to the public.

Ibudilast reverses the decrease in the synaptic signaling protein phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein 1 (PEBP1) produced by chronic methamphetamine intake in rats.

Background: Chronic methamphetamine intake has been shown to induce a neuroinflammatory state leading to significant changes in brain functioning including behavioral changes. These changes can persist for years after drug use is discontinued and likely contribute to the risk of relapse. A better understanding of inflammation responses associated with methamphetamine intake may help in designing novel and more efficacious treatment strategies.

Contribution of bioinformatics prediction in microRNA-based cancer therapeutics.

Despite enormous efforts, cancer remains one of the most lethal diseases in the world. With the advancement of high throughput technologies massive amounts of cancer data can be accessed and analyzed. Bioinformatics provides a platform to assist biologists in developing minimally invasive biomarkers to detect cancer, and in designing effective personalized therapies to treat cancer patients.

Optimisation of miRNA-mRNA relationship prediction using biological features.

MicroRNAs are small (approx. 22nt) non-coding RNAs that regulate the expression of genes by either degrading messenger-RNA (mRNA) that has already been transcribed or by repressing the translation of mRNA, thus inhibiting protein production. This mechanism of gene regulation by binding of the miRNA to 3-prime-untranslated region of target mRNAs has been recently discovered.

Classification and identification of fungal sequences using characteristic restriction endonuclease cut order.

Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) is a powerful molecular tool that is extensively used in the molecular fingerprinting and epidemiological studies of microorganisms. In a wet-lab setting, the DNA is cut with one or more restriction enzymes and subjected to gel electrophoresis to obtain signature fragment patterns, which is utilized in the classification and identification of organisms. This wet-lab approach may not be practical when the experimental data set includes a large number of genetic sequences and a wide pool of restriction enzymes to choose from.

Link test--A statistical method for finding prostate cancer biomarkers.

We present a new method, link-test, to select prostate cancer biomarkers from SELDI mass spectrometry and microarray data sets. Biomarkers selected by link-test are supported by data sets from both mRNA and protein levels, and therefore results in improved robustness. Link-test determines the level of significance of the association between a microarray marker and a specific mass spectrum marker by constructing background mass spectra distributions estimated by all human protein sequences in the SWISS-PROT database.

Computational approach involving use of the internal transcribed spacer 1 region for identification of Mycobacterium species.

The rapid and reliable identification of clinically significant Mycobacterium species is a challenge for diagnostic laboratories. This study evaluates a unique sequence-dependent identification algorithm called MycoAlign for the differential identification of Mycobacterium species. The MycoAlign system uses pan-Mycobacterium-specific primer amplification in combination with a customized database and algorithm.

Mucin biosynthesis: upregulation of core 2 beta 1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase by retinoic acid and Th2 cytokines in a human airway epithelial cell line.

Vitamin A and the T helper 2 cytokines IL-4 and IL-13 play important roles in the induction of mucin gene expression and mucus hypersecretion. However, the effects of these agents on enzymes responsible for mucin glycosylation have received little attention. Here, we report the upregulation of core 2 beta1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (C2GnT) activity both by all-trans retinoic acid (RA) and by IL-4 and IL-13 in the H292 airway epithelial cell line.

Utilization of the relative complexity measure to construct a phylogenetic tree for fungi.

The relative complexity measure (RCM) is a new approach to evaluate relatedness of DNA sequences which eliminates the requirement to align sequences prior to analysis, a step required with standard reference methods. The value of the RCM approach to generate distance matrices for use in phylogenetic analysis of organisms has not been determined. This study compared RCM with the algorithmic and tree searching reference methods for phylogenetic analysis using fungal sequences.

Temperature-mediated heteroduplex analysis for detection of pncA mutations associated with pyrazinamide resistance and differentiation between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis by denaturing high- performance liquid chromatography.

The goal of this study was to apply temperature-mediated heteroduplex analysis using denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography to identify pyrazinamide (PZA) resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates and simultaneously differentiate between M. tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis. Features that contributed to an optimal assay included the use of two different reference probes for the pncA gene targets from wild-type M.

Mucin biosynthesis: epidermal growth factor downregulates core 2 enzymes in a human airway adenocarcinoma cell line.

Enzymes which exhibit core 2 beta1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (C2GnT) activity play important roles in physiologic processes including the inflammatory response and immune system function, and C2GnT activity is regulated during processes, such as T cell activation and cellular differentiation. In this study, we have examined the regulation of C2GnT activity in the H292 airway epithelial cell line by epidermal growth factor (EGF), which has been previously shown to upregulate expression of the airway mucin MUC5AC in this cell line. We found that EGF suppressed C2GnT activity in a time- and dose-dependent fashion, and also suppressed core 4 beta1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (C4GnT) activity.

Transferrin-facilitated lipofection gene delivery strategy: characterization of the transfection complexes and intracellular trafficking.

We previously showed that mixing transferrin with a cationic liposome prior to the addition of DNA, greatly enhanced the lipofection efficiency. Here, we report characterization of the transfection complexes in formulations prepared with transferrin, lipofectin, and DNA (pCMVlacZ) in various formulations. DNA in all the formulations that contain lipofectin was resistant to DNase I treatment.

Downregulation of PTEN/MMAC/TEP1 expression in human prostate cancer cell line DU145 by growth stimuli.

Genetic alterations and/or deletion of the tumor suppressor gene PTEN/MMAC/TEP1 occur in many types of human cancer including prostate cancer. We describe the production of monoclonal antibody against recombinant human PTEN and the study of PTEN gene and protein expression in three commercially available human prostate cancer cell lines, PC-3, LNCaP, and DU 145. Northern blotting analyses showed that LNCaP and DU145 but not PC-3 cells expressed PTEN mRNA.