Knowledge management through two virtual communities of practice (Endobloc and Pneumobloc).

We developed two virtual communities of practice (Endobloc and Pneumobloc) to increase the interaction between general practitioners and nurses in primary care and hospital endocrinologists and pulmonologists. They were designed and developed using an existing web 2.0-based virtual network belonging to the local National Health System, and we quantitatively assessed the usefulness through the participation and use during the first 24 months after the launch in 2010.

MicroRNA deep-sequencing reveals master regulators of follicular and papillary thyroid tumors.

MicroRNA deregulation could be a crucial event in thyroid carcinogenesis. However, current knowledge is based on studies that have used inherently biased methods. Thus, we aimed to define in an unbiased way a list of deregulated microRNAs in well-differentiated thyroid cancer in order to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers.

DNA methylation profiling of well-differentiated thyroid cancer uncovers markers of recurrence free survival.

Thyroid cancer is a heterogeneous disease with several subtypes characterized by cytological, histological and genetic alterations, but the involvement of epigenetics is not well understood. Here, we investigated the role of aberrant DNA methylation in the development of well-differentiated thyroid tumors. We performed genome-wide DNA methylation profiling in the largest well-differentiated thyroid tumor series reported to date, comprising 83 primary tumors as well as 8 samples of adjacent normal tissue.

Determinants of sex hormone-binding globulin concentrations in a cross-sectional study of healthy men randomly selected.

Sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG) is a glycoprotein synthesised in the liver and it is a transport protein which is primary modulator of the androgen signal. This cross-sectional study prompted us to investigate the relati-onship between SHBG and, age, anthropometric, body composition variables, the IGF-I system and leptin in a group of healthy adult men randomly selected. Included 134 men, aged 41.