Unlabelled: Background - Alcohol is the most abused substance in Western society, resulting in major economic losses and negative health consequences. Therefore, there is a need for a selective and robust detection method for alcohol consumption in various clinical and forensic settings. This study aimed to validate a mass spectrometry method for quantifying phosphatidylethanol (PEth) and perform retrospective data analysis from the patient population of a national reference laboratory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnvironmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has become a popular conservation tool for detecting rare and elusive species. eDNA assays typically target mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) due to its high copy number per cell and its ability to persist in the environment longer than nuclear DNA. Consequently, the development of eDNA assays has relied on mitochondrial reference sequences available in online databases, or in cases where such data are unavailable, de novo DNA extraction and sequencing of mtDNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study evaluated the quality of cancer recurrence data in the National Cancer Database (NCDB) to determine if missingness and reporting consistency have improved enough to support national research.
Methods: This multi-methods study included NCDB analyses and a cancer registry staff survey. Trends in recurrence data missingness from 2004 to 2021 and multivariable analyses of factors associated with missingness from 2017 to 2021 were evaluated for 4,568,927 patients with non-metastatic cancer.
Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 4 (MAP3K4) promotes fetal and placental growth and development, with MAP3K4 kinase inactivation resulting in placental insufficiency and fetal growth restriction. MAP3K4 promotes key signaling pathways including JNK, p38, and PI3K/Akt, leading to activation of CREB-binding protein. MAP3K4 kinase inactivation results in loss of these pathways and gain of histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) expression and activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExposure to stressors has been shown to dysregulate motivated behaviors in a bidirectional manner over time. The relationship between stress and motivation is relevant to psychological disorders, including depression, binge eating, and substance use disorder; however, this relationship is not well characterized, especially in females, despite their increased risk of these disorders. Social defeat stress is a common model to study stress-induced motivation changes, however, historically this model excluded females due to lack of female-to-female aggression and unreliable male-to-female aggression.
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