Assessment of Imprecision in gamma interferon release assays for the detection of exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

New gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) release assays (IGRAs) to detect an exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis have recently been launched. The majority of the studies in temperate-climate countries agree that these methods have superior specificity and equal or even superior sensitivity over tuberculin skin tests (TSTs) in the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI). However, reproducibility data of IGRAs are virtually missing.

Fourier-transformed infrared breath testing after ingestion of technical alcohol.

The study aim was to evaluate the feasibility of a Fourier-transformed infrared (FT-IR) analyzer for out-of-laboratory use by screening the exhalations of inebriated individuals, and to determine analysis quality using common breath components and solvents. Each of the 35 inebriated participants gave an acceptable sample. Because of the metabolism of 2-propanol, the subjects exhaled high concentrations of acetone in addition to ethanol.

Clinical associations of the risk alleles of HLA-Cw6 and CCHCR1*WWCC in psoriasis.

The PSORS1 locus is the consistently replicated genetic risk factor for psoriasis. Clinical associations with the main marker allele of PSORS1, HLA-Cw6, have been addressed in a number of studies, but clinical associations have not been used as a way to distinguish the effects of the neighbouring candidate genes in PSORS1. Our results show that HLA-Cw6 and CCHCR1 risk allele associations with clinical features of psoriasis are predictably highly similar in a Finnish nationwide cohort of 379 psoriasis patients.

DNA copy number amplification profiling of human neoplasms.

DNA copy number amplifications activate oncogenes and are hallmarks of nearly all advanced tumors. Amplified genes represent attractive targets for therapy, diagnostics and prognostics. To investigate DNA amplifications in different neoplasms, we performed a bibliomics survey using 838 published chromosomal comparative genomic hybridization studies and collected amplification data at chromosome band resolution from more than 4500 cases.

Independent component analysis of fMRI group studies by self-organizing clustering.

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a valuable technique for the multivariate data-driven analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data sets. Applications of ICA have been developed mainly for single subject studies, although different solutions for group studies have been proposed. These approaches combine data sets from multiple subjects into a single aggregate data set before ICA estimation and, thus, require some additional assumptions about the separability across subjects of group independent components.