Integration of eye health into primary care services in Tanzania: a qualitative investigation of experiences in two districts.

Background: Visual impairment is a public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa, affecting nearly 5% of the population. Efforts to combat avoidable causes have been hampered by weak health systems and little evidence exists to suggest what interventions may be effective to improve the situation. Despite this, there are calls to promote some specific interventions, one of which being the closer integration of eye health services into health systems, often focusing on training primary health workers to deliver basic eye health services.

Laparoscopic Gastroepiploic Lymphovascular Pedicle Harvesting for the Treatment of Extremity Lymphedema: A Novel Technique.

Vascularized lymph node transfers have multiple donor sites with risk of iatrogenic lymphedema. We sought to describe in detail a surgical technique that is safe, reproducible, and efficient in harvesting gastroepiploic vascularized lymph nodes using real-time indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescent imaging. Photographs and video were acquired from a case to depict a step-by-step approach.

Mixed methods evaluation of a primary eye care training programme for primary health workers in Morogoro Tanzania.

Background: There are 285 million people with visual impairment (VI) worldwide including 39 million who are blind; 15 % of those with VI live in Africa, and around 80 % of VI is preventable or treatable with the right equipment, information and skills. The scarcity of human resources for eye health, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, is a key challenge towards achieving this goal. Therefore training primary health workers (PHW) in providing eye-care services has been seen by some authors as a way to improve access to eye-care services in remote communities.

Host Protein Biomarkers Identify Active Tuberculosis in HIV Uninfected and Co-infected Individuals.

Biomarkers for active tuberculosis (TB) are urgently needed to improve rapid TB diagnosis. The objective of this study was to identify serum protein expression changes associated with TB but not latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (LTBI), uninfected states, or respiratory diseases other than TB (ORD). Serum samples from 209 HIV uninfected (HIV(-)) and co-infected (HIV(+)) individuals were studied.

Hereditary pancreatitis: endoscopic and surgical management.

Introduction: Hereditary pancreatitis is a rare cause of chronic pancreatitis. In recent years, genetic mutations have been characterized. The rarity of this disorder has resulted in a gap in clinical knowledge.

Protein biomarker quantification by mass spectrometry.

The protein biomarker field is becoming increasingly interested in multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry (MRM-MS) assays for biomarker tests. Originally developed years ago and used extensively to quantify small molecules, this technique is now being adapted to peptides. A summary is presented of MRM-MS techniques for quantification of protein biomarkers, including biomarker panels, and clinical applications of this approach.

Industrialized MS-based proteomics in the search for circulating biomarkers.

Proteomics is the study of the expression, structure and function of proteins under a range of cellular conditions. A rapidly evolving component of this field is clinical proteomics, which focuses on proteins involved in human disease and how they are affected by therapeutic intervention. MS is the main analytical technology for identifying and quantifying proteins whose expression is modulated across the normal to disease continuum.

Intracellular adaptation of Brucella abortus.

Macrophages were infected with virulent Brucella abortus strain 2308 or attenuated strain 19. Intracellular bacteria were recovered at different times after infection and their proteomes compared. The virulent strain initially reduced most biosynthesis and altered its respiration; adaptations reversed later in infection.

PARPs database: a LIMS systems for protein-protein interaction data mining or laboratory information management system.

Background: In the "post-genome" era, mass spectrometry (MS) has become an important method for the analysis of proteins and the rapid advancement of this technique, in combination with other proteomics methods, results in an increasing amount of proteome data. This data must be archived and analysed using specialized bioinformatics tools.

Description: We herein describe "PARPs database," a data analysis and management pipeline for liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) proteomics.

Peptide Shifter: enhancing separation reproducibility using correlated expression profiles.

Chromatographic protein and peptide separation technologies enable comprehensive proteomic analysis of plasma and other complex biological samples by mass spectrometry. However, as the number of separations and/or fractions increases, so does the number of peptides split across fraction boundaries. Irreproducibility of peptide chromatographic separation results in peptides on or near the boundary moving partially or entirely into adjacent fractions.

An evaluation of multidimensional fingerprinting in the context of clinical proteomics.

Multidimensional fingerprinting (MDF) utilizes measurable peptide characteristics to identify proteins. In this study, 3-D fingerprinting, namely, parent protein molecular weight, peptide mass, and peptide retention time on RPLC, is used to identify 331 differentially expressed proteins between normal and human colon cancer plasma membrane samples. A false discovery rate (FDR) procedure is introduced to evaluate the performance of MDF on the colon cancer dataset.

Extensive cell envelope modulation is associated with virulence in Brucella abortus.

Brucella virulence is linked to components of the cell envelope and tightly connected to the function of the BvrR/BvrS sensory-regulatory system. To quantify the impact of BvrR/BvrS on cell envelope proteins, we performed a label-free mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis of spontaneously released outer membrane fragments from four strains of Brucella abortus (wild type virulent, avirulent bvrR- and bvrS- mutants as well as reconstituted virulent bvrR+ (bvrR-/pbvrR+)). We identified 167 differentially expressed proteins, of which 25 were assigned to the outer membrane.

Death with dignity: devising a withdrawal of treatment process.

In 2002, a study was undertaken at St Thomas' Hospital to ascertain whether nurses felt adequately prepared in caring for patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) during the withdrawal of treatment (WoT) process (Dean, 2002). The study concluded that nurses on the ICU were unclear of the process and lacked confidence and knowledge of WoT. This study inspired the establishment of a WoT steering group to address the many issues involved in this process.

Protein depletion from blood plasma using a volatile buffer.

Removal of high abundance proteins is widely used in sample processing for proteomics studies of blood plasma. Immunoaffinity (IA) depletion is currently the most specific method for performing this step. Historically, IA depletion matrices have been designed to be used with inorganic buffers.

Proteome profiling of human epithelial ovarian cancer cell line TOV-112D.

A proteome profiling of the epithelial ovarian cancer cell line TOV-112D was initiated as a protein expression reference in the study of ovarian cancer. Two complementary proteomic approaches were used in order to maximise protein identification: two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE) protein separation coupled to matrix assisted laser desorption/ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and one-dimensional gel electrophoresis (1DE) coupled to liquid-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC MS/MS). One hundred and seventy-two proteins have been identified among 288 spots selected on two-dimensional gels and a total of 579 proteins were identified with the 1DE LC MS/MS approach.

Experimental and bioinformatic approaches for interrogating protein-protein interactions to determine protein function.

An ambitious goal of proteomics is to elucidate the structure, interactions and functions of all proteins within cells and organisms. One strategy to determine protein function is to identify the protein-protein interactions. The increasing use of high-throughput and large-scale bioinformatics-based studies has generated a massive amount of data stored in a number of different databases.

A proteomic approach to the identification of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins as a new family of poly(ADP-ribose)-binding proteins.

A new class of poly(ADP-ribose) (pADPr)-binding proteins, heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs), has been identified by a proteomic approach using matrix-assisted laser-desorption-ionization time-of-flight ('MALDI-TOF') MS. Liquid-phase isoelectric focusing with a Rotofor cell (Bio-Rad) allowed pre-fractionation of proteins extracted from HeLa cells. Rotofor protein fractions were further separated by SDS/PAGE and then transferred to a PVDF membrane.

Disruptor of telomeric silencing-1 is a chromatin-specific histone H3 methyltransferase.

Yeast disruptor of telomeric silencing-1 (DOT1) is involved in gene silencing and in the pachytene checkpoint during meiotic cell cycle. Here we show that the Dot1 protein possesses intrinsic histone methyltransferase (HMT) activity. When compared with Rmt1, another putative yeast HMT, Dot1 shows very distinct substrate specificity.