A Simple Physical Examination Predicts Cognitive Decline in Very Mild Dementia.

Background: Different exercises have different effects upon physical fitness and cognitive domains. In this context, physical fitness behaviors have been identified as a contributing factor to cognitive decline in patients with very mild dementia. The present study aimed to further determine baseline senior fitness behaviors in patients with very mild dementia and possible factors related to rapid cognitive decline.

Successful autologous stem cell collection in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in complete cytogenetic response, with quantitative measurement of BCR-ABL expression in blood, marrow, and apheresis products.

Imatinib mesylate is the initial therapy of choice for chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase (CML-CP), but in some patients, the disease becomes resistant to imatinib. Autologous stem cell transplantation using cells collected while in complete cytogenetic response (CCyR) may represent a therapeutic option for these patients. We mobilized and collected autologous CD34(+) stem cells from 20 CML-CP patients in CCyR, 19 of whom were taking imatinib, and measured BCR-ABL expression in the apheresis products, blood and bone marrow using real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR).

Parallel screening and activity profiling with HIV protease inhibitor pharmacophore models.

Parallel Screening has been introduced as an in silico method to predict the potential biological activities of compounds by screening them with a multitude of pharmacophore models. This study presents an early application example employing a Pipeline Pilot-based screening platform for automatic large-scale virtual activity profiling. An extensive set of HIV protease inhibitor pharmacophore models was used to screen a selection of active and inactive compounds.

High-throughput SNP genotyping by single-tube PCR with Tm-shift primers.

Despite many recent advances in high-throughput single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping technologies, there is still a great need for inexpensive and flexible methods with a reasonable throughput. Here we report substantial modifications and improvements to an existing homogenous allele-specific PCR-based SNP genotyping method, making it an attractive new option for researchers engaging in candidate gene studies or following up on genome-wide scans. In this advanced version of the melting temperature (Tm)-shift SNP genotyping method, we attach two GC-rich tails of different lengths to allele-specific PCR primers, such that SNP alleles in genomic DNA samples can be discriminated by the Tms of the PCR products.