Being the ghost in the machine: a medical ghostwriter's personal view.

Linda Logdberg, a medical ghostwriter for 11 years, provides a personal view of her former work and what she believes should be done about the problem of fraud in authorship.

Human blood group genes 2010: chromosomal locations and cloning strategies revisited.

Thirty human blood group systems are now recognized. Corresponding genes have been cloned and characterized for all of the systems and localized to single cytogenetic bands on 14 autosomes and the X chromosome. In this review, we summarize this information, highlighting the most recently defined blood group system (Rh-associated glycoprotein) and the developing understanding of the P1 system and the complex molecular basis for its phenotypes.

Animal models of transfusion-related acute lung injury.

Currently, more than 50 years after its apparent early recognition in case reports, and more than 20 years after its name was coined to denote a distinct entity of pulmonary transfusion reactions, transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) has emerged as a serious cause of transfusion-associated morbidity and the subject of an exponentially growing scientific literature. However, review articles, clinical case reports, and case series continue to dominate the published literature on the topic and experimental studies aimed at modeling and elucidating TRALI mechanisms are less frequent. This article reviews the current status of the known experimental models of TRALI, with particular emphasis on efforts to establish in vivo animal models of this important pulmonary transfusion reaction.

Stage-specific regulation of adhesion molecule expression segregates epithelial stem/progenitor cells in fetal and adult human livers.

Purpose: Regulated expression of cell adhesion molecules could be critical in the proliferation, sequestration, and maintenance of stem/progenitor cells. Therefore, we determined fetal and adult stage-specific roles of cell adhesion in liver cell compartments.

Methods: We performed immunostaining for the adhesion molecules, E-cadherin and Ep-CAM, associated proteins, beta-catenin and alpha-actinin, hepatobiliary markers, albumin, alpha-fetoprotein, and cytokeratin-19, and the proliferation marker, Ki-67.

Transfusion-related acute lung injury.

With the success of reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted infectious diseases, noninfectious serious hazards of transfusion have come to the forefront with respect to transfusion safety. Transfusion-related acute lung injury has emerged as a dominant noninfectious serious hazard of transfusion. Improved understanding of its pathophysiology is needed to improve clinical strategies to deal with the risk.