Improving the Insulin Pump Initiation Process for Pediatric Patients with Type 1 Diabetes through Application of Lean Quality Improvement Methods.

Context: Our pediatric diabetes center initiated insulin pump therapy for more than 250 patients with type 1 diabetes in 2014, but onboarding was inefficient.

Objective: To decrease time from the decision to initiate pump therapy to the ambulatory encounter after pump start (lead time) for new pump users from 132.5 days to less than 110 days within 5 months.

Lineage-specific gene duplication and loss in human and great ape evolution.

Given that gene duplication is a major driving force of evolutionary change and the key mechanism underlying the emergence of new genes and biological processes, this study sought to use a novel genome-wide approach to identify genes that have undergone lineage-specific duplications or contractions among several hominoid lineages. Interspecies cDNA array-based comparative genomic hybridization was used to individually compare copy number variation for 39,711 cDNAs, representing 29,619 human genes, across five hominoid species, including human. We identified 1,005 genes, either as isolated genes or in clusters positionally biased toward rearrangement-prone genomic regions, that produced relative hybridization signals unique to one or more of the hominoid lineages.

Investigation of DUSP8 and CALCA in alcohol dependence.

Evidence for genetic linkage to alcohol dependence was found on chromosome 11p15.5 from an autosome-wide scan in a Southwestern Native American population. The purpose of this study was to identify genes that may underlie this linkage signal.

Fine mapping of polymorphic alcohol-related quantitative trait loci candidate genes using interval-specific congenic recombinant mice.

Background: The inbred long-sleep (ILS) and inbred short-sleep (ISS) strains of mice are widely studied as a model of initial sensitivity to alcohol. Recently, a large comparative DNA sequencing study of candidate genes located within the four Lore quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with the ethanol-induced loss of righting reflex in ILS and ISS mice has identified eight genes that contain coding region differences corresponding to amino acid changes. Here, recently developed interval-specific congenic recombinant mice (ISCRs) have been used to map these genes in relationship to newly narrowed QTL regions.