A single droplet dispensing system for high-throughput screening and reliable recovery of rare events.

Microfluidic droplet sorting has emerged as a powerful technique for a broad spectrum of biomedical applications ranging from single cell analysis to high-throughput drug screening, biomarker detection and tissue engineering. However, the controlled and reliable retrieval of selected droplets for further off-chip analysis and processing is a significant challenge in droplet sorting, particularly in high-throughput applications with low expected hit rates. In this study, we present a microfluidic platform capable of sorting and dispensing individual droplets with minimal loss rates.

Disease progression in systemic sclerosis-overlap syndrome is significantly different from limited and diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis.

Background: Systemic sclerosis (SSc)-overlap syndromes are a very heterogeneous and remarkable subgroup of SSc-patients, who present at least two connective tissue diseases (CTD) at the same time, usually with a specific autoantibody status.

Objectives: To determine whether patients, classified as overlap syndromes, show a disease course different from patients with limited SSc (lcSSc) or diffuse cutaneous SSc (dcSSc).

Methods: The data of 3240 prospectively included patients, registered in the database of the German Network for Systemic Scleroderma and followed between 2003 and 2013, were analysed.