Adoptive transfer of splenocytes to study cell-mediated immune responses in hepatitis C infection using HCV transgenic mice.

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic hepatitis and a health problem affecting over 170 million people around the world. We previously studied transgenic mice that express HCV Core, Envelope 1 and Envelope 2 proteins predominantly in the liver, resulting in steatosis, liver and lymphoid tumors, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Herein, the immune-mediated cell response to hepatitis C antigens was evaluated by adoptive transfers of carboxyfluorescein succinimidyl ester (CFSE) labelled splenocytes from HCV immunized mice into HCV transgenic mice.

Data mining and clinical data repositories: Insights from a 667,000 patient data set.

Clinical repositories containing large amounts of biological, clinical, and administrative data are increasingly becoming available as health care systems integrate patient information for research and utilization objectives. To investigate the potential value of searching these databases for novel insights, we applied a new data mining approach, HealthMiner, to a large cohort of 667,000 inpatient and outpatient digital records from an academic medical system. HealthMiner approaches knowledge discovery using three unsupervised methods: CliniMiner, Predictive Analysis, and Pattern Discovery.