Evaluation of a Video-Assisted Patient Education Program to Reduce Blood Pressure Delivered Through the Electronic Medical Record: Results of a Quality Improvement Project.

Background: Low-cost, automated interventions that increase knowledge and skills around diet and lifestyle modifications are recommended for cardiovascular disease risk reduction.

Methods: We initiated a quality improvement program to assess the impact of a web-based diet and lifestyle intervention utilizing short animated videos in adults with high blood pressure (BP) at a primary care clinic in Saudi Arabia. We enrolled adults with elevated BP, not on BP medications, who were identified using the electronic medical record.

Microbial drug efflux proteins of the major facilitator superfamily.

Drug efflux proteins are widespread amongst microorganisms, including pathogens. They can contribute to both natural insensitivity to antibiotics and to emerging antibiotic resistance and so are potential targets for the development of new antibacterial drugs. The design of such drugs would be greatly facilitated by knowledge of the structures of these transport proteins, which are poorly understood, because of the difficulties of obtaining crystals of quality.

Collection and characterisation of bacterial membrane proteins.

A general strategy for the amplified expression in Escherichia coli of membrane transport and receptor proteins from other bacteria is described. As an illustration we report the cloning of the putative alpha-ketoglutarate membrane transport gene from the genome of Helicobacter pylori, overexpression of the protein tagged with RGS(His)6 at the C-terminus, and its purification in mg quantities. The retention of structural and functional integrity was verified by circular dichroism spectroscopy and reconstitution of transport activity.