Grit, anxiety, and stress in emergency physicians.

Introduction: The personality traits of emergency physicians are infrequently studied, though interest in physician wellness is increasing. The objective of this study is to acquire pilot data about the amount of grit, anxiety, and stress in emergency physicians using established psychological survey instruments, and to examine their associations of each of these traits with each other.

Methods: Thirty-six emergency medicine resident and attending physicians from an urban academic medical center consented for enrollment.

Analysis of differential gene expression in healthy and osteoarthritic cartilage and isolated chondrocytes by microarray analysis.

The regulation of chondrocytes in osteoarthritic cartilage and the expression of specific gene products by these cells during early-onset and late-stage osteoarthritis are not well characterized. With the introduction of cDNA array technology, the measurement of thousands of different genes in one small tissue sample can be carried out. Interpretation of gene expression analyses in articular cartilage is aided by the fact that this tissue contains only one cell type in both normal and diseased conditions.

Relative messenger RNA expression profiling of collagenases and aggrecanases in human articular chondrocytes in vivo and in vitro.

Objective: Osteoarthritic (OA) cartilage destruction depends on collagen- and aggrecan-degrading proteases such as collagenases (MMP-1 and MMP-13), stromelysin (MMP-3), MMP-14, as well as the so-called aggrecanases (ADAM-TS4 and ADAM-TS5). In this study, we tried to clarify whether these proteases are expressed in vivo in human normal and OA cartilage (and whether they are up-regulated or down-regulated during the disease process) and in interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta)-stimulated chondrocytes in vitro.

Methods: Quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays were developed and performed on RNA isolated directly from normal and degenerative cartilage tissue as well as from primary human articular chondrocytes cultured with and without IL-1beta.