Using item analysis to evaluate hand hygiene self-assessments at Alberta health services.

Background: It is important to evaluate the quality of assessments used in education as the evaluation can identify poorly worded questions, or questions which are not contributing to the validity or reliability of the test. The objective of this study was to perform an item analysis on the hand hygiene self-assessments used at Alberta Health Services to determine the assessments' validity, reliability, and to highlight questions that required rewording or removal.

Methods: The sample included all first completed attempts between April 2018 and December 2020.

Survival and disease relapse in surgical stage I endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus after adjuvant vaginal vault brachytherapy.

Introduction: Advanced age, deep myoinvasion, whole cavity or lower uterine segment tumors, poor differentiation, and lymphovascular space invasion are known to increase recurrence risk and adversely affect survival in stage I endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus.

Objectives: To ascertain survival rates, failure patterns, and salvageability and to correlate adverse histopathologic effects to recurrences in these patients.

Methods: Data of 162 patients with surgical stage I endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus with an increased risk of recurrence were reviewed from the year 1997 to 2008 at KK Gynaecological Cancer Centre, Singapore.

Different patterns of regulation of Tyr-phosphorylated STAT1 and STAT3 in human hepatoma Hep3B cells by the phosphatase inhibitor orthovanadate.

The cellular physiology of signal transducer and activator of transcription protein family (STAT) transcription factors includes activation by Tyr-phosphorylation (PY) in cytokine and growth factor receptor complexes at the level of plasma membrane rafts, subsequent cytoplasmic transit and nuclear import, and transcriptional regulation of target genes, followed by dephosphorylation and export back to the cytoplasm. The ubiquitous protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) called "T-cell protein tyrosine phosphatase" has been reported to mediate Tyr-dephosphorylation of both interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma)-induced PY-STAT1 and interkleukin-6 (IL-6)-induced PY-STAT3 in some cell lines. To test whether the same PTP regulated both PY-STAT1 and PY-STAT3 in human hepatocytes we used orthovanadate (VO(4); 0.

Association of the chaperone glucose-regulated protein 58 (GRP58/ER-60/ERp57) with Stat3 in cytosol and plasma membrane complexes.

Glucose-regulated protein 58 (GRP58/ER-60/ERp57), best known as a chaperone in the endoplasmic reticulum lumen, was previously identified by us as one of several accessory proteins in the S100 cytosol fraction of human hepatoma Hep3B cells that was differentially coshifted by anti-Stat3 antibody in an antibody-subtracted differential protein display assay. In the present study, the association between GRP58 and Stat3 in different cytoplasmic compartments was evaluated using cross-immunoprecipitation and cell-fractionation techniques. In the S100 cytosol fraction, three different anti-GRP58 polyclonal antibodies (pAb) cross-immunoprecipitated Stat3 (but not Stat1), and, conversely, anti-Stat3 pAb cross-immunoprecipitated GRP58.

Cytokine signaling: STATS in plasma membrane rafts.

STAT transcription factors signal from the plasma membrane to the nucleus in response to growth factors and cytokines. We have investigated whether plasma membrane "rafts" are involved in cytokine-activated STAT signaling. Cytokine-free human hepatoma Hep3B cells or cells treated with interleukin-6 (IL-6) or orthovanadate (a general activator of STATs) were fractionated, and plasma membrane raft fractions were obtained by equilibrium sedimentation or flotation through discontinuous sucrose gradients using either non-detergent or detergent-based (saponin or Triton X-100) methods.