Background: The exponential growth of telehealth is revolutionizing health care delivery, but its evaluation has not matched the pace of its uptake. Various forms of assessment, from single-item to more extensive questionnaires, have been used to assess telehealth and digital therapeutics and their usability. The most frequently used questionnaire is the "Telehealth Usability Questionnaire" (TUQ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac dysfunction is a hallmark of aging in humans and mice. Here we report that a two-week treatment to restore youthful Bridging Integrator 1 (BIN1) levels in the hearts of 24-month-old mice rejuvenates cardiac function and substantially reverses the aging phenotype. Our data indicate that age-associated overexpression of BIN1 occurs alongside dysregulated endosomal recycling and disrupted trafficking of cardiac Ca1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPediatric palliative home care (PPHC) provides care for children, adolescents, and young adults with life-limiting illnesses in their own homes. Home care often requires long travel times for the PPHC team, which is available to the families 24/7 during crises. The complementary use of telehealth may improve the quality of care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCa1.2 channels are critical players in cardiac excitation-contraction coupling, yet we do not understand how they are affected by an important therapeutic target of heart failure drugs and regulator of blood pressure, angiotensin II. Signaling through G-coupled AT1 receptors, angiotensin II triggers a decrease in PIP, a phosphoinositide component of the plasma membrane (PM) and known regulator of many ion channels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPatients under palliative home care have special needs for their end-of-life support, which in general does not automatically include cardiopulmonary resuscitation. However, emergency medical services (EMS) respond to emergencies in children under palliative care that lead to cardiopulmonary resuscitation. To understand the underlying steps of decision-making, this retrospective, cross-sectional, multicenter study aimed to analyze pediatric patients under palliative home care who had been resuscitated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGene therapy, cell therapy and vaccine research have led to an increased use of qPCR/ddPCR in bioanalytical laboratories. CROs are progressively undertaking the development and validation of qPCR and ddPCR assays. Currently, however, there is limited regulatory guidance for the use of qPCR and a complete lack of any regulatory guidelines for the use of the newer ddPCR to support regulated bioanalysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article describes the development and validation of a bioanalytical assay to quantify CPI-613 and its major metabolites, CPI-2850 and CPI-1810, in human plasma matrix using LC-MS/MS. Sample extraction procedure following protein precipitation with acetonitrile was optimized to extract all three analytes from plasma with maximum recovery. The final extracted supernatants were diluted with water and injected onto an Xbridge C18 (50 × 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGene therapy, cell therapy and vaccine research have led to an increased need to perform cellular immunity testing in a regulated environment to ensure the safety and efficacy of these treatments. The most common method for the measurement of cellular immunity has been Enzyme-Linked Immunospot assays. However, there is a lack of regulatory guidance available discussing the recommendations for developing and validating these types of assays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe voltage-gated Na channel regulates the initiation and propagation of the action potential in excitable cells. The major cardiac isoform Na1.5, encoded by , comprises a monomer with four homologous repeats (I-IV) that each contain a voltage sensing domain (VSD) and pore domain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a debilitating autoimmune disease with grave physical, emotional and socioeconomic consequences. Despite advances in targeted biologic and pharmacologic interventions that have recently come to market, many patients with RA continue to have inadequate response to therapies, or intolerable side effects, with resultant progression of their disease. In this review, we detail multiple biomolecular pathways involved in RA disease pathogenesis to elucidate and highlight pathways that have been therapeutic targets in managing this systemic autoimmune disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
February 2021
The number and activity of Ca1.2 channels in the cardiomyocyte sarcolemma tunes the magnitude of Ca-induced Ca release and myocardial contraction. β-Adrenergic receptor () activation stimulates sarcolemmal insertion of Ca1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe 14 edition of the Workshop on Recent Issues in Bioanalysis (14 WRIB) was held virtually on June 15-29, 2020 with an attendance of over 1000 representatives from pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, and regulatory agencies worldwide. The 14 WRIB included three Main Workshops, seven Specialized Workshops that together spanned 11 days in order to allow exhaustive and thorough coverage of all major issues in bioanalysis, biomarkers, immunogenicity, gene therapy, cell therapy and vaccine. Moreover, a comprehensive vaccine assays track; an enhanced cytometry track and updated Industry/Regulators consensus on BMV of biotherapeutics by Mass Spectrometry (hybrid assays, LCMS and HRMS) were special features in 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Mutations in the SCN5A gene, encoding the α subunit of the Nav1.5 channel, cause a life-threatening form of cardiac arrhythmia, long QT syndrome type 3 (LQT3). Mexiletine, which is structurally related to the Na channel-blocking anesthetic lidocaine, is used to treat LQT3 patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShortly after cardiac Na channels activate and initiate the action potential, inactivation ensues within milliseconds, attenuating the peak Na current, I and allowing the cell membrane to repolarize. A very limited number of Na channels that do not inactivate carry a persistent I, or late I. While late I is only a small fraction of peak magnitude, it significantly prolongs ventricular action potential duration, which predisposes patients to arrhythmia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVoltage-gated Na (Na) channels comprise a macromolecular complex whose components tailor channel function. Key components are the non-covalently bound β1 and β3 subunits that regulate channel gating, expression, and pharmacology. Here, we probe the molecular basis of this regulation by applying voltage clamp fluorometry to measure how the β subunits affect the conformational dynamics of the cardiac Na channel (Na1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFunctional eukaryotic voltage-gated Na (Na) channels comprise four domains (DI-DIV), each containing six membrane-spanning segments (S1-S6). Voltage sensing is accomplished by the first four membrane-spanning segments (S1-S4), which together form a voltage-sensing domain (VSD). A critical Na channel gating process, inactivation, has previously been linked to activation of the VSDs in DIII and DIV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetically engineered crops were first commercialized in 1994 and since then have been rapidly adopted, enabling growers to more effectively manage pests and increase crop productivity while ensuring food, feed, and environmental safety. The development of these crops is complex and based on rigorous science that must be well coordinated to create a plant with desired beneficial phenotypes. This article describes the general process by which a genetically engineered crop is developed from an initial concept to a commercialized product.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Quantification of bile acids using LC-MS has previously been very challenging on triple quadrupole MS systems due to the absence of a primary fragment ion for unconjugated bile acids.
Results: A LC-high-resolution/accurate mass MS method for the analysis of six bile acids (cholic acid, chenodeoxycholic acid, taurocholic acid, deoxycholic acid, lithocholic acid and ursodeoxycholic acid) was developed and successfully validated. The method includes a single extraction and a single injection with all analytes separated using target-selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode in two periods with a resolution of 70,000 and 140,000, respectively.
In order to meet the drug discovery and development needs of pharmaceutical companies, CROs are constantly challenged by the requirements for rapid LC-MS/MS method development prior to method validation and sample analysis. In order to meet this challenge, a comprehensive method development program, nicknamed 'Amoeba™', which uses a series of written protocols for standardized and efficient method development was developed. In this paper, the genesis of the Amoeba method development program is elucidated in detail and a number of case studies are presented to showcase the execution of the Amoeba method development program.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth Mark Q
January 2011
This article details research examining attitudes towards, and utilization of, cosmetic augmentation procedures among Generation Y individuals. Cosmetic augmentation is defined as the utilization of advanced technologies to augment the appearance of otherwise healthy individuals. Examples of cosmetic augmentation include plastic surgery and laser surgical procedures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn plants, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) with sequence homology to transcribed regions of genes can guide the sequence-specific degradation of corresponding mRNAs, leading to posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS). The current consensus is that siRNA-mediated PTGS occurs primarily in the cytoplasm where target mRNAs are localized and translated into proteins. However, expression of an inverted-repeat double-stranded RNA corresponding to the soybean FAD2-1A desaturase intron is sufficient to silence FAD2-1, implicating nuclear precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) rather than cytosolic mRNA as the target of PTGS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSuppression of the microsomal ω6 oleate desaturase during the seed development of soybean (Glycine max) with the 420-bp soybean FAD2-1A intron as RNAi trigger shifts the conventional fatty acid composition of soybean oil from 20% oleic and 60% polyunsaturates to one containing greater than 80% oleic acid and less than 10% polyunsaturates. To determine whether RNAi could be attenuated by reducing the trigger fragment length, transgenic plants were generated to express successively shorter 5' or 3' deletion derivatives of the FAD2-1A intron. We observed a gradual reduction in transcript suppression with shorter trigger fragments.
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