Association of maternal metals exposure, metabolites and birth outcomes in newborns: A prospective cohort study.

Background: Maternal exposure to metals may pose a risk to the health of newborns, however, the underlying mechanisms remain ambiguous. Herein, we aimed to investigate the influence of metals exposure on birth outcomes and reveal the importance of metabolites in the exposure-outcomes association by using metabolomics methods.

Methods: In our study, 292 mother-pairs were included who were recruited from the affiliated hospitals of Nanjing Medical University between 2006 and 2011.

Self-assembly in escin-nonionic surfactant mixtures: From micelles to vesicles.

Hypothesis: Saponins are a class of plant derived surfactants which are widely used in food related foams and emulsions, aerated drinks, and in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. As a potential biosourced and renewable ingredient in a wider range of surfactant based formulations their potential is intimately associated with their mixing with synthetic surfactants. As such the nature of the mixed saponin-surfactant self-assembly is an important characteristic to investigate and understand.

Sex-specific differences in rim appearance of multiple sclerosis lesions on quantitative susceptibility mapping.

Background: Susceptibility MRI techniques, such as phase and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) reveal lesion heterogeneity in MS, including the presence of lesions with outer rims suggestive of iron accumulation in macrophages and microglia, indicative of chronic-active inflammatory white matter lesions (WMLs).

Objective: To evaluate the in vivo relationship between chronic-active WMLs (as visualized by rimmed lesions on QSM) and several clinical metrics.

Methods: 39 patients (15 men, 24 women) with MS underwent 7 Tesla brain MRIs and clinical evaluation.

Methods for testing familial aggregation of diseases in population-based samples: application to Hodgkin lymphoma in Swedish registry data.

We use data on lymphoma in families of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) cases from the Swedish Family Cancer Database (Hemminki et al. 2001) to illustrate survival methods for detecting familial aggregation in first degree relatives of case probands compared to first degree relatives of control probands, from registries that permit sampling of all cases. Because more than one case may occur in a given family, the first degree relatives of case probands are not necessarily independent, and we present procedures that allow for such dependence.