1,720,959 research outputs found
Potential cause-effect relationship between insulin autoimmune syndrome and alpha lipoic acid: Two case reports
Full text linkObjectives: Insulin autoimmune syndrome (IAS) or Hirata disease is a rare cause of autoimmune hypoglycemia with apparent high insulin levels and anti-insulin autoantibodies and was first described by Hirata in Japan in 1970. IAS cases are usually related to exposure to sulfhydryl-containing drugs, which stimulate the production of insulin autoantibodies. Among sulfhydryl-containing compounds, alpha lipoic acid (ALA) has recently emerged as a cause of IAS. After the first observations of ALA-induced IAS were reported in Japan in 2006, an increasing number of cases related to ALA administration have been described. An Italian group recently reported on six cases of IAS of which one was associated with HLA-DRB1*04:06 and the remaining five with HLA-DRB1*04:03. This suggests that the latter is potentially involved in the genetic susceptibility of people of European descent to IAS. Methods: Here, we describe two new cases of IAS in women that were triggered by ALA. Results: Both cases are associated with HLA-DRB1*04:03 and confirm the evidence that HLA-DRB1*04:03 rather than HLA-DRB1*04:06 is specifically related to IAS susceptibility in Europeans. Conclusions: Case reports of ALA-induced hypoglycemic episodes highlight the need for greater care in prescribing ALA supplementation as well as the identification of specific and personalized therapeutic targets
Evaluation of the diagnostic and predictive power of PCA3 in the prostate cancer. A different best cut-off in each different scenario. Preliminary results
No full textHuman leukocyte antigen (HLA) DQ2/DQ8 prevalence in recurrent pregnancy loss women
Full text linkOBJECTIVE:
Over the last few years, medical scholars have reported the significant association between recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) and celiac disease (CD). Various pathogenic mechanisms underlying the pregnancy failure in CD have been suggested: among them the ability of anti-transglutaminase antibodies to impair the trophoblast invasiveness and endometrial endothelial cells differentiation and disrupt early placentation. CD shows a complex non-Mendelian pattern of inheritance, involving major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes. The strongest effects are mapped to the classical human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DQA1 and HLA-DQB1 genes. Specifically, the common haplotypes DQ2.5, DQ2.2, and DQ8 have been shown to increase CD risk by six-fold on average. MHC region contains genes with immunological functions and is responsible for the strongest association signals observed in most immune-mediated diseases. The aim of our study was to investigate the prevalence of the HLA-DQ2/DQ8 haplotypes in RPL, outside of CD.
METHODS:
The study population included women with history of RPL (≥3 spontaneous pregnancy losses) and women with at least two previous uncomplicated term pregnancies (control group, CTR). All women gave their informed consent to use their data for research purposes.
RESULTS:
97 RPL women and 55 CTR were considered in the study. Mean age of the RPL sample was 37.7 (standard deviation, SD, 3.0; min 27; max 39). Mean age of the control group was 35.6 (SD 3.0; min 26years; m, max 38). A significantly increased prevalence of HLA-DQ2/DQ8 haplotype positivity was found in RPL population compared to control women (52.6% vs 23.6%; p<0.01).
CONCLUSIONS:
Our observations show for the first time a higher proportion of individuals HLA DQ2/DQ8 positive in women with RPL as compared to controls (and to general population estimates). Further studies are needed to better understand (i) the possible pathogenic mechanism to this observation; (ii) the clinical and therapeutic implications of our observation in order to provide a new approach to RPL couples.
Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.
KEYWORDS:
Celiac disease; Genetic susceptibility; Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DQ2/DQ8; Intestinal permeabylity; Recurrent pregnancy los
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Comparison between three molecular methods for detection of blood melanoma tyrosinase mRNA. Correlation with melanoma stages and S100, LDH, NSE, byochemical markers
No full textDispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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