Wentworthgrantham1146
Group A Streptococcus (GAS) skin infections are caused by a diverse array of strain types and are highly prevalent in disadvantaged populations. The role of strain-specific immunity in preventing GAS infections is poorly understood, representing a critical knowledge gap in vaccine development. A recent GAS murine challenge study showed evidence that sterilising strain-specific and enduring immunity required two skin infections by the same GAS strain within three weeks. This mechanism of developing enduring immunity may be a significant impediment to the accumulation of immunity in populations. We used an agent-based mathematical model of GAS transmission to investigate the epidemiological consequences of enduring strain-specific immunity developing only after two infections with the same strain within a specified interval. Accounting for uncertainty when correlating murine timeframes to humans, we varied this maximum inter-infection interval from 3 to 420 weeks to assess its impact on prevalence and strain diS skin infection.Objective To determine whether neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) was associated with large for gestational age (LGA) while considering key sociodemographic and clinical confounding factors. Setting and patient All singleton infants whose parents were living in the city of Marseilles, France, between 2013 and 2016. Method Population-based study based on new-born hospital birth admission charts from the French National Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set Database. LGA infants were compared to appropriate-for-gestational-age (AGA) infants. Multiple generalized logistic model analysis was used to examine factors associated with LGA. Results A total of 43,309 singleton infants were included, and 4,747 (11%) were born LGA. LGA infants were more likely to have metabolic and respiratory diseases and to be admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Multiparity, advanced maternal age, obesity and diabetes were associated with an increased risk of LGA. Lower neighbourhood SES was associated with LGA (aOR = 1.24, 95% CI 1.14; 1.36; p 35 years old. Conclusion Neighbourhood SES could be considered an important factor for clinicians to better identify mothers at risk of having LGA births in addition to well-known risk factors such as maternal diabetes, obesity and age. The intensification of the association between SES and LGA with increasing maternal age suggests that neighbourhood disadvantage may act on LGA cumulatively over time.The essential role of journals as registries of scientific activity in all areas of knowledge justifies concern about their ownership and type of access. The purpose of this research is to analyze the main characteristics of publishers with journals that have received the DOAJ Seal. Triton X-114 in vitro The specific objectives are a) to identify publishers and journals registered with the DOAJ Seal; b) to characterize those publishers; and c) to analyze their article processing fees. The research method involved the use of the DOAJ database, the Seal option and the following indicators publisher, title, country, number of articles, knowledge area, article processing charges in USD, time for publication in weeks, and year of indexing in DOAJ. The results reveal a fast-rising oligopoly, dominated by Springer with 35% of the titles and PLOS with more than 20% of the articles. We've identified three models of expansion a) a few titles with hundreds of articles; b) a high number of titles with a mix of big and small journals; and c) a high number of titles with medium-size journals. We identify a high number of titles without APCs (27%) in all areas while medicine was found to be the most expensive area. Commercial publishers clearly exercise control over the scope of journals and the creation of new titles, according to the interests of their companies, which are not necessarily the same as those of the scientific community or of society in general.The relationship between age and well-being is U-shaped. One recent explanation for this empirical pattern is related to unmet aspirations theory, pointing out that optimism bias decreases life satisfaction at younger ages, whereas pessimism bias increases it at later stages of life. This paper investigates the effects of Internet use on subjective well-being over the life cycle. Our model investigates the proposition that Internet use affects aspirations, and that this effect is relatively stronger at younger and older ages. To investigate moderation effects of Internet use on the U-shape of life, we use the Eurobarometer annual surveys for the years 2010 to 2016, which provide rich information for around 150,000 individuals in all European countries. We focus on the EU Digital Agenda policy program, and exploit exogenous variation in broadband Internet take-up across European countries to identify the causal effects of Internet on life satisfaction for different age groups. The results of 2SLS estimations for a recursive bivariate ordered probit model show that active Internet users have a different well-being pattern over the life cycle compared to less active users. Specifically, we find that Internet use makes the U-shape of life steeper. Country-level evidence on aspiration levels for different demographic and Internet user groups indicates that our empirical results are consistent with unmet aspirations theory.Background Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy including pre-eclampsia are associated with maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. Early detection is vital for effective treatment and management of pre-eclampsia. This study examines and compares the clinical presentation and outcomes between early- and late-onset pre-eclampsia over a two year period. Methods A retrospective cohort study design which examines socio-demographic characteristics, treatment, outcomes, and fetal and maternal complications among women with early onset of pre-eclampsia (EO-PE) and late onset of pre-eclampsia (LO-PE). De-identified records of women who attended antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care services and experienced pre-eclampsia at Kenyatta National teaching and referral hospital were reviewed. We used chi square, t-test, and calculated odds ratio to determine any significant differences between the EO-PE and LO-PE cohorts. Results Out of 620 pre-eclamptic and eclamptic patients' records analyzed; 44 percent (n = 273l outcomes, it is critical to identify, manage, referral and closely follow-up pregnant women with pre-eclampsia throughout the pregnancy continuum. Ethical approval This study protocol was approved by Population Council's research ethics Institutional Review Board, Protocol 813, and KNH-UoN Ethics and Research Committee, Protocol 293/06/2017.The emergence of single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) technology has made it possible to measure gene expression variations at cellular level. This breakthrough enables the investigation of a wider range of problems including analysis of splicing heterogeneity among individual cells. However, compared to bulk RNA-seq, scRNA-seq data are much noisier due to high technical variability and low sequencing depth. Here we propose SCATS (Single-Cell Analysis of Transcript Splicing) for differential splicing analysis in scRNA-seq, which achieves high sensitivity at low coverage by accounting for technical noise. SCATS models scRNA-seq data either with or without Unique Molecular Identifiers (UMIs). For non-UMI data, SCATS explicitly models technical noise by accounting for capture efficiency and amplification bias through the use of external spike-ins; for UMI data, SCATS models capture efficiency and further accounts for transcriptional burstiness. A key aspect of SCATS lies in its ability to group "exons" that originate from the same isoform(s). Grouping exons is essential in splicing analysis of scRNA-seq data as it naturally aggregates spliced reads across different exons, making it possible to detect splicing events even when sequencing depth is low. To evaluate the performance of SCATS, we analyzed both simulated and real scRNA-seq datasets and compared with existing methods including Census and DEXSeq. We show that SCATS has well controlled type I error rate, and is more powerful than existing methods, especially when splicing difference is small. In contrast, Census suffers from severe type I error inflation, whereas DEXSeq is more conservative. When applied to mouse brain scRNA-seq datasets, SCATS identified more differential splicing events with subtle difference across cell types compared to Census and DEXSeq. With the increasing adoption of scRNA-seq, we believe SCATS will be well-suited for various splicing studies. The implementation of SCATS can be downloaded from https//github.com/huyustats/SCATS.BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of tumor-derived exosomal RNA eIF4E (exo-eIF4E) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and its correlation with prognosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data was exacted to investigate the role of tissue eIF4E in NSCLC. We enrolled 99 NSCLC patients and 40 healthy volunteers with corresponding serum samples in this study. The levels of exo-eIF4E in the peripheral blood of each group were tested by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The chi-squared test and the log-rank test were applied to analyze the correlation between the expression levels of exo-eIF4E and the patients' clinical-pathological data, including the overall survival. RESULTS TCGA data showed that increased eIF4E in NSCLC tissues was associated with late-stage disease (P=0.0497) and inferior overall survival (P=0.017). The expression of exo-eIF4E in the serum of the NSCLC group was significantly higher than that in healthy individuals (P less then 0.001). Furthermore, advanced TNM stage (P=0.003), distant metastasis (P=0.008), and serum positive cytokeratin fragment 19 (CYFRA21-1) (P=0.023) are more likely present in NSCLC patients with higher exo-eIF4E expression. Moreover, the multivariate combined with univariate analyses verified exo-eIF4E as an independent prognostic factor for shorter overall survival (P=0.01) and progression-free survival (P=0.005). Shorter overall survival (P=0.0005) and inferior progression-free survival (P=0.0017) are more likely present in NSCLC patients with higher exo-eIF4E. CONCLUSIONS Tumor-derived exo-eIF4E in serum can be a practical tool to predict the prognosis of NSCLC.Several tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) were recently identified, that could qualify as targets for immunotherapy, they could qualify (on RNA-level) for monitoring of tumor load. Here, we studied the expression levels of the immunogenic antigens PRAME (preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma), WT1 (Wilms' tumor gene), and PR3 (proteinase 3) on myeloid blasts by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and correlated these data to the state and course of disease and to the defined subgroups of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). At first diagnoses, 41 of 47 patients tested showed overexpression of PRAME (87%), 38 of WT1 (81%), and 26 of PR3 (55%), with the highest expression levels for PRAME (2048-fold), followed by WT1 (486-fold) and PR3 (196-fold). Thereby, with 70%, the most frequent combination at first diagnoses was detected to be PRAME and WT1 (33/47 patients). Overall, 21 patients (45%) revealed overexpression for all 3 TAAs. Moreover, the highest expression levels of PRAME were found to be correlated with the FAB subtype M5, cytogenetic unfavorable risk groups, and AMLs arising from myelodysplasia (secondary AML; P=0.