Potential roles of cytoskeletal protein in glioblastoma chemoresistance

Conference Theme: Brain Attack: A New EraPosters: no. P-14INTRODUCTION: Glioblastoma is a highly malignant neoplasm for which temozolomide is currently the standard chemotherapeutic agent. Adducin 3 (ADD3) is a cytoskeletal protein associated with chemoresistance but its role in glioblastoma has not been investigated ...postprin

The Hong Kong mental morbidity survey: background and study design

Mental disorders are highly prevalent conditions with immense disease burden. To inform health and social services policy formulation, local psychiatric epidemiological data are required. The Hong Kong Mental Morbidity Survey is a 3-year population-based study in which 5700 community-dwelling Chinese adults aged between 16 and 75 years were interviewed with the aim of evaluating the prevalence, co-morbidity, functional impairment, physical morbidity, and social determinants of significant mental disorders in the population. This paper describes the background and design of the survey, and is the first territory-wide psychiatric epidemiological study in Hong Kong. 精神障礙非常普遍，且對社會造成巨大的疾病負擔。收集本地精神病流行病學資料，對計劃相關的衛生及社會服務政策至為重要。香港精神健康調查是一個為期3年，以人口為基礎的大型研究，透過對5700名介乎16歲至75歲之華裔市民進行精神健康評估，檢視重要的精神障礙的現患率、共病、功能障礙、身體疾病以及社會決定因素。本文闡述這項首個全港大型精神病流行病研究的背景和設計。published_or_final_versio

Promoting influenza prevention for elderly people in Hong Kong using health action process approach: Study protocol

Background: People 65 years or older are at greater risk of serious complications from the seasonal influenza compared with young. To promote elderly people's behavioral compliance toward influenza prevention, the aim of the current project is to develop, implement, and evaluate a theory-based low-administration-cost intervention building on a leading psychological theory, the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA). Methods: The target group is Hong Kong Chinese elderly people aged 65 or older who rarely or never adopt any preventive actions. This project will be conducted in three phases over 24 months. In phase 1, intervention program will be developed building on the HAPA theoretical framework which comprises both the initiation and maintenance of influenza prevention behaviors. In phase 2, intervention will be implemented and evaluated using a randomized controlled trial, including: (a) behavior initiation only, (b) behavior initiation + behavior maintenance, and (c) control group. Both the initiation and maintenance components will comprise weekly-delivered telephone-based individual intervention sessions in 3 months. In phase 3, outcome evaluation of behavioral and psychological variables and process evaluation will be conducted. The effectiveness of the intervention will be analyzed using a series of linear mixed models on each behavioral and psychological outcome variable. Structural equation modelling will be used to test the hypothesized theoretical sequence in the HAPA model. Discussion: The proposed project is expected to design theory-based intervention materials to promote the influenza prevention behaviors in Hong Kong elderly people and provide information on its effectiveness and the potential changing mechanism of behavior initiation and maintenance. Trial registration: This randomized controlled trial was funded by the Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF), Food and Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Ref: 16151222) and was registered on 13/10/2017 at CCRB Clinical Trials Registry of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Partner Registry of a WHO Primary Registry (Ref: CUHK-CCRB00567)

Predictors of the Uptake of A (H1N1) Influenza Vaccine: Findings from a Population-Based Longitudinal Study in Tokyo

BACKGROUND: Overall pandemic A (H1N1) influenza vaccination rates remain low across all nations, including Japan. To increase the rates, it is important to understand the motives and barriers for the acceptance of the vaccine. We conducted this study to determine potential predictors of the uptake of A (H1N1) influenza vaccine in a cohort of Japanese general population. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: By using self-administered questionnaires, this population-based longitudinal study was conducted from October 2009 to April 2010 among 428 adults aged 18-65 years randomly selected from each household residing in four wards and one city in Tokyo. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed. Of total, 38.1% of participants received seasonal influenza vaccine during the preceding season, 57.0% had willingness to accept A (H1N1) influenza vaccine at baseline, and 12.1% had received A (H1N1) influenza vaccine by the time of follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounding variables, people who had been vaccinated were significantly more likely to be living with an underlying disease (p = 0.001), to perceive high susceptibility to influenza (p = 0.03), to have willingness to pay even if the vaccine costs ≥ US$44 (p = 0.04), to have received seasonal influenza vaccine during the preceding season (p<0.001), and to have willingness to accept A (H1N1) influenza vaccine at baseline (p<0.001) compared to those who had not been vaccinated. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: While studies have reported high rates of willingness to receive A (H1N1) influenza vaccine, these rates may not transpire in the actual practices. The uptake of the vaccine may be determined by several potential factors such as perceived susceptibility to influenza and sensitivity to vaccination cost in general population

A model-independent approach to infer hierarchical codon substitution dynamics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Codon substitution constitutes a fundamental process in molecular biology that has been studied extensively. However, prior studies rely on various assumptions, e.g. regarding the relevance of specific biochemical properties, or on conservation criteria for defining substitution groups. Ideally, one would instead like to analyze the substitution process in terms of raw dynamics, independently of underlying system specifics. In this paper we propose a method for doing this by identifying groups of codons and amino acids such that these groups imply closed dynamics. The approach relies on recently developed spectral and agglomerative techniques for identifying hierarchical organization in dynamical systems.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have applied the techniques on an empirically derived Markov model of the codon substitution process that is provided in the literature. Without system specific knowledge of the substitution process, the techniques manage to "blindly" identify multiple levels of dynamics; from amino acid substitutions (via the standard genetic code) to higher order dynamics on the level of amino acid groups. We hypothesize that the acquired groups reflect earlier versions of the genetic code.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results demonstrate the applicability of the techniques. Due to their generality, we believe that they can be used to coarse grain and identify hierarchical organization in a broad range of other biological systems and processes, such as protein interaction networks, genetic regulatory networks and food webs.</p

Molecular Approach to the Identification of Fish in the South China Sea

BACKGROUND: DNA barcoding is one means of establishing a rapid, accurate, and cost-effective system for the identification of species. It involves the use of short, standard gene targets to create sequence profiles of known species against sequences of unknowns that can be matched and subsequently identified. The Fish Barcode of Life (FISH-BOL) campaign has the primary goal of gathering DNA barcode records for all the world's fish species. As a contribution to FISH-BOL, we examined the degree to which DNA barcoding can discriminate marine fishes from the South China Sea. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: DNA barcodes of cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) were characterized using 1336 specimens that belong to 242 species fishes from the South China Sea. All specimen provenance data (including digital specimen images and geospatial coordinates of collection localities) and collateral sequence information were assembled using Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD; www.barcodinglife.org). Small intraspecific and large interspecific differences create distinct genetic boundaries among most species. In addition, the efficiency of two mitochondrial genes, 16S rRNA (16S) and cytochrome b (cytb), and one nuclear ribosomal gene, 18S rRNA (18S), was also evaluated for a few select groups of species. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The present study provides evidence for the effectiveness of DNA barcoding as a tool for monitoring marine biodiversity. Open access data of fishes from the South China Sea can benefit relative applications in ecology and taxonomy

The International HapMap Project

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62838/1/nature02168.pd