Sub-Sets of Cancer Stem Cells Differ Intrinsically in Their Patterns of Oxygen Metabolism

PMCID: PMC3640080This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

An Improved and Homogeneous Altimeter Sea Level Record from the ESA Climate Change Initiative

Sea Level is a very sensitive index of climate change since it integrates the impacts of ocean warming and ice mass loss from glaciers and the ice sheets. Sea Level has been listed as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). During the past 25 years, the sea level ECV has been measured from space by different altimetry missions that have provided global and regional observations of sea level variations. As part of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) program of the European Space Agency (ESA) (established in 2010), the Sea Level project (SL_cci) aimed at providing an accurate and homogeneous long-term satellite-based sea level record. At the end of the first phase of the project (2010-2013), an initial version (v1.1) of the sea level ECV has been made available to users (Ablain et al., 2015). During the second phase (2014-2017), improved altimeter standards have been selected to produce new sea level products (called SL_cci v2.0) based on 9 altimeter missions for the period 1993-2015 (https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-sea_level_cci-1993_2015-v_2.0-201612). Corresponding orbit solutions, geophysical corrections and altimeter standards used in this v2.0 dataset are described in details in Quartly et al. (2017). The present paper focuses on the description of the SL_cci v2.0 ECV and associated uncertainty and discusses how it has been validated. Various approaches have been used for the quality assessment such as internal validation, comparisons with sea level records from other groups and with in-situ measurements, sea level budget closure analyses and comparisons with model outputs. Compared to the previous version of the sea level ECV, we show that use of improved geophysical corrections, careful bias reduction between missions and inclusion of new altimeter missions lead to improved sea level products with reduced uncertainties at different spatial and temporal scales. However, there is still room for improvement since the uncertainties remain larger than the GCOS requirements. Perspectives for subsequent evolutions are also discussed

Homogeneity in prediction of survival probabilities for subcategories of hipprosthesis data : the Nordic Arthroplasty Register Association, 2000–2013

Introduction: The four countries in the Nordic Arthroplasty Register Association (NARA) share geographic proximity, culture, and ethnicity. Pooling data from different sources in order to obtain higher precision and accuracy of survival-probability estimates is appealing. Nevertheless, survival probabilities of hip replacements vary between the countries. As such, risk prediction for individual patients within countries may be problematic if data are merged. In this study, our primary question was to address when data merging for estimating prosthesis survival in subcategories of patients is advantageous for survival prediction of individual patients, and at what sample sizes this may be advised. Methods: Patients undergoing total hip replacements for osteoarthritis between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2013 in the four Nordic countries were studied. A total of 184,507 patients were stratified into 360 patient subcategories based on country, age-group, sex, fixation, head size, and articulation. For each patient category, we determined the sample size needed from a single country to obtain a more accurate and precise estimate of prosthesis-survival probability at 5 and 10 years compared to an estimate using data from all countries. The comparison was done using mean-square error. Results: We found large variations in the sample size needed, ranging from 40 to 2,060 hips, before an estimate from a single Nordic country was more accurate and precise than estimates based on the NARA data. Conclusion: Using pooled survival-probability estimates for individual risk prediction may be imprecise if there is heterogeneity in the pooled data sources. By applying mean-square error, we demonstrate that for small sample sizes, applying the larger NARA database may provide a more accurate and precise estimate; however, this effect is not consistent and varies with the characteristics of the subcategory

The Impact of HAART on the Respiratory Complications of HIV Infection: Longitudinal Trends in the MACS and WIHS Cohorts

Objective: To review the incidence of respiratory conditions and their effect on mortality in HIV-infected and uninfected individuals prior to and during the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Design: Two large observational cohorts of HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected men (Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [MACS]) and women (Women's Interagency HIV Study [WIHS]), followed since 1984 and 1994, respectively. Methods: Adjusted odds or hazards ratios for incident respiratory infections or non-infectious respiratory diagnoses, respectively, in HIV-infected compared to HIV-uninfected individuals in both the pre-HAART (MACS only) and HAART eras; and adjusted Cox proportional hazard ratios for mortality in HIV-infected persons with lung disease during the HAART era. Results: Compared to HIV-uninfected participants, HIV-infected individuals had more incident respiratory infections both pre-HAART (MACS, odds ratio [adjusted-OR], 2.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2-2.7; p<0.001) and after HAART availability (MACS, adjusted-OR, 1.5; 95%CI 1.3-1.7; p<0.001; WIHS adjusted-OR, 2.2; 95%CI 1.8-2.7; p<0.001). Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was more common in MACS HIV-infected vs. HIV-uninfected participants pre-HAART (hazard ratio [adjusted-HR] 2.9; 95%CI, 1.02-8.4; p = 0.046). After HAART availability, non-infectious lung diseases were not significantly more common in HIV-infected participants in either MACS or WIHS participants. HIV-infected participants in the HAART era with respiratory infections had an increased risk of death compared to those without infections (MACS adjusted-HR, 1.5; 95%CI, 1.3-1.7; p<0.001; WIHS adjusted-HR, 1.9; 95%CI, 1.5-2.4; p<0.001). Conclusion: HIV infection remained a significant risk for infectious respiratory diseases after the introduction of HAART, and infectious respiratory diseases were associated with an increased risk of mortality. © 2013 Gingo et al

Subclinical Epileptiform Process in Patients with Unipolar Depression and Its Indirect Psychophysiological Manifestations

BACKGROUND: According to recent clinical findings epileptiform activity in temporolimbic structures may cause depressive and other psychiatric symptoms that may occur independently of any seizure in patient's history. In addition in these patients subclinical seizure-like activity with indirect clinical manifestations likely may occur in a form of various forms of cognitive, affective, memory, sensory, behavioral and somatic symptoms (the so-called complex partial seizure-like symptoms). A typical characteristic of epileptiform changes is increased neural synchrony related to spreading of epileptiform activity between hemispheres even in subclinical conditions i.e. without seizures. These findings suggest a hypothesis that measures reflecting a level of synchronization and information transfer between hemispheres could reflect spreading of epileptiform activity and might be related to complex partial seizure-like symptoms. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Suitable data for such analysis may provide various physiological signals reflecting brain laterality, as for example bilateral electrodermal activity (EDA) that is closely related to limbic modulation influences. With this purpose we have performed measurement and analysis of bilateral EDA and compared the results with psychometric measures of complex partial seizure-like symptoms, depression and actually experienced stress in 44 patients with unipolar depression and 35 healthy controls. The results in unipolar depressive patients show that during rest conditions the patients with higher level of complex partial seizure like symptoms (CPSI) display increased level of EDA transinformation (PTI) calculated between left and right EDA records (Spearman correlation between CPSI and PTI is r = 0.43, p = 0.004). CONCLUSIONS: The result may present potentially useful clinical finding suggesting that increased EDA transinformation (PTI) could indirectly indicate increased neural synchrony as a possible indicator of epileptiform activity in unipolar depressive patients treated by serotoninergic antidepresants

Intracranial and subcortical volumes in adolescents with early‐onset psychosis: A multisite mega‐analysis from the ENIGMA consortium

Early‐onset psychosis disorders are serious mental disorders arising before the age of 18 years. Here, we investigate the largest neuroimaging dataset, to date, of patients with early‐onset psychosis and healthy controls for differences in intracranial and subcortical brain volumes. The sample included 263 patients with early‐onset psychosis (mean age: 16.4 ± 1.4 years, mean illness duration: 1.5 ± 1.4 years, 39.2% female) and 359 healthy controls (mean age: 15.9 ± 1.7 years, 45.4% female) with magnetic resonance imaging data, pooled from 11 clinical cohorts. Patients were diagnosed with early‐onset schizophrenia (n = 183), affective psychosis (n = 39), or other psychotic disorders (n = 41). We used linear mixed‐effects models to investigate differences in intracranial and subcortical volumes across the patient sample, diagnostic subgroup and antipsychotic medication, relative to controls. We observed significantly lower intracranial (Cohen's d = −0.39) and hippocampal (d = −0.25) volumes, and higher caudate (d = 0.25) and pallidum (d = 0.24) volumes in patients relative to controls. Intracranial volume was lower in both early‐onset schizophrenia (d = −0.34) and affective psychosis (d = −0.42), and early‐onset schizophrenia showed lower hippocampal (d = −0.24) and higher pallidum (d = 0.29) volumes. Patients who were currently treated with antipsychotic medication (n = 193) had significantly lower intracranial volume (d = −0.42). The findings demonstrate a similar pattern of brain alterations in early‐onset psychosis as previously reported in adult psychosis, but with notably low intracranial volume. The low intracranial volume suggests disrupted neurodevelopment in adolescent early‐onset psychosis