Saliva Stimulants and the Oral Health of Geriatric Patients

Root-surface caries (RSC) has been recognized as a specific and important dental disease. Significant advances have been made in the pathology and microbiology of RSC, and the need to standardize the guidelines for recording RSC data has been recognized. Researchers have emphasized the increasing impact RSC will have on the geriatric population, especially since the methods to treat and prevent this disease are limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of limiting RSC in a Veterans Administration (VA) patient population, using polyol-containing saliva stimulants that were voluntarily consumed by residents of a VA Medical Center (VAMC) over a period of from six to 30 months. Another aim was to study the effect of this program on the gingival health of periodontal patients.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68278/2/10.1177_08959374950090020901.pd

Phosphonormalizer: an R package for normalization of MS-based label-free phosphoproteomics

MOTIVATION: Global centering-based normalization is a commonly-used normalization approach in mass spectrometry-based label-free proteomics. It scales the peptide abundances to have the same median intensities, based on an assumption that the majority of abundances remain the same across the samples. However, especially in phosphoproteomics, this assumption can introduce bias, as the samples are enriched during sample preparation which can mask the underlying biological changes. To address this possible bias, phosphopeptides quantified in both enriched and non-enriched samples can be used to calculate factors that mitigate the bias.RESULTS: We present an R package phosphonormalizer for normalizing enriched samples in label-free mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics.AVAILABILITY: The phosphonormalizer package is freely-available under GPL ( > =2) license from Bioconductor ( https://bioconductor.org/packages/phosphonormalizer ).</h4

Results of international standardised beekeeper surveys of colony losses for winter 2012-2013 : analysis of winter loss rates and mixed effects modelling of risk factors for winter loss.

This article presents results of an analysis of winter losses of honey bee colonies from 19 mainly European countries, most of which implemented the standardised 2013 COLOSS questionnaire. Generalised linear mixed effects models (GLMMs) were used to investigate the effects of several factors on the risk of colony loss, including different treatments for Varroa destructor, allowing for random effects of beekeeper and region. Both winter and summer treatments were considered, and the most common combinations of treatment and timing were used to define treatment factor levels. Overall and within country colony loss rates are presented. Significant factors in the model were found to be: percentage of young queens in the colonies before winter, extent of queen problems in summer, treatment of the varroa mite, and access by foraging honey bees to oilseed rape and maize. Spatial variation at the beekeeper level is shown across geographical regions using random effects from the fitted models, both before and after allowing for the effect of the significant terms in the model. This spatial variation is considerable

Bankart versus Latarjet operation as a revision procedure after a failed arthroscopic Bankart repair

Background: An arthroscopic Bankart operation is the most common operative procedure to treat shoulder instability. In case of recurrence, both Bankart and Latarjet procedures are used as revision procedures. The purpose of this study was to compare the re-recurrence rate of instability and clinical results after arthroscopic revision Bankart and open revision Latarjet procedures following failed primary arthroscopic Bankart operations.Methods: Consecutive patients operatively treated for shoulder instability at Turku University Hospital between 2002 and 2013 were analyzed. Patients who underwent a primary arthroscopic Bankart operation followed by a recurrence of instability and underwent a subsequent arthroscopic Bankart or open Latarjet revision operation with a minimum of 1 year of follow-up were called in for a follow-up evaluation. The re-recurrence of instability, Subjective Shoulder Value, and Western Ontario Shoulder Instability index were assessed.Results: Of 69 patients, 48 (dropout rate, 30%) were available for follow-up. Recurrent instability symptoms occurred in 13 patients (43%) after the revision Bankart procedure and none after the revision Latarjet procedure. A statistically and clinically significant difference in the Western Ontario Shoulder Instability index was found between the patients after the revision Bankart and revision Latarjet operations (68% and 88%, respectively; P = .0166).Conclusions: The redislocation rate after an arthroscopic revision Bankart operation is high. Furthermore, patient-reported outcomes remain poor after a revision Bankart procedure compared with a revision Latarjet operation. We propose that in cases of recurring instability after a failed primary Bankart operation, an open Latarjet revision should be considered.</p

Evaluation of tools for identifying large copy number variations from ultra-low-coverage whole-genome sequencing data

BackgroundDetection of copy number variations (CNVs) from high-throughput next-generation whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data has become a widely used research method during the recent years. However, only a little is known about the applicability of the developed algorithms to ultra-low-coverage (0.0005–0.8×) data that is used in various research and clinical applications, such as digital karyotyping and single-cell CNV detection.ResultHere, the performance of six popular read-depth based CNV detection algorithms (BIC-seq2, Canvas, CNVnator, FREEC, HMMcopy, and QDNAseq) was studied using ultra-low-coverage WGS data. Real-world array- and karyotyping kit-based validation were used as a benchmark in the evaluation. Additionally, ultra-low-coverage WGS data was simulated to investigate the ability of the algorithms to identify CNVs in the sex chromosomes and the theoretical minimum coverage at which these tools can accurately function. Our results suggest that while all the methods were able to detect large CNVs, many methods were susceptible to producing false positives when smaller CNVs (< 2 Mbp) were detected. There was also significant variability in their ability to identify CNVs in the sex chromosomes. Overall, BIC-seq2 was found to be the best method in terms of statistical performance. However, its significant drawback was by far the slowest runtime among the methods (> 3 h) compared with FREEC (~ 3 min), which we considered the second-best method.ConclusionsOur comparative analysis demonstrates that CNV detection from ultra-low-coverage WGS data can be a highly accurate method for the detection of large copy number variations when their length is in millions of base pairs. These findings facilitate applications that utilize ultra-low-coverage CNV detection.</div

Role of the endocannabinoid system in obesity induced by neuropeptide Y overexpression in noradrenergic neurons

Objective: Endocannabinoids and neuropeptide Y (NPY) promote energy storage via central and peripheral mechanisms. In the hypothalamus, the two systems were suggested to interact. To investigate such interplay also in non-hypothalamic tissues, we evaluated endocannabinoid levels in obese OE-NPYD&beta;H mice, which overexpress NPY in the noradrenergic neurons in the sympathetic nervous system and the brain. Methods: The levels of the endocannabinoids anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol were measured in key regulatory tissues, i.e. hypothalamus, pancreas, epididymal white adipose tissue, liver and soleus muscle, over the development of metabolic dysfunctions in OE-NPYD&beta;H mice. The effects of a 5-week treatment with the CB1 receptor inverse agonist AM251 on adiposity and glucose metabolism were studied. Results: 2-arachidonoylglycerol levels were increased in the hypothalamus and epididymal white adipose tissue of pre-obese and obese OE-NPYD&beta;H mice. Anandamide levels in adipose tissue and pancreas were increased at 4 months concomitantly with higher fat mass and impaired glucose tolerance. CB1 receptor blockage reduced body weight gain and glucose intolerance in OE-NPYD&beta;H to the level of vehicle-treated wildtype mice. Conclusions: Altered endocannabinoid tone may underlie some of the metabolic dysfunctions in OE-NPYD&beta;H mice, which can be attenuated with CB1 inverse agonism suggesting interactions between endocannabinoids and NPY also in the periphery. CB1 receptors may offer a target for the pharmacological treatment of the metabolic syndrome with altered NPY levels.</p

The governors of school markets? : Local education authorities, school choice and equity in Finland and Sweden

As one of the key elements of the Nordic welfare model, education systems are based on the idea of providing equal educational opportunities, regardless of gender, social class and geographic origin. Since the 1990s, Nordic welfare states have undergone a gradual but wide-ranging transformation towards a more market-based mode of public service delivery. Along this trajectory, the advent of school choice policy and the growing variation in the between-school achievement results have diversified the previously homogenous Nordic education systems. The aim of our paper is to analyse how Finnish and Swedish local education authorities comprehend and respond to the intertwinement of the market logic of school choice and the ideology of equality. The data consist of two sets of in-depth thematic interviews with staff from the local providers of education, municipal education authorities. The analysis discloses the ways in which national legislation has authorized municipal authorities to govern the provision of education.Peer reviewe