Randomized controlled trials in pediatric complementary and alternative medicine: Where can they be found?

BACKGROUND: The safety and effectiveness of CAM interventions are of great relevance to pediatric health care providers. The objective of this study is to identify sources of reported randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the field of pediatric complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). METHODS: Reports of RCTs were identified by searching Medline and 12 additional bibliographic databases and by reviewing the reference lists of previously identified pediatric CAM systematic reviews. RESULTS: We identified 908 reports of RCTs that included children under 18 and investigated a CAM therapy. Since 1965, there has been a steady growth in the number of these trials that are being published. The four journals that published the most reported RCTs are The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and Lancet. Medline, CAB Health, and Embase were the best database sources for identifying these studies; they indexed 93.2%, 58.4% and 42.2 % respectively of the journals publishing reports of pediatric CAM RCTs. CONCLUSIONS: Those working or interested in the field of pediatric CAM should routinely search Medline, CAB Health and Embase for literature in the field. The four core journals identified above should be included in their collection

Oestrogen receptor α gene haplotype and postmenopausal breast cancer risk: a case control study

INTRODUCTION: Oestrogen receptor α, which mediates the effect of oestrogen in target tissues, is genetically polymorphic. Because breast cancer development is dependent on oestrogenic influence, we have investigated whether polymorphisms in the oestrogen receptor α gene (ESR1) are associated with breast cancer risk. METHODS: We genotyped breast cancer cases and age-matched population controls for one microsatellite marker and four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in ESR1. The numbers of genotyped cases and controls for each marker were as follows: TA(n), 1514 cases and 1514 controls; c.454-397C → T, 1557 cases and 1512 controls; c.454-351A → G, 1556 cases and 1512 controls; c.729C → T, 1562 cases and 1513 controls; c.975C → G, 1562 cases and 1513 controls. Using logistic regression models, we calculated odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Haplotype effects were estimated in an exploratory analysis, using expectation-maximisation algorithms for case-control study data. RESULTS: There were no compelling associations between single polymorphic loci and breast cancer risk. In haplotype analyses, a common haplotype of the c.454-351A → G or c.454-397C → T and c.975C → G SNPs appeared to be associated with an increased risk for ductal breast cancer: one copy of the c.454-351A → G and c.975C → G haplotype entailed an OR of 1.19 (95% CI 1.06–1.33) and two copies with an OR of 1.42 (95% CI 1.15–1.77), compared with no copies, under a model of multiplicative penetrance. The association with the c.454-397C → T and c.975C → G haplotypes was similar. Our data indicated that these haplotypes were more influential in women with a high body mass index. Adjustment for multiple comparisons rendered the associations statistically non-significant. CONCLUSION: We found suggestions of an association between common haplotypes in ESR1 and the risk for ductal breast cancer that is stronger in heavy women

Array comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH) analysis of premenopausal breast cancers from a nuclear fallout area and matched cases from Western New York

High-resolution array comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH) analysis of DNA copy number aberrations (CNAs) was performed on breast carcinomas in premenopausal women from Western New York (WNY) and from Gomel, Belarus, an area exposed to fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Genomic DNA was isolated from 47 frozen tumour specimens from 42 patients and hybridised to arrays spotted with more than 3000 BAC clones. In all, 20 samples were from WNY and 27 were from Belarus. In total, 34 samples were primary tumours and 13 were lymph node metastases, including five matched pairs from Gomel. The average number of total CNAs per sample was 76 (range 35–134). We identified 152 CNAs (92 gains and 60 losses) occurring in more than 10% of the samples. The most common amplifications included gains at 8q13.2 (49%), at 1p21.1 (36%), and at 8q24.21 (36%). The most common deletions were at 1p36.22 (26%), at 17p13.2 (26%), and at 8p23.3 (23%). Belarussian tumours had more amplifications and fewer deletions than WNY breast cancers. HER2/neu negativity and younger age were also associated with a higher number of gains and fewer losses. In the five paired samples, we observed more discordant than concordant DNA changes. Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis revealed two distinct groups of tumours: one comprised predominantly of Belarussian carcinomas and the other largely consisting of WNY cases. In total, 50 CNAs occurred significantly more commonly in one cohort vs the other, and these included some candidate signature amplifications in the breast cancers in women exposed to significant radiation. In conclusion, our high-density aCGH study has revealed a large number of genetic aberrations in individual premenopausal breast cancer specimens, some of which had not been reported before. We identified a distinct CNA profile for carcinomas from a nuclear fallout area, suggesting a possible molecular fingerprint of radiation-associated breast cancer

Feline immunodeficiency virus plasma load reduction by a retroinverso octapeptide reproducing the Trp-rich motif of the transmembrane glycoprotein

The Trp-rich motif (TrpM) of the transmembrane glycoprotein (TM) of lentiviruses is an attractive domain on which to design new potential cell entry peptide inhibitors. We recently demonstrated that an octapeptide reproducing the TrpM of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), designated C8, broadly inhibited this virus in vitro and that the retroinverso analogue of this peptide (riC8) was almost as inhibitory and exhibited features suggestive of a much increased stability. Here, we demonstrated that riC8 is indeed highly stable, maintaining its concentration unchanged for at least 24 In in cat serum in vitro. Furthermore, once inoculated into cats, riC8 produced no major acute toxic effects and exhibited satisfactory pharmacolkinetic properties. Finally, we report the results of a short-term monotherapy experiment in chronically FIV-infected cats showing that riC8 is well tolerated and also has substantial antiviral activity in vivo. In particular, the mean viral load of riC8-treated animals declined progressively with increasing time of treatment, whereas that of control animals given C8 or solvent alone did not. These results provide the first evidence that clinically useful inhibition of virus replication with a small peptide derived from a functional domain of the TM of a lentivirus can be achieved in vivo

High level of messenger RNA for BRMS1 in primary breast carcinomas is associated with poor prognosis

BRMS1 is regarded as a metastasis suppressor gene for its ability to reduce metastatic potential of human and murine breast cancer cells as well as human melanoma cells. However, BRMS1 association to human tumor progression is not clearly understood. In the present study we analyzed BRMS1 mRNA expression in tumor progression and its potential prognostic value for breast carcinoma. BRMS1 mRNA expression level was quantified by real-time PCR in 47 tumoral, in 14 peritumoral and in 15 metastatic microdissected cellular populations from 47 breast cancer patients with 10-year follow up. We found BRMS1 expression to be higher in carcinoma cells than in matching normal epithelial cell populations in 10 out of 14 cases (p = 0.0005), while lymph-nodal carcinoma cells showed lower BRMS1 expression in 9 out of 15 cases (p = 0.001). Using both in vivo (human mammary breast carcinomas) and in vitro systems (breast cancer cell lines) we were able to demonstrate that BRMS1 overexpression was not a bias effect induced by cell proliferation rate. BRMS1 expression levels did not correlate with standard breast cancer prognostic factors but BRMS1 higher expression was associated with patient shorter disease-free and overall survival. Our findings are apparently inconsistent with the concept of BRMS1 as a metastasis suppressor gene. One possible explanation is that epithelial cells increase their BRMS1 expression as a compensatory response to tumor formation or metastasis progression, which is elevated in proportion to tumor aggressiveness, whereas those cells of the primary tumor that cannot upregulate BRMS1 escape to form metastasis

Understanding Perceptual And Conceptual Fluency At A Large Scale

We create a dataset of 543,758 logo designs spanning 39 industrial categories and 216 countries. We experiment and compare how different deep convolutional neural network (hereafter, DCNN) architectures, pretraining protocols, and weight initializations perform in predicting design memorability and likability. We propose and provide estimation methods based on training DCNNs to extract and evaluate two independent constructs for designs: perceptual distinctiveness (“perceptual fluency” metrics) and ambiguity in meaning (“conceptual fluency” metrics) of each logo. We provide evidences of causal inference that both constructs significantly affect memory for a logo design, consistent with cognitive elaboration theory. The effect on liking, however, is interactive, consistent with processing fluency (e.g., Lee and Labroo (2004), and Landwehr et al. (2011))