What do Irish women know about cervical screening?

In anticipation of the launch of the national cervical screening programme, a questionnaire was distributed amongst 200 women on the maternity wards of the Coombe Women’s Hospital. The questionnaires revealed that 24% of the women surveyed never had a smear test and 50% of these did not know how the test was performed. The majority of all women did not know what a smear test showed and 26% did not know the meaning of an abnormal smear. Irish women’s knowledge of cervical screening is limited, and the success of the proposed programme will depend on an improvement in public information and education

Should pregnant women be screened for drugs of abuse?

Sir- We would like to compliment Drs Bosio et al1 for the first reported prospective screening study for drug abuse in an Irish obstetric population. We would disagree, however, with the deduction that "drug abuse is not a serious problem among Dublin's pregnant population." 43 cases of neonatal drug withdrawal were identified at our hospital between July 1996 and June 1997 and these babies had significant impact on facilities and staffing levels in our neonatal ICU

Novel MicroRNAs Differentially Expressed during Aging in the Mouse Brain

<div><p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous small RNA molecules that regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. Work in <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> has shown that specific miRNAs function in lifespan regulation and in a variety of age-associated pathways, but the roles of miRNAs in the aging of vertebrates are not well understood. We examined the expression of small RNAs in whole brains of young and old mice by deep sequencing and report here on the expression of 558 known miRNAs and identification of 41 novel miRNAs. Of these miRNAs, 75 known and 18 novel miRNAs exhibit greater than 2.0-fold expression changes. The majority of expressed miRNAs in our study decline in relative abundance in the aged brain, in agreement with trends observed in other miRNA studies in aging tissues and organisms. Target prediction analysis suggests that many of our novel aging-associated miRNAs target genes in the insulin signaling pathway, a central node of aging-associated genetic networks. These novel miRNAs may thereby regulate aging-related functions in the brain. Since many mouse miRNAs are conserved in humans, the aging-affected brain miRNAs we report here may represent novel regulatory genes that also function during aging in the human brain.</p> </div

Additional file 1: of Differences in nulliparous caesarean section rates across models of care: a decomposition analysis

Clinical Codes for Risk Factor Identification. ICD-10-AM/ACHI codes for identification of clinical risk factors in the data. (DOCX 13 kb

Genomic locations of brain-expressed miRNAs found within 10 kb region of each other.

<p>(a) miRNA clusters found on chromosome 12. Top panel: location of miRNAs relative to the entire chromosome 12. Bottom three panels: three distinct clusters found in the boxed off region in the top panel. The three clusters are located close to each other. (b) miRNA clusters found on X chromosome. Top panel: location of miRNAs relative to the entire X chromosome. Bottom two panels: clusters found in the boxed off regions of the top panel, from left to right. Blue: brain-expressed known miRNAs. Teal: miRNAs downregulated in expression in our dataset. Purple: miRNAs upregulated in expression in our dataset. Pink: known miRNAs found in the same genomic region but not found to be expressed in our dataset. Red: brain-expressed novel miRNA candidates. Green: TROMER transcriptome data (retrieved from UCSC Genome Browser).</p

Brain-expressed miRNAs.

<p>(<b>a</b>) Expression changes of miRNAs in mouse brain with aging. Distribution of individual miRNA expression changes are ranked by those miRNAs that exhibit the greatest increase in expression with aging (log2 Ratio (Old/Young)). Blue: known miRNAs, red: novel miRNAs. (<b>b</b>) Known miRNAs that change more than 2.0-fold in expression in old versus young mouse brains. Only miRNAs with at least 10 sequence reads at one time point are shown and P-value <0.05 are in bold. MiRNA frequency was normalized by all reads that matched to the mouse genome (mm9) (Old/Young  = 1.472107). (<b>c</b>) Comparison of qRT-PCR data with deep sequencing data for three known miRNAs. Values shown are fold changes in old versus young brain expression levels. qPCR results were normalized to U6 snRNA expression levels; error bars indicate standard deviation for technical triplicate. Statistically significant difference from U6 control denoted by asterisks (*: two-tailed P-value <0.01).</p

Novel miRNA candidates.

<p>(<b>a</b>) Novel miRNA candidates that change more than 2.0-fold in expression in old versus young mouse brains. MiRNA frequency was normalized by all reads that matched to the mouse genome (mm9) (Old/Young  = 1.472107). †: candidates validated by qRT-PCR. ‡: candidates with sequence overlap with known miRNAs (but have distinct mature miRNA sequences: isomiRs). ^A: Novel miRNA candidates that map to regions overlapping snoRNA and rRNA sequences (see main text). Blue font: miRNA novel to mouse. Black font: completely novel miRNA sequence, excluding seed sequence matches. Differentially expressed miRNAs with P-values <0.05 (calculated using DEGseq <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0040028#pone.0040028-Wang1" target="_blank">[20]</a>) indicated in bold. See also <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0040028#pone.0040028.s005" target="_blank">Table S4</a>. (<b>b</b>) Secondary structures of putative precursor hairpins corresponding to nine novel miRNA candidates identified in this study. The predicted miRNA mature sequences are highlighted in red. Four of these novel miRNAs were found to be up-regulated (top) in aged mouse brain while five others were down-regulated (bottom). (See also <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0040028#pone.0040028.s005" target="_blank">Table S4</a>). (<b>c</b>) Comparison of qRT-PCR data with deep sequencing data for the nine novel miRNA candidates shown in (b). Values shown are log2 ratios of old versus young brain expression levels. qPCR results were normalized to U6 snRNA expression levels. Inset: Correlation of expression changes as measured by deep sequencing versus qPCR (Pearson correlation coefficient  = 0.78). Plot for miR-5620 (isomiR) was taken out as the sequence was not reliably detected by qPCR. (<b>d</b>) Sequence alignment of novel miRNA candidates with known miRNAs of other species. *: conserved nucleotide. age: <i>Ateles geoffroyi</i>. bta: <i>Bos taurus</i>. dan: <i>Drosophila ananassae</i>. der: <i>Drosophila erecta</i>. dgr: <i>Drosophila grimshawi</i>. dme: <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>. dmo: <i>Drosophila mojavensis</i>. dpe: <i>Drosophila persimilis</i>. dps: <i>Drosophila pseudoobscura</i>. dse: <i>Drosophila sechellia</i>. dsi: <i>Drosophila simulans</i>. dvi: <i>Drosophila virilis</i>. dwi: <i>Drosophila willistoni</i>. dya: <i>Drosophila yakuba</i>. gga: <i>Gallus gallus</i>. ggo: <i>Gorilla gorilla</i>. hsa: <i>Homo sapiens</i>. lla: <i>Lagothrix lagotricha</i>. mdo: <i>Monodelphis domestica</i>. mml: <i>Macaca mulatta</i>. mne: <i>Macaca nemestrina</i>. ppa: <i>Pan paniscus</i>. ppy: <i>Pongo pygmaeus</i>. ptr: <i>Pan troglodytes</i>. rno: <i>Rattus norvegicus</i>. sla: <i>Saguinus labiatus</i>. sme: <i>Schmidtea mediterranea.</i> xtr: <i>Xenopus tropicalis</i>.</p

The insulin signaling pathway is predicted to be targeted by many aging-regulated novel miRNA candidates.

<p>Multiple novel miRNA candidates are predicted to target each of the genes implicated in the pathway, and each novel miRNA candidate is predicted to target multiple genes in the pathway. In red: upregulated (>2.0-fold) novel miRNAs; in black: downregulated (>2.0-fold) novel miRNAs.</p

Suppementa_data - Transcriptional Changes in Cancer Cells Induced by Exposure to a Healing Method

<p>Suppementa_data for Transcriptional Changes in Cancer Cells Induced by Exposure to a Healing Method by Sarah Beseme, William Bengston, Dean Radin, Michael Turner, and John McMichael in Dose-Response</p

Sonographic markers of fetal adiposity and risk of Cesarean delivery

Objective Increased fetal size is associated with shoulder dystocia during labor and subsequent need for assisted delivery. We sought to investigate if increased fetal adiposity diagnosed sonographically in late pregnancy is associated with increased risk of operative delivery. Methods This secondary analysis of the Genesis Study recruited 2392 nulliparous women with singleton pregnancy in cephalic presentation, in a prospective, multicenter study, to examine prenatal and intrapartum predictors of Cesarean delivery. Participants underwent ultrasound and clinical evaluation between 39 + 0 and 40 + 6 weeks' gestation. Data on fetal biometry were not revealed to patients or to their managing clinicians. A fetal adiposity composite of fetal thigh adiposity and fetal abdominal wall thickness was compiled for each infant in order to determine whether fetal adiposity > 90th centile was associated with an increased risk of Cesarean or operative vaginal delivery. Results After exclusions, data were available for 2330 patients. Patients with a fetal adiposity composite > 90th centile had a higher maternal body mass index (BMI) (25 ± 5 kg/m2 vs 24 ± 4 kg/m2; P = 0.005), birth weight (3872 ± 417 g vs 3585 ± 401 g; P  90th centile were more likely to require Cesarean delivery than were those with adiposity composite ≤ 90th centile (P  90th centile remained a risk factor for Cesarean delivery (P  90th centile was more predictive of the need for unplanned Cesarean delivery than was an estimated fetal weight > 90th centile (odds ratio, 2.20 (95% CI, 1.65–2.94; P  90th centile was not associated with an increased likelihood of operative vaginal delivery when compared with having an adiposity composite ≤ 90th centile (P = 0.37). Conclusions Fetuses with increased adipose deposition are more likely to require Cesarean delivery than are those without increased adiposity. Consideration should, therefore, be given to adding fetal thigh adiposity and abdominal wall thickness to fetal sonographic assessment in late pregnancy. Copyright © 2019 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd