Rectal Visceral Sensitivity in Women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome without Psychiatric Comorbidity Compared with Healthy Volunteers

Background. Psychiatric comorbidity and visceral hypersensitivity are common in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but little is known about visceral sensitivity in IBS patients without psychiatric disorders. Aim. We wanted to examine rectal visceral sensitivity in IBS patients without comorbid psychiatric disorders, IBS patients with phobic anxiety and healthy volunteers. Methods. A total of thirty-eight female, non-constipated IBS patients without psychiatric disorders and eleven female IBS patients with phobic anxiety were compared to nine healthy women using a barostat double random staircase method. The non-psychiatric patients were divided into those with diarrhoea predominant symptoms and those with alternating stool habits. Results. The IBS patients without psychiatric disorders had normal visceral pressure thresholds. However, in the diarrhoea predominant subgroup, the volume discomfort threshold was reduced while it was unchanged in those with alternating stool habits. The phobic IBS patients had similar thresholds to the healthy volunteers. The rectal tone was increased in the non-psychiatric IBS patients with diarrhoea predominant symptoms and in the IBS patients with phobic anxiety. Conclusions. Non-constipated IBS patients without psychiatric disorders had increased visceral sensitivity regarding volume thresholds but normal pressure thresholds. Our study suggests that the lowered volume threshold was due to increased rectal tone

miRMaid: a unified programming interface for microRNA data resources

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous small RNAs that play a key role in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression in animals and plants. The number of known miRNAs has increased rapidly over the years. The current release (version 14.0) of miRBase, the central online repository for miRNA annotation, comprises over 10.000 miRNA precursors from 115 different species. Furthermore, a large number of decentralized online resources are now available, each contributing with important miRNA annotation and information.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have developed a software framework, designated here as miRMaid, with the goal of integrating miRNA data resources in a uniform web service interface that can be accessed and queried by researchers and, most importantly, by computers. miRMaid is built around data from miRBase and is designed to follow the official miRBase data releases. It exposes miRBase data as inter-connected web services. Third-party miRNA data resources can be modularly integrated as miRMaid plugins or they can loosely couple with miRMaid as individual entities in the World Wide Web. miRMaid is available as a public web service but is also easily installed as a local application. The software framework is freely available under the LGPL open source license for academic and commercial use.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>miRMaid is an intuitive and modular software platform designed to unify miRBase and independent miRNA data resources. It enables miRNA researchers to computationally address complex questions involving the multitude of miRNA data resources. Furthermore, miRMaid constitutes a basic framework for further programming in which microRNA-interested bioinformaticians can readily develop their own tools and data sources.</p

Unemployment and disability pension-an 18-year follow-up study of a 40-year-old population in a Norwegian county

<p>© 2012 Støver et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p><p>This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p