Association between thyroid hormones and the components of metabolic syndrome

BACKGROUND: Thyroid hormones are known to have direct and indirect effects on metabolism. Individuals with metabolic syndrome, a disease that is growing in incidence at a rapid rate, are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. The aim of this study was to identify whether significant correlations exist between thyroid hormone levels and components of the metabolic syndrome in the general population of Korea. METHODS: The data were collected from the sixth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 2013 to 2015. A total of 1423 participants were tested for thyroid function. The analysis of variance and multiple linear regression were performed to analyze the relationship between thyroid hormone level and components of the metabolic syndrome. RESULTS: A positive association between free thyroxine and fasting glucose level was observed in patients with high free thyroxine levels (≥1.70 ng/dL, β = 15.992, p = < 0.0001), when compared with patients with normal-middle free thyroxine levels. Moreover, a negative association was observed between free thyroxine and triglyceride levels in patients with normal-high free thyroxine levels (β = - 21.145, p = 0.0054) and those with high free thyroxine levels (β = - 49.713, p = 0.0404). CONCLUSION: Free thyroxine shows a partially positive association with fasting glucose and a partially negative association with triglycerides in the Korean population. In patients with abnormal thyroid function, follow up tests for glucose levels and lipid profiling during treatment for thyroid dysfunction would be beneficial in terms of overlooking metabolic syndrome and to prevent related diseases

XCluSim: a visual analytics tool for interactively comparing multiple clustering results of bioinformatics data

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided he original work is properly cited.Abstract Background The primary goal of pathway analysis using transcriptome data is to find significantly perturbed pathways. However, pathway analysis is not always successful in identifying pathways that are truly relevant to the context under study. A major reason for this difficulty is that a single gene is involved in multiple pathways. In the KEGG pathway database, there are 146 genes, each of which is involved in more than 20 pathways. Thus activation of even a single gene will result in activation of many pathways. This complex relationship often makes the pathway analysis very difficult. While we need much more powerful pathway analysis methods, a readily available alternative way is to incorporate the literature information. Results In this study, we propose a novel approach for prioritizing pathways by combining results from both pathway analysis tools and literature information. The basic idea is as follows. Whenever there are enough articles that provide evidence on which pathways are relevant to the context, we can be assured that the pathways are indeed related to the context, which is termed as relevance in this paper. However, if there are few or no articles reported, then we should rely on the results from the pathway analysis tools, which is termed as significance in this paper. We realized this concept as an algorithm by introducing Context Score and Impact Score and then combining the two into a single score. Our method ranked truly relevant pathways significantly higher than existing pathway analysis tools in experiments with two data sets. Conclusions Our novel framework was implemented as ContextTRAP by utilizing two existing tools, TRAP and BEST. ContextTRAP will be a useful tool for the pathway based analysis of gene expression data since the user can specify the context of the biological experiment in a set of keywords. The web version of ContextTRAP is available at http://biohealth.snu.ac.kr/software/contextTRA

The effects of Asian summer monsoon on algal blooms in reservoirs

An important characteristic of lakes and reservoirs in the East Asian summer monsoon region is the dramatic seasonal difference in hydrologic inputs, with annual rainfall commonly concentrated in a few heavy rain events. In this study, we surveyed the monthly variations of phytoplankton density in 3 large deep reservoirs and 7 small shallow reservoirs and analyzed the effect of large precipitation events on phytoplankton. During heavy rains, stream phosphorus concen&not;trations increased sharply, and phosphorus loadings into reservoirs were not continuous but episodic shock loadings. In deep stratified reservoirs, however, the concentrations of phosphorus and chlorophyll a were much lower than expected from the high total phosphorus levels in the storm runoff. Inflowing storm waters laden with phosphorus flowed into metalimnetic layers because deep reservoirs had strong thermal stratification and the storm water was cooler than the epilimnion. The result was the formation of an ecosystem resilient to phosphorus shock loadings during monsoon. Nutrients in the metalimnion seemed to be dispersed gradually toward the epilimnion, and phytoplankton reached maximum densities, called &ldquo;monsoon blooms,&rdquo; after the monsoon. By contrast, shallow reservoirs with short hydraulic residence times had lower chlorophyll a concentrations during the monsoon season because the high flushing rate was the major limiting factor of phytoplankton growth. In conclusion, summer monsoon is the major determinant of phyto&not;plankton density in reservoirs of the East Asian region, but their responses can vary widely depending on hydrologic characteristics

Statewide Intercity Passenger Transportation in Illinois

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all areas of life in the United States. For travel, the changes have been vast, whether for private vehicle use or public transit use. For the intercity bus industry, the pandemic changed operations in meaningful ways that have yet to return to previous levels \u2013 whether on the service or the demand side. This study set out to measure both the supply and the demand for intercity routes; however, the fluctuations in supply levels made that virtually impossible to quantify. This study does, however, provide an overview of the history and current funding processes for intercity bus questions while performing modeling that shows where the greatest demand is for intercity bus services, both entirely within the State of Illinois and for routes that leave the state\u2019s borders. This study also provides considerable information about how feeder services improve connectivity to longer intercity bus routes, on a county-by-county level. This study also interviews other state DOTs to gain insight into their use of 5311(f) intercity bus funding that the Federal Transit Administration provides. The industry at the moment is plagued by increasing costs, shortages of staff, and funding levels that have not kept up with those increasing costs. Due to a perceived difficulty in procuring this funding from the State of Illinois, some providers have avoided attempting to utilize this funding in Illinois entirely, choosing to pursue providing service in other states, some of which provide additional services to intercity bus operators. Investments in intercity bus marketing could also assist efforts to move passengers around the state

Predictive biomarkers for 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in gastric cancers via profiling of patient-derived xenografts.

Gastric cancer (GC) is commonly treated by chemotherapy using 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) derivatives and platinum combination, but predictive biomarker remains lacking. We develop patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) from 31 GC patients and treat with a combination of 5-FU and oxaliplatin, to determine biomarkers associated with responsiveness. When the PDXs are defined as either responders or non-responders according to tumor volume change after treatment, the responsiveness of PDXs is significantly consistent with the respective clinical outcomes of the patients. An integrative genomic and transcriptomic analysis of PDXs reveals that pathways associated with cell-to-cell and cell-to-extracellular matrix interactions enriched among the non-responders in both cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME). We develop a 30-gene prediction model to determine the responsiveness to 5-FU and oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy and confirm the significant poor survival outcomes among cases classified as non-responder-like in three independent GC cohorts. Our study may inform clinical decision-making when designing treatment strategies

The economic effect of urban design quality and physical features on the land price in the commercial area in Austin, Texas

textMany people have realized that urban design is one of the most important features to determine the real estate price. However, there are rare studies to explain the effect of urban design on the real estate price due to its intangible characteristic. This study is intended to demonstrate the relationship between land prices in the commercial area and urban design quality and physical features of lands using the hedonic price model. First, physical features that affected the real estate price are analyzed through literature reviews. Next, by literature reviews, the study to measure urban design quality quantitatively is also introduced. Then, urban design quality of 14 subject streets in Austin, Texas is evaluated using the measurement instrument after selecting 14 subject streets among all of Austin streets. Finally, the explanation model to demonstrate the relationship between the land price, and urban design quality and physical features is built by the hedonic price model. The model displays that urban design quality has a great influence on the land price in commercial areas in Austin, Texas. In addition, the influence of urban design quality is revealed largely in comparison to other physical features. The significance of this study is to analyze and demonstrate what we intuitively believe by statistical and quantitative methods.Community and Regional Plannin

Cross-level interaction between individual socioeconomic status and regional deprivation on overall survival after onset of ischemic stroke: National health insurance cohort sample data from 2002 to 2013

Introduction: The literature on stroke mortality and neighborhood effect is characterized by studies that are often Western society-oriented, with a lack of racial and cultural diversity. We estimated the effect of cross-level interaction between individual and regional socioeconomic status on the survival after onset of ischemic stroke. Methods: We selected newly diagnosed ischemic stroke patients from 2002 to 2013 using stratified representative sampling data of 1,025,340 subjects. A total of 37,044 patients over the 10 years from 2004 to 2013 had newly diagnosed stroke. We calculated hazard ratios (HR) of 12- and 36-month mortality using the Cox proportional hazard model, with the reference group as stroke patients with high income in advantaged regions. Results: For the middle income level, the patients in advantaged regions showed low HRs for overall mortality (12-month HR 1.27; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.13–1.44; 36-month HR 1.25; 95% CI, 1.14–1.37) compared to the others in disadvantaged regions (12-month HR 1.36; 95% CI, 1.19–1.56; 36-month HR 1.30; 95% CI, 1.17–1.44). Interestingly, for the low income level, the patients in advantaged regions showed high HRs for overall mortality (12-month HR 1.27; 95% CI, 1.13–1.44; 36-month HR 1.33; 95% CI, 1.22–1.46) compared to the others in disadvantaged regions (12-month HR 1.25; 95% CI, 1.09–1.43; 36-month HR 1.30; 95% CI, 1.18–1.44). Conclusion: Although we need to perform further investigations to determine the exact mechanisms, regional deprivation, as well as medical factors, might be associated with survival after onset of ischemic stroke in low-income patients