Detection of herb-symptom associations from traditional chinese medicine clinical data

YesTraditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an individualized medicine by observing the symptoms and signs (symptoms in brief) of patients. We aim to extract the meaningful herb-symptom relationships from large scale TCM clinical data. To investigate the correlations between symptoms and herbs held for patients, we use four clinical data sets collected from TCM outpatient clinical settings and calculate the similarities between patient pairs in terms of the herb constituents of their prescriptions and their manifesting symptoms by cosine measure. To address the large-scale multiple testing problems for the detection of herb-symptom associations and the dependence between herbs involving similar efficacies, we propose a network-based correlation analysis (NetCorrA) method to detect the herb-symptom associations. The results show that there are strong positive correlations between symptom similarity and herb similarity, which indicates that herb-symptom correspondence is a clinical principle adhered to by most TCM physicians. Furthermore, the NetCorrA method obtains meaningful herb-symptom associations and performs better than the chi-square correlation method by filtering the false positive associations. Symptoms play significant roles for the prescriptions of herb treatment. The herb-symptom correspondence principle indicates that clinical phenotypic targets (i.e., symptoms) of herbs exist and would be valuable for further investigations

Iron pnictides: Single crystal growth and effect of doping on structural, transport and magnetic properties

We demonstrate the preparation of large, free standing iron pnictide single crystals with a size up to 20 x 10 x 1 mm3 using solvents in zirconia crucibles under argon atmosphere. Transport and magnetic properties are investigated to study the effect of potassium doping on the structural and superconducting property of the compounds. The spin density wave (SDW) anomaly at Ts ~138 K in BaFe2As2 single crystals from self-flux shifts to Ts ~85 K due to Sn solvent growth. We show direct evidence for an incorporation of Sn on the Fe site. The electrical resistivity data show a sharp superconducting transition temperature Tc~38.5 K for the single crystal of Ba0.68K0.32Fe2As2. A nearly 100% shielding fraction and bulk nature of the superconductivity for the single crystal were confirmed by magnetic susceptibility data. A sharp transition Tc~25 K occurred for the single crystal of Sr0.85K0.15Fe2As2. There is direct evidence for a coexistence of the SDW and superconductivity in the low doping regime of Sr1-xKxFe2As2 single crystals. Structural implications of the doping effects as well as the coexistence of the two order parameters are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

Nuclear effects in the Drell-Yan process at very high energies

We study Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton(deuterium)-nucleus and in nucleus-nucleus collisions within the light-cone color dipole formalism. This approach is especially suitable for predicting nuclear effects in the DY cross section for heavy ion collisions, as it provides the impact parameter dependence of nuclear shadowing and transverse momentum broadening, quantities that are not available from the standard parton model. For p(D)+A collisions we calculate nuclear shadowing and investigate nuclear modification of the DY transverse momentum distribution at RHIC and LHC for kinematics corresponding to coherence length much longer than the nuclear size. Calculations are performed separately for transversely and longitudinally polarized DY photons, and predictions are presented for the dilepton angular distribution. Furthermore, we calculate nuclear broadening of the mean transverse momentum squared of DY dileptons as function of the nuclear mass number and energy. We also predict nuclear effects for the cross section of the DY process in heavy ion collisions. We found a substantial nuclear shadowing for valence quarks, stronger than for the sea.Comment: 46 pages, 18 figures, title changed and some discussion added, accepted for publication in PR

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

A facile enantioselective approach to neolignans

An enantioselective and stereoselective synthesis of 8-O-4' neolignans is reported in which a natural 8-0-4', norneolignan is enantioselectively synthesized as a single erythro isomer. Furthermore the route has been adapted to allow the enantioselective synthesis of 1,4-benzodioxane neolignans. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved