Seasonal variation of serotonin turnover in human cerebrospinal fluid, depressive symptoms and the role of the 5-HTTLPR.

Studying monoaminergic seasonality is likely to improve our understanding of neurobiological mechanisms underlying season-associated physiological and pathophysiological behavior. Studies of monoaminergic seasonality and the influence of the serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) on serotonin seasonality have yielded conflicting results, possibly due to lack of power and absence of multi-year analyses. We aimed to assess the extent of seasonal monoamine turnover and examined the possible involvement of the 5-HTTLPR. To determine the influence of seasonality on monoamine turnover, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) and homovanillic acid (HVA) were measured in the cerebrospinal fluid of 479 human subjects collected during a 3-year period. Cosine and non-parametric seasonal modeling were applied to both metabolites. We computed serotonin (5-HT) seasonality values and performed an association analysis with the s/l alleles of the 5-HTTLPR. Depressive symptomatology was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory-II. Circannual variation in 5-HIAA fitted a spring-peak cosine model that was significantly associated with sampling month (P=0.0074). Season of sampling explained 5.4% (P=1.57 × 10(-7)) of the variance in 5-HIAA concentrations. The 5-HTTLPR s-allele was associated with increased 5-HIAA seasonality (standardized regression coefficient=0.12, P=0.020, N=393). 5-HIAA seasonality correlated with depressive symptoms (Spearman's rho=0.13, P=0.018, N=345). In conclusion, we highlight a dose-dependent association of the 5-HTTLPR with 5-HIAA seasonality and a positive correlation between 5-HIAA seasonality and depressive symptomatology. The presented data set the stage for follow-up in clinical populations with a role for seasonality, such as affective disorders

PCR clonality detection in Hodgkin lymphoma

B-cell clonality detection in whole tissue is considered indicative of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). We tested frozen tissue of 24 classical Hodgkin lymphomas (cHL) with a varying tumor cell load with the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primer sets for IGH and IGK gene rearrangement (BIOMED-2). A clonal population was found in 13 cases with the IGH FR1 and/or FR2/FR3 PCRs. Using the IGK-VJ and IGK-DE PCRs, an additional six cases had a dominant clonal cell population, resulting in a detection rate of 79% in frozen tissue. Of 12 cases, also the formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue was tested. Surprisingly, in eight of the 12 FFPE cases with acceptable DNA quality (allowing PCR amplification of >200 nt fragments), the IGK multiplex PCRs performed better in detecting clonality (six out of eight clonal IGK rearrangements) than the IGH PCRs (four out of nine clonal rearrangements), despite a rather large amplicon size. There was no evidence of B-cell lymphoma during follow-up of 1 to 6 years and no correlation was found between the presence of a clonal result and Epstein–Barr virus in the tumor cells. Our results indicate that the present routine PCR methods are sensitive enough to detect small numbers of malignant cells in cHL. Therefore, the presence of a clonal B-cell population does not differentiate between cHL and NHL

Bridging the gap between the economic evaluation literature and daily practice in occupational health: a qualitative study among decision-makers in the healthcare sector

Background: Continued improvements in occupational health can only be ensured if decisions regarding the implementation and continuation of occupational health and safety interventions (OHS interventions) are based on the best available evidence. To ensure that this is the case, scientific evidence should meet the needs of decision-makers. As a first step in bridging the gap between the economic evaluation literature and daily practice in occupational health, this study aimed to provide insight into the occupational health decision-making process and information needs of decision-makers.Methods: An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with a purposeful sample of occupational health decision-makers in the Ontario healthcare sector. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the process by which occupational health decisions are made and the importance given to the financial implications of OHS interventions. Twenty-five structured telephone interviews were conducted to explore the sources of information used during the decision-making process, and decision-makers' knowledge on economic evaluation methods. In-depth interview data were analyzed according to the constant comparative method. For the structured telephone interviews, summary statistics were prepared.Results: The occupational health decision-making process generally consists of three stages: initiation stage, establishing the need for an intervention; pre-implementation stage, developing an intervention and its business case in order to receive senior management approval; and implementation and evaluation stage, implementing and evaluating an intervention. During this process, information on the financial implications of OHS interventions was found to be of great importance, especially the employer's costs and benefits. However, scientific evidence was rarely consulted, sound ex-post program evaluations were hardly ever performed, and there seemed to be a need to advance the economic evaluation skill set of decision-makers.Conclusions: Financial information is particularly important at the front end of implementation decisions, and can be a key deciding factor of whether to go forward with a new OHS intervention. In addition, it appears that current practice in occupational health in the healthcare sector is not solidly grounded in evidence-based decision-making and strategies should be developed to improve this. © 2013 van Dongen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Frequencies of BCR-ABL1 fusion transcripts among Sudanese chronic myeloid leukaemia patients

The incidence of one or other rearrangement in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients varies in different reported series. In this study we report the frequencies of BCR-ABL1 fusion transcript variants studied in 43 CML patients from Sudan. The study includes 46 Sudanese patients, three of which negative for the BCR-ABL1 fusion transcript. More than half of 43 positive patients showed b2a2 fusion transcript (53.5%), while (41.9%) showed b3a2 transcript and the remaining (4.6%) coexpression of b3a2/ b2a2 and b3a2/b2a2/e19a2. We detected neither coexpression of p210/p190 nor e1a2 alone. Male patients showed a tendency to express b2a2, while female tende to express b3a2 (p = 0.017). Moreover, a single nucleotide polymorphism was detected in BCR exon 13 in one out of four patients and this patient showed only b2a2 expression. In conclusion, we observed a significant correlation between sex and type of BCR-ABL1 transcript, an observation that deserves further investigation

Further insights into the operation of the Chinese number system: Competing effects of Arabic and Mandarin number formats

Here we report the results of a speeded relative quantity task with Chinese participants. On each trial a single numeral (the probe) was presented and the instructions were to respond as to whether it signified a quantity less than or greater than five (the standard). In separate blocks of trials, the numerals were either presented in Mandarin or in Arabic number formats. In addition to the standard influence of numerical distance, a significant predictor of performance was the degree of physical similarity between the probe and the standard as depicted in Mandarin. Additionally, competing effects of physical similarity, defined in terms of the Arabic number format, were also found. Critically the size of these different effects of physical similarity varied systematically across individuals such that larger effects of one compensated for smaller effects of the other. It is argued that the data favor accounts of processing that assume that different number formats access different format-specific representations of quantities. Moreover, for Chinese participants the default is to translate numerals into a Mandarin format prior to accessing quantity information. The efficacy of this translation process is itself influenced by a competing tendency to carry out a translation into Arabic format