On consensus biomarker selection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent development of mass spectrometry technology enabled the analysis of complex peptide mixtures. A lot of effort is currently devoted to the identification of biomarkers in human body fluids like serum or plasma, based on which new diagnostic tests for different diseases could be constructed. Various biomarker selection procedures have been exploited in recent studies. It has been noted that they often lead to different biomarker lists and as a consequence, the patient classification may also vary.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we propose a new approach to the biomarker selection problem: to apply several competing feature ranking procedures and compute a consensus list of features based on their outcomes. We validate our methods on two proteomic datasets for the diagnosis of ovarian and prostate cancer.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The proposed methodology can improve the classification results and at the same time provide a unified biomarker list for further biological examinations and interpretation.</p

Tracking virus outbreaks in the twenty-first century

Emerging viruses have the potential to impose substantial mortality, morbidity and economic burdens on human populations. Tracking the spread of infectious diseases to assist in their control has traditionally relied on the analysis of case data gathered as the outbreak proceeds. Here, we describe how many of the key questions in infectious disease epidemiology, from the initial detection and characterization of outbreak viruses, to transmission chain tracking and outbreak mapping, can now be much more accurately addressed using recent advances in virus sequencing and phylogenetics. We highlight the utility of this approach with the hypothetical outbreak of an unknown pathogen, 'Disease X', suggested by the World Health Organization to be a potential cause of a future major epidemic. We also outline the requirements and challenges, including the need for flexible platforms that generate sequence data in real-time, and for these data to be shared as widely and openly as possible

Oral corticosteroids for wheezing attacks under 18 months.

In a double blind, partial crossover trial we compared treatment with prednisolone with treatment with placebo (56 treatments) in 38 children aged less than 18 months (mean age 9.8 months, range 3-17 months), 30 of whom had required previous admission to hospital. Placebo or oral prednisolone 2 mg/kg/day in two divided doses for five days was given during acute exacerbations of symptoms on an outpatient basis. Daily symptom scores of cough, wheeze, and breathlessness did not show any significant difference in rate of improvement or overall outcome, either between the two whole groups or within subgroups aged less than 6 months, 6-12 months, and 12-18 months. Parental preference failed to indicate superiority of treatment with prednisolone over treatment with placebo in the 18 crossover patients, and parents were equally as likely to feel that treatment with either placebo or prednisolone had had positive effect in non-crossover patients. Two children required admission to hospital during treatment, one aged 5 1/2 months being treated with prednisolone, and one aged 14 months being treated with placebo