Beobachtungsstudien im Rahmen eines naturheilkundlichen Klinikverbunds :Teil I: Methoden und Übersicht der Ergebnisse in den beteiligten Kliniken

Background: In Germany a considerable number of in-patient facilities offer complementary medicine in addition to conventional care. In this study we aimed to describe patient characteristics, diagnostics, therapy and outcomes of four such in-patient facilities. Methods: 2835 consecutive in-patients admitted to two private hospitals with an emphasis on complementary medical cart, one private hospital for traditional Chinese medicine, and the Department of Complementary Medicine of a public district hospital participated in a prospective observational (cohort) study with 12 months follow-up. Sociodemographic characteristics, diagnoses, duration of disease, type and frequency of therapeutic interventions, intensity of complaints, assessment of therapeutic success, and quality of life were documented. Results: Patients of the observed hospitals were mostly female (66%-80% in the four hospitals) and a high proportion was chronically ill (31%-62% with a disease history longer than 5 years). The frequency of single diagnoses varied strongly between the four hospitals, however, chronic pain syndromes were very frequent in all. Complementary care always included a large number of different therapeutic methods whose combination varied with different diagnoses and between the hospitals. At discharge, 57%-73% of patients rated the therapeutic success as good or very good, Follow-up rates were satisfactory only in two of the four hospitals. After 12 months 51%-64% of the responding patients still rated the success as good or very good. Conclusions: In the observed hospitals mainly chronically ill patients are treated with highly complex combinations of a large variety of complementary therapies. A majority of patients seems to be satisfied by the treatment. A major methodological problem in the interpretations of patient outcomes are the partly low followup rates

Sommergrundlinien 2011

Das kräftige Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft hält an. Nach dem Rekordzuwachs von 3,6 Prozent im Jahr 2010 wird die deutsche Wirtschaft dieses Jahr noch einmal um 3,2 Prozent wachsen. Für das nächste Jahr ist immer noch mit einem überdurchschnittlichen Wachstum von 1,8 Prozent zu rechnen. Entsprechend verbessert sich auch die Lage auf dem Arbeitsmarkt weiter, wenn auch nicht so schwungvoll wie in den letzten Monaten. Für das Jahr 2011 ist mit einer durchschnittlichen Arbeitslosenquote von sieben Prozent zu rechnen, im nächsten Jahr dürfte die Quote weiter sinken.Business cycle forecast, economic outlook

Search for composite and exotic fermions at LEP 2

A search for unstable heavy fermions with the DELPHI detector at LEP is reported. Sequential and non-canonical leptons, as well as excited leptons and quarks, are considered. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 48 pb^{-1} at an e^+e^- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV and about 20 pb^{-1} equally shared between the centre-of-mass energies of 172 GeV and 161 GeV. The search for pair-produced new leptons establishes 95% confidence level mass limits in the region between 70 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2, depending on the channel. The search for singly produced excited leptons and quarks establishes upper limits on the ratio of the coupling of the excited fermio

Search for lightest neutralino and stau pair production in light gravitino scenarios with stau NLSP

Promptly decaying lightest neutralinos and long-lived staus are searched for in the context of light gravitino scenarios. It is assumed that the stau is the next to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) and that the lightest neutralino is the next to NLSP (NNLSP). Data collected with the Delphi detector at centre-of-mass energies from 161 to 183 \GeV are analysed. No evidence of the production of these particles is found. Hence, lower mass limits for both kinds of particles are set at 95% C.L.. The mass of gaugino-like neutralinos is found to be greater than 71.5 GeV/c^2. In the search for long-lived stau, masses less than 70.0 to 77.5 \GeVcc are excluded for gravitino masses from 10 to 150 \eVcc . Combining this search with the searches for stable heavy leptons and Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model staus a lower limit of 68.5 \GeVcc may be set for the stau mas

Large-Scale Conformational Changes of Trypanosoma cruzi Proline Racemase Predicted by Accelerated Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Chagas' disease, caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is a life-threatening illness affecting 11–18 million people. Currently available treatments are limited, with unacceptable efficacy and safety profiles. Recent studies have revealed an essential T. cruzi proline racemase enzyme (TcPR) as an attractive candidate for improved chemotherapeutic intervention. Conformational changes associated with substrate binding to TcPR are believed to expose critical residues that elicit a host mitogenic B-cell response, a process contributing to parasite persistence and immune system evasion. Characterization of the conformational states of TcPR requires access to long-time-scale motions that are currently inaccessible by standard molecular dynamics simulations. Here we describe advanced accelerated molecular dynamics that extend the effective simulation time and capture large-scale motions of functional relevance. Conservation and fragment mapping analyses identified potential conformational epitopes located in the vicinity of newly identified transient binding pockets. The newly identified open TcPR conformations revealed by this study along with knowledge of the closed to open interconversion mechanism advances our understanding of TcPR function. The results and the strategy adopted in this work constitute an important step toward the rationalization of the molecular basis behind the mitogenic B-cell response of TcPR and provide new insights for future structure-based drug discovery

Rosetta FlexPepDock ab-initio: Simultaneous Folding, Docking and Refinement of Peptides onto Their Receptors

Flexible peptides that fold upon binding to another protein molecule mediate a large number of regulatory interactions in the living cell and may provide highly specific recognition modules. We present Rosetta FlexPepDock ab-initio, a protocol for simultaneous docking and de-novo folding of peptides, starting from an approximate specification of the peptide binding site. Using the Rosetta fragments library and a coarse-grained structural representation of the peptide and the receptor, FlexPepDock ab-initio samples efficiently and simultaneously the space of possible peptide backbone conformations and rigid-body orientations over the receptor surface of a given binding site. The subsequent all-atom refinement of the coarse-grained models includes full side-chain modeling of both the receptor and the peptide, resulting in high-resolution models in which key side-chain interactions are recapitulated. The protocol was applied to a benchmark in which peptides were modeled over receptors in either their bound backbone conformations or in their free, unbound form. Near-native peptide conformations were identified in 18/26 of the bound cases and 7/14 of the unbound cases. The protocol performs well on peptides from various classes of secondary structures, including coiled peptides with unusual turns and kinks. The results presented here significantly extend the scope of state-of-the-art methods for high-resolution peptide modeling, which can now be applied to a wide variety of peptide-protein interactions where no prior information about the peptide backbone conformation is available, enabling detailed structure-based studies and manipulation of those interactions