Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The Influence of Emotion on Keyboard Typing: An Experimental Study Using Auditory Stimuli.

In recent years, a novel approach for emotion recognition has been reported, which is by keystroke dynamics. The advantages of using this approach are that the data used is rather non-intrusive and easy to obtain. However, there were only limited investigations about the phenomenon itself in previous studies. Hence, this study aimed to examine the source of variance in keyboard typing patterns caused by emotions. A controlled experiment to collect subjects' keystroke data in different emotional states induced by International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS) was conducted. Two-way Valence (3) x Arousal (3) ANOVAs was used to examine the collected dataset. The results of the experiment indicate that the effect of arousal is significant in keystroke duration (p < .05), keystroke latency (p < .01), but not in the accuracy rate of keyboard typing. The size of the emotional effect is small, compared to the individual variability. Our findings support the conclusion that the keystroke duration and latency are influenced by arousal. The finding about the size of the effect suggests that the accuracy rate of emotion recognition technology could be further improved if personalized models are utilized. Notably, the experiment was conducted using standard instruments and hence is expected to be highly reproducible

Keystroke duration with respect to arousal.

<p>Keystroke duration with respect to arousal.</p

Repeated measures 3 (Valence: negative, neutral, positive) x 3 (Arousal: low, medium, high) ANOVA table for accuracy rate of keyboard typing

<p>Repeated measures 3 (Valence: negative, neutral, positive) x 3 (Arousal: low, medium, high) ANOVA table for accuracy rate of keyboard typing</p

Repeated measures 3 (Valence: negative, neutral, positive) x 3 (Arousal: low, medium, high) ANOVA table for keystroke duration.

<p>* p < .05</p><p>** p < .01</p><p>Repeated measures 3 (Valence: negative, neutral, positive) x 3 (Arousal: low, medium, high) ANOVA table for keystroke duration.</p

The distribution of the mean valence and arousal ratings elicited by IADS-2 sounds during the experiment.

<p>The numbers showed in the figure are the sound ids of the used sounds (these sounds can be found in the IADS-2 database [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0129056#pone.0129056.ref042" target="_blank">42</a>] using the sound ids).</p

Keystroke latency with respect to arousal.

<p>Keystroke latency with respect to arousal.</p

Descriptive statistics of keystroke latency under independent variables Valence x Arousal.

<p>Descriptive statistics of keystroke latency under independent variables Valence x Arousal.</p