The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the shortcomings in deployment of state-of-the-art diagnostics platforms. Although several polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based techniques have been rapidly developed to meet growing testing needs, such often need samples collected through a swab, use RNA extraction kits, and expensive thermocyclers order successfully perform test. Isothermal amplification...

A computer model was developed to analyze the costs to Medicare and the potential procedure volume associated with alternative strategies for treatment of acute myocardial infarction. The expected cost per case to Medicare for initial hospitalization was approximately $7,200 for conventional treatment, $7,900 for treatment with intravenous streptokinase and $8,400 for treatment with recombinant...

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) causes significant losses in many economically important crops. Contaminated soils may play roles as reservoirs and sources of transmission for TMV. In this study we report the development of an immunocapture real-time RT-PCR (IC-real-time RT-PCR) assay for direct detection of TMV in soils without RNA isolation. A series of TMV infected leaf sap dilutions of 1:101, 1:...

In this paper, we validate the availability of direct path in half-duplex-based cooperative relay networks from a practical point of view. Cooperative relaying is a low-complexity technique, which schedules orthogonal transmissions through the divided time slots. By doing so, transmission impairments due to multi-path fading and path loss are mitigated by obtaining a diversity gain. In conventi...

BACKGROUND Diffusion MRI, although having the potential to be a biomarker for early assessment of tumor response to therapy, could be confounded by edema and necrosis in or near the brain tumors. This study aimed to develop and investigate the ability of the diffusion abnormality index (DAI) to be a new imaging biomarker for early assessment of brain metastasis response to radiation therapy (RT...

AIMS  To develop a novel Vero cell assay that implements a real-time cell electronic sensing (RT-CES) system for the determination of the presence of verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC). The assay overcomes the major drawbacks in conventional Vero cell assay, for example, labour-intensive and time-consuming. METHODS AND RESULTS  Cells were grown onto the surfaces of microelectronic se...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to evaluate and compare the efficacy, tolerability and toxicity of three palliative radiotherapy (RT) schedules in locally advanced head and neck carcinoma (LAHNC), i.e. Quad Shot schedule, Christie schedule and conventional palliative schedule. METHODS The patients were randomly divided into three groups of 30 each. Group I patients were planned for 14.8 G...

Three multiplex hemi-nested RT-PCR assays were developed to detect simultaneously 12 RNA respiratory viruses: influenza viruses A, B and C, human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV), human metapneumovirus (hMPV), parainfluenza virus types 1-4 (PIV-1, -2, -3 and -4), human coronavirus OC43 and 229E (HCoV) and rhinovirus (hRV). An internal amplification control was included in one of the RT-PCR as...

Diagnosis of respiratory viruses traditionally relies on culture or antigen detection. We aimed to demonstrate capacity of the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (RT-PCR/ESI-MS) platform to identify clinical relevant respiratory viruses in nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA) samples and compare the diagnostic performance characteristics relative ...

AIMS To develop a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based technique that would permit the rapid and highly specific detection of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA extracted from frozen liver tissue. METHODS Samples of liver tissue from 18 patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplantation were studied. Nine patients were HCV positive. Total RNA was extracted from between one and 10 sections, 10 mic...