BACKGROUND Many patients undergoing bariatric surgery have severe comorbidities, including obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). We suspected that sleep apnea was underdiagnosed in our study population. METHODS A retrospective chart review of our bariatric database was conducted comparing OSA evaluation based on clinical parameters (Era 1) with mandatory OSA evaluation for all patients (Era 2). RE...

Intraoperative angiography in cerebrovascular neurosurgery can drive the repositioning or addition of aneurysm clips. Our institution has switched from a strategy of intraoperative digital subtraction angiography (DSA) universally, to a strategy of indocyanine green (ICG) videoangiography with DSA on an as-needed basis. We retrospectively evaluated whether the rates of perioperative stroke, une...

Results All JIA patients were carriers of wild type allele for all three polymorphisms. Regarding Arg753Gln polymorphism of TLR2, only one patient with ERA (5.56%) and 2 healthy controls (5%) were carriers of heterozygous allele. There were no homozygous mutants. All ERA patients had wild type allele for Asp299Gly polymorphism of TLR4. For Thr399Ile polymorphism of TLR4, 21.05% ERA patients wer...

Oxytocin facilitates stress regulation but little is known about individual differences in this effect. The present study investigates whether the effect of intranasal oxytocin on stress-contingent cortisol release differs between individuals with high vs. low emotional regulation abilities (ERA). In a double-blind study thirty-six healthy male students with either high or low ERA were randomly...

Hormone-dependent estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer cells may adapt to low estrogen environments such as produced by aromatase inhibitors. In many instances, cells become insensitive to the effects of estrogen but may still retain dependence on ER. We have investigated the expression, function, and activation of ERa in two endocrine-resistant MCF-7 models to identify mechanisms that...

The efficacy of the Meld system to allocate livers has never been investigated in European centers. The outcome of 339 patients with chronic liver disease listed according to their Meld score between 2003 and 2005 (Meld era) was compared to 224 patients listed during the previous 2 years according to their Child score (Child era). During the Meld era, hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) had a 'mod...

Factors associated with increased estrogen synthesis increase breast cancer risk. Increased aromatase and estrogen receptor a (ERa) in both normal epithelium and ductal carcinoma in situ lesions are found in conjunction with breast cancer, leading to the idea that altered estrogen signaling pathways predispose the mammary gland to cancer development. Here, we developed a transgenic mouse that c...

OBJECTIVE Since 2006, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination has been routinely recommended for adolescent females in the USA. The quadrivalent vaccine induces long-term seropositivity to HPV 6/11/16, which may be useful as a marker for HPV vaccine coverage. METHODS We evaluated vaccine type seropositivity (i.e., seropositivity to HPV 6/11/16 with or without HPV18) among females aged 14-59 ye...

ERA forms a unique family of GTPase. It is widely conserved and essential in bacteria. ERA functions in cell cycle control by coupling cell division with growth rate. ERA homologues also are found in eukaryotes. Here we report the crystal structure of ERA from Escherichia coli. The structure has been determined at 2.4-A resolution. It reveals a two-domain arrangement of the molecule: an N-termi...

We sought to characterize sex-based differences in access to deceased donor liver transplantation. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients data were used to analyze n = 78 998 adult candidates listed before (8/1997-2/2002) or after (2/2002-2/2007) implementation of Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD)-based liver allocation. The primary outcome was deceased donor liver transplantation....