To evaluate serum fructosamine as an indicator for diabetic control, serum fructosamine (FRA), glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) were simultaneously measured in 452 diabetics in stable diabetic control. We divided the measured FRA according to the degree of deviation from the expected FRA into three types, hyper-FRA, normo-FRA and hypo-FRA. In the hypo-FRA to HbA1...

PURPOSE This study examined the reliability and validity of a Falls Risk Assessment (FRA) tool developed to identify risk factors associated with falls in homebound older adults. DESIGN AND METHODS FRA scores of 307 Medicare-eligible adults over 65 admitted sequentially to a home health agency (HHA) were analyzed retrospectively using a case-control design. A total of 18 subjects participated...

Three families with the fragile X syndrome were studied with the aim to establish the most frequent clinical signs in the affected individuals and heterozygous women. The clinical evaluation, IQ level measurements and cytogenetic studies were performed in 40 subjects, 20 males and 20 females. The fragile X diagnosis was confirmed in all the male individuals with mental retardation. In the postp...

Mesenchymal-epithelial transitions (METs) are important in both development and the growth of secondary tumours. Although the molecular basis for epithelial polarity is well studied, less is known about the cues that induce MET. Here we show that Netrins, well known as chemotropic guidance factors, provide a basal polarising cue during the Drosophila midgut MET. Both netrinA and netrinB are exp...

BACKGROUND The identification of epitopes in proteins recognized by medically relevant antibodies is useful for the development of peptide-based diagnostics and vaccines. In this study, epitopes in the cytoplasmic repetitive antigen (CRA) and flagellar repetitive antigen (FRA) proteins from Trypanosoma cruzi were identified using synthetic peptide techniques and pooled sera from Chagasic patien...

Pedicle screws (PS) can provide initial stabilization of anterior interbody femoral ring allograft (FRA) lumbar constructs. Translaminar screws (TLS) have also been advocated for this procedure. The objective of this study was to use an in vitro human cadaveric model to compare the stability of one-level anterior interbody lumbar constructs stabilized with PS and those stabilized with TLS. Five...

BACKGROUND In the Drosophila embryonic nerve cord, the formation of commissures require both the chemoattractive Netrin receptor Frazzled (Fra) and the Abelson (Abl) cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase. Abl binds to the cytoplasmic domain of Fra and loss-of-function mutations in abl enhance fra-dependent commissural defects. To further test Abl's role in attractive signaling, we over-expressed Abl in F...

Fos-related antigen-1 (Fra-1) is a member of the activator protein-1 transcription factor superfamily. It plays important roles in oncogenesis in various types of malignancies. Herein, we investigated the expression of Fra-1 in lung cancer tissues by qPCR, immunohistochemistry, and western blot technologies. The results showed that Fra-1 was overexpressed in the lung cancer tissues when compare...

The ligand hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF) and its receptor tyrosine kinase, c-Met, are highly expressed in most human malignant mesotheliomas (MMs) and may contribute to their increased growth and viability. Based upon our observation that RNA silencing of fos-related antigen 1 (Fra-1) inhibited c-met expression in rat mesotheliomas (1), we hypothesized that Fra-1 was a key playe...

In the context of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), in this paper, the authors present a new agent based routing protocol named Fast Rumor Agents protocol (FRA). The FRA protocol optimizes the agent (respectively the query) propagation through the network preventing backward paths. With FRA, a rumor must have a straight trajectory, reducing the total overhead of the network. Performances compari...