A long-term assessment of quantitative hepatitis C virus (HCV) testing was performed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The Quantiplex HCV RNA 2.0 branched-chain DNA (bDNA) assay (Bayer Diagnostics) for hepatitis C viral load determination was used to test 3,471 specimens. bDNA-negative samples were also tested by an in-house qualitative reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR assay with a ...

The survival of animals depends critically on prioritizing responses to motivationally salient stimuli. While it is generally believed that motivational salience increases decision speed, the quantitative relationship between motivational salience and decision speed, measured by reaction time (RT), remains unclear. Here we show that the neural correlate of motivational salience in the basal for...

OBJECTIVES The purposes of this study were to test whether quantitative real-time myocardial contrast echocardiography (RT-MCE) can detect coronary disease during pharmacologic stress and to compare this approach with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). BACKGROUND Assessing myocardial perfusion during stress is important for the diagnosis and risk stratification of patients wi...

BACKGROUND The presence or absence of metastatic disease in cervical lymph nodes is the single most important determinant of therapy and prognosis for patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). However, histologic examination fails to detect metastatic disease in a subset of neck dissection specimens. The accuracy of neck staging may be improved by the use of molecular techniq...

EGFR is an extensively studied biomarker in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). In this review, we discuss the prognostic and predictive role of EGFR in HNSCC, focusing on the different molecular alterations in specific treatment modalities such as radiotherapy alone (RT), combination of surgery, RT and chemotherapy (CT), EGFR inhibitors. We considered EGFR at different molecular lev...

Sensitive detection of water- and foodborne enteric viruses is extremely relevant, especially due to the low concentrations in which they are found. Accurate and sensitive detection of Norovirus, the primary responsible for water- and foodborne outbreaks, is of particular importance. Quantification of Norovirus is commonly performed by quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR). In recent years a new platfo...

peppermint has considerable commercial value and widely cultivated for essential oil production, especially menthol. the aim of this study was to determine the quantitative expression of pulegone reductase (pr), menthofuran synthase (mfs) and limonene synthase (ls) genes in menthol biosynthesis pathway in mentha x piperita , using semiquantitative rt-pcr analysis and evaluating menthol producti...