Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Christian Science”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

565 records · Page 32Linked to original sources
PubMed2003

Effect of drawing a discard tube on PT and APTT results in healthy adults.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare results obtained for the prothrombin time (PT) and the activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) using specimens drawn with and without a discard tube in healthy adults. DESIGN: A specimen of blood in a 3.2% sodium citrate, 5.0 mL tube was drawn from one arm with a discard tube and from the other arm without a discard tube on 35 healthy adults. A PT and APTT were performed on each specimen using a fibrometer. SETTING: The PT and APTT tests were all performed in the student laboratory of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at East Carolina University. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Study subjects induded technician, technologist, and phlebotomist employees of the clinical laboratory at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, and faculty and junior and senior students in the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. All participants signed an informed consent prior to venipuncture. INTERVENTIONS: Two coagulation specimens were drawn from each subject. Specimens in a discard (no anticoagulant) tube and then an anticoagulated tube were drawn from one arm, and a specimen in a single anticoagulant tube was drawn from the other arm. The PT and APTT were performed using standardized procedures with Pacific Hemostasis reagents and controls and a BBL FibroSystem fibrometer. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The degree of difference between PT results and between APTT results for specimens drawn with and without a discard tube. RESULTS: Based on paired t-test analyses, no difference in mean PT results and no difference in mean APTT results were found between specimens drawn with a discard tube and those drawn without a discard tube at an alpha of 0.05. Paired-samples correlation coefficients were significant for both the PT and the APTT at an alpha of 0.05, showing precision between results with and without a discard tube for both coagulation tests. CONCLUSIONS: Relative to sampling from a population of healthy adults, drawing a discard tube before a sodium citrate tube for coagulation testing appears to make an insignificant difference. Replication of these results with patients receiving anticoagulant therapy and/or patients with abnormal coagulation results, would offer cost savings by justifying elimination of discard tubes for blood draws for coagulation testing only. Such a change in protocol would also reduce the likelihood of nosocomial blood loss in vulnerable patient populations.

Blood Specimen Collection↗
PubMed2003

[Structure and limitations of past and future functions of hospitals in Germany from the physicians's point of view].

The present paper describes the emergence of hospitals from the xenodochia of the early Christian period up to the hospitals founded in the middle of the 19th century. Based on this tradition the development of German hospitals up to the present day has been influenced by the increase in scientific medical knowledge (anaesthesia, asepsis, antisepsis, roentgenology). Also, the differentiation of the traditional medical specialties into additional special fields and branches will be illustrated. Here, a special role may be attributed to both the laws and regulations releasing hospitals from the care for the invalid and elderly and a change in the prerequisites for hospital financing, which finally led to today's German hospitals being "acute care hospitals". Especially after World War II, the organisation and management structure of German hospitals were also affected by socio-political changes; it will be emphasised that the pyramidal structure (hierarchy) of quality, experience and competence is an indispensable requirement, which particularly applies to the structure of the medical staff. When a human being falls ill he does so as an entire psychophysical unit; the medical care for the diseased person must therefore not regard this unit that forms man as arbitrarily divided individual sections. The development of modern health technologies (such as--to mention just a few--dialysis, ultrasound, endoscopy, cardiac catheterisation, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging) should not lead to a complete autonomy of process engineers and thus to the splitting up of medicine into individual allotments because such an approach would be based on an utterly erroneous perception of man. In German hospitals, measures of internal quality assurance have been known for ages, long before politicians also discovered the necessity of so-called external quality assurance in medicine. Quality assurance has always been a matter-of-factness with hospitals. The presentation of the quality of hospital care to the outside world is a necessity. Scientifically founded clinical guidelines will be welcome in hospitals if they identify the necessary lower limit on medical practices by summarising the world-wide knowledge about diagnosis and treatment and if they are regularly checked and updated. But guidelines determining an upper limit on medical practices serve economical purposes only, fixing the manoeuvring space for practising the art of medicine to the disadvantage of the patients and transforming medicine from an attention-giving into an allocation-oriented profession. The future of German hospitals will only partially depend on the progress achieved in the medical sciences; to a greater extent it will be restricted by political decisions and general economic conditions.

Germany↗
PubMed2006

VANTED: a system for advanced data analysis and visualization in the context of biological networks.

BACKGROUND: Recent advances with high-throughput methods in life-science research have increased the need for automatized data analysis and visual exploration techniques. Sophisticated bioinformatics tools are essential to deduct biologically meaningful interpretations from the large amount of experimental data, and help to understand biological processes. RESULTS: We present VANTED, a tool for the visualization and analysis of networks with related experimental data. Data from large-scale biochemical experiments is uploaded into the software via a Microsoft Excel-based form. Then it can be mapped on a network that is either drawn with the tool itself, downloaded from the KEGG Pathway database, or imported using standard network exchange formats. Transcript, enzyme, and metabolite data can be presented in the context of their underlying networks, e. g. metabolic pathways or classification hierarchies. Visualization and navigation methods support the visual exploration of the data-enriched networks. Statistical methods allow analysis and comparison of multiple data sets such as different developmental stages or genetically different lines. Correlation networks can be automatically generated from the data and substances can be clustered according to similar behavior over time. As examples, metabolite profiling and enzyme activity data sets have been visualized in different metabolic maps, correlation networks have been generated and similar time patterns detected. Some relationships between different metabolites were discovered which are in close accordance with the literature. CONCLUSION: VANTED greatly helps researchers in the analysis and interpretation of biochemical data, and thus is a useful tool for modern biological research. VANTED as a Java Web Start Application including a user guide and example data sets is available free of charge at http://vanted.ipk-gatersleben.de.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1996

Genetic predisposition to organ-specific endpoints of alcoholism.

Medical records of the 15,924 twin-pairs in the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) twin registry were collected for an additional 16 years through 1994 when the surviving twins were aged 67 to 77 years. Compared with earlier analyses (Hrubec, Z, and Omenn, G. S., Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res., 5:207-215, 1981), when subjects were aged 51 to 61, there were 23% more diagnoses of alcoholism (34.4 per 1,000 prevalence), 32% more diagnoses of alcoholic psychosis (5.4 per 1,000), and 25% more twins with liver cirrhosis (17.7 per 1,000). Overall, 5.3% of the cohort had at least one of the diagnoses related to alcoholism. Probandwise concordance rates (%) were: alcoholism-26.7 monozygotic (MZ), 12.2 dizygotic (DZ) (p < 0.0001); alcoholic psychosis-17.3 MZ, 4.8 DZ (p < 0.05); and cirrhosis-16.9 MZ, 5.3 DZ (p < 0.001). Concordance for any diagnosis related to alcoholism was 30.2 MZ, 13.9 DZ (p < 0.0001). Maximum-likelihood modeling indicated that approximately 50% of the overall variance was due to additive genetic effects; in all diagnosis categories, a totally environmental model gave a significantly poorer fit to the data. Bivariate and trivariate genetic analyses indicated most of the genetic liability for the organ-specific endpoints of psychosis and cirrhosis was due to the shared genetic liability for alcoholism. Once the shared variance with alcoholism was considered, there was no further shared genetic liability for psychosis and cirrhosis. Our results confirm Hrubec and Omenn's conclusion that there was significantly greater concordance in MZ twins-pairs for alcoholic psychosis and cirrhosis in the NAS-NRC twins, and concordance rates remained similar to those reported 16 years earlier. In contrast, we found most of the genetic liability to organ-specific complications of alcoholism was shared with the genetic liability for alcoholism per se; only a small portion of the genetic variance of the individual complications was independent of the genetic predisposition for alcoholism.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Real-time PCR system for detection of orthopoxviruses and simultaneous identification of smallpox virus.

A screening assay for real-time LightCycler (Roche Applied Science, Mannheim, Germany) PCR identification of smallpox virus DNA was developed and compiled in a kit system under good manufacturing practice conditions with standardized reagents. In search of a sequence region unique to smallpox virus, the nucleotide sequence of the 14-kDa fusion protein gene of each of 14 variola virus isolates of the Russian World Health Organization smallpox virus repository was determined and compared to published sequences. PCR primers were designed to detect all Eurasian-African species of the genus ORTHOPOXVIRUS: A single nucleotide mismatch resulting in a unique amino acid substitution in smallpox virus was used to design a hybridization probe pair with a specific sensor probe that allows reliable differentiation of smallpox virus from other orthopoxviruses by melting-curve analysis. The applicability was demonstrated by successful amplification of 120 strains belonging to the orthopoxvirus species variola, vaccinia, camelpox, mousepox, cowpox, and monkeypox virus. The melting temperatures (T(m)s) determined for 46 strains of variola virus (T(m)s, 55.9 to 57.8 degrees C) differed significantly (P = 0.005) from those obtained for 11 strains of vaccinia virus (T(m)s, 61.7 to 62.7 degrees C), 15 strains of monkeypox virus (T(m)s, 61.9 to 62.2 degrees C), 40 strains of cowpox virus (T(m)s, 61.3 to 63.7 degrees C), 8 strains of mousepox virus (T(m), 61.9 degrees C), and 8 strains of camelpox virus (T(m)s, 64.0 to 65.0 degrees C). As most of the smallpox virus samples were derived from infected cell cultures and tissues, smallpox virus DNA could be detected in a background of human DNA. By applying probit regression analysis, the analytical sensitivity was determined to be 4 copies of smallpox virus target DNA per sample. The DNAs of several human herpesviruses as well as poxviruses other than orthopoxviruses were not detected by this method. The assay proved to be a reliable technique for the detection of orthopoxviruses, with the advantage that it can simultaneously identify variola virus.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Use of dermal regeneration template in contracture release procedures: a multicenter evaluation.

Integra dermal regeneration template (Integra Life Sciences, Plainsboro, N.J.) is an effective treatment for full-thickness burns. It can also be useful in contracture release procedures; however, the clinical utility of a dermal regeneration template in contracture release procedures has not been adequately characterized. In this multicenter investigation, the outcomes of release procedures incorporating a dermal regeneration template for 89 consecutive patients, who underwent a total of 127 contracture releases, were retrospectively evaluated. The procedures involved the application of Integra, which includes a temporary silicone epidermal substitute and an artificial dermal layer. After formation of a neodermis, the silicone layer is removed and replaced with an epidermal autograft. Data on patient and contracture site history, treatment methods, physician assessments of range of motion or function, patient satisfaction, recurrence, and adverse events were collected with a standardized questionnaire. Release procedures for the study patients involved the neck, axilla, trunk, elbow, knee, hand, and other anatomical sites. The mean postoperative follow-up period was 11.4 months. At 76 percent of the release sites, range of motion or function was rated as good (significant improvement in range of motion or function) or excellent (maximal range of motion or function possible) by physicians. Responding patients expressed satisfaction with the overall results of treatment at 82 percent of the sites. No recurrence of contracture at 75 percent of the sites was observed during follow-up monitoring. Patient age and prior surgical treatment at the site did not significantly affect the results of treatment. However, outcomes were superior at mature sites, i.e., those for which more than 12 months had elapsed since the original injury. Postoperative complications rarely necessitated regrafting. These results indicate that a dermal regeneration template provides a useful alternative technique for contracture release procedures. The study data indicate that this approach leads to favorable functional outcomes and a high rate of patient satisfaction. This modality also seems to be versatile, because a range of anatomical sites are amenable to treatment with a dermal regeneration template, regardless of prior surgical treatment, and both pediatric and adult patients respond well to this form of therapy. Furthermore, Integra confers functional and cosmetic benefits similar to those of full-thickness grafts but without comparable potential for donor-site morbidity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Complexities in ETS-domain transcription factor function and regulation: lessons from the TCF (ternary complex factor) subfamily. The Colworth Medal Lecture.

The ETS-domain transcription factor family can be divided into a series of subfamilies. Elk-1 represents the founding member of the ternary complex factor (TCF) subfamily. By focusing on the TCF subfamily, we can demonstrate the complexities that exist in the function and regulation of ETS-domain transcription factors. This article focuses on Elk-1 in detail and summarizes the functions of other TCFs. The key themes covered include the domain structure of the TCFs, the mechanisms of complex formation with serum response factor, regulation of TCFs by mitogen-activated protein kinase cascades, and transcriptional regulatory properties of the TCFs. Finally, the emerging role of the TCFs in vivo is discussed. A picture is developing indicating that, while these proteins exhibit significant sequence and functional conservation, key differences in their structure and regulation are being identified which may relate to unique functions of these proteins in vivo.

Amino Acid Sequence↗