Plos One
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Serum levels of caspase-cleaved cytokeratin-18 in patients with severe traumatic brain injury are associated with mortality: a pilot study.
There have been found apoptotic changes in brain tissue samples from animals and humans after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The protein cytokeratin 18 (CK-18), present in epithelial cells, is cleaved by the action of caspases during apoptosis, and the resulting fragments are released into the blood as caspase-cleaved CK (CCCK)-18. Circulating levels of CCCK-18, as biomarker of apoptosis, have been determined in patients with different processes; however, it has not been explored in TBI patients. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether there is an association between serum CCCK-18 levels and mortality and whether such levels could be used as a biomarker to predict outcomes in TBI patients. ⋯ The novel finding of our study was that serum CCCK-18 levels are associated with 30-day mortality and could be used as a prognostic biomarker in patients with severe TBI.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Customized Internal Reference Controls for Improved Assessment of Circulating MicroRNAs in Disease.
Altered levels of circulating extracellular miRNA in plasma and serum have shown promise as non-invasive biomarkers of disease. However, unlike the assessment of cellular miRNA levels for which there are accepted housekeeping genes, analogous reference controls for normalization of circulating miRNA are lacking. Here, we provide an approach to identify and validate circulating miRNA reference controls on a de novo basis, and demonstrate the advantages of these customized internal controls in different disease settings. Importantly, these internal controls overcome key limitations of external spike-in controls. ⋯ We demonstrate the feasibility of identifying circulating reference controls that can reduce extraneous technical variations, and improve the assessment of disease-related changes in plasma miRNA levels. This study provides a novel conceptual framework that addresses a critical and previously unmet need if circulating miRNAs are to advance as reliable diagnostic tools in medicine.
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Multicenter Study
Plasma elaidic acid level as biomarker of industrial trans fatty acids and risk of weight change: report from the EPIC study.
Few epidemiological studies have examined the association between dietary trans fatty acids and weight gain, and the evidence remains inconsistent. The main objective of the study was to investigate the prospective association between biomarker of industrial trans fatty acids and change in weight within the large study European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort. ⋯ These data suggest that a high intake of industrial trans fatty acids may decrease the risk of weight loss, particularly in women. Prevention of obesity should consider limiting the consumption of highly processed foods, the main source of industrially-produced trans fatty acids.
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Multicenter Study
Incidence of neuralgic amyotrophy (Parsonage Turner syndrome) in a primary care setting--a prospective cohort study.
Neuralgic amyotrophy is considered a rare peripheral nervous system disorder but in practice seems grossly under recognized, which negatively affects care for these patients. In this study we prospectively counted the one-year incidence rate of classic neuralgic amyotrophy in a primary care setting. ⋯ Our findings suggest that neuralgic amyotrophy is 30-50 times more common than previously thought. Unawareness of the disorder and its clinical presentation seems the most likely explanation for this difference. An incidence rate of 1 per 1000 and the long-term sequelae many patients suffer warrant more vigilance in diagnosing the disorder, to pave the way for timely treatment and prevent complications.
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Multicenter Study
Diagnostic accuracy of 123I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine myocardial scintigraphy in dementia with Lewy bodies: a multicenter study.
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) needs to be distinguished from Alzheimer's disease (AD) because of important differences in patient management and outcome. Severe cardiac sympathetic degeneration occurs in DLB, but not in AD, offering a potential system for a biological diagnostic marker. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy, in the ante-mortem differentiation of probable DLB from probable AD, of cardiac imaging with the ligand 123I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) which binds to the noradrenaline reuptake site, in the first multicenter study. ⋯ Our first multicenter study confirmed the high correlation between abnormal cardiac sympathetic activity evaluated with 123I-MIBG myocardial scintigraphy and a clinical diagnosis of probable DLB. The diagnostic accuracy is sufficiently high for this technique to be clinically useful in distinguishing DLB from AD, especially in patients with mild dementia.