Search results for "Original Papers"
showing 10 items of 28 documents
Sex- and age patterns in incidence of infectious diseases in Germany: analyses of surveillance records over a 13-year period (2001–2013)
2018
AbstractSex differences in the incidence of infections may indicate different risk factors and behaviour but have not been analysed across pathogens. Based on 3.96 million records of 33 pathogens in Germany, notified from 2001 to 2013, we applied Poisson regression to generate age-standardised incidence rate ratios and assessed their distribution across age and sex. The following trends became apparent: (a) pathogens with male incidence preponderance at infant and child age (meningococcal disease (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 1.19, 95% CI 1.03–1.38, age = 0–4); influenza (IRR = 1.09, 95% CI 1.06–1.13, age = 0–4)), (b) pathogens with sex-switch in incidence preponderance at puberty (e.g. nor…
Temporal association between the influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV): RSV as a predictor of seasonal influenza.
2016
SUMMARYEpidemiologists agree that there is a prevailing seasonality in the presentation of epidemic waves of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections and influenza. The aim of this study is to quantify the potential relationship between the activity of RSV, with respect to the influenza virus, in order to use the RSV seasonal curve as a predictor of the evolution of an influenza virus epidemic wave. Two statistical tools, logistic regression and time series, are used for predicting the evolution of influenza. Both logistic models and time series of influenza consider RSV information from previous weeks. Data consist of influenza and confirmed RSV cases reported in Comunitat Valenciana (…
Krapina atlases suggest a high prevalence of anatomical variations in the first cervical vertebra of Neanderthals
2020
The first cervical vertebra, atlas, and its anatomical variants have been widely studied in Homo sapiens. However, in Neanderthals, the presence of anatomical variants of the atlas has been very little studied until very recently. Only the Neanderthal group from the El Sidrón site (Spain) has been analysed with regard to the anatomical variants of the atlas. A high prevalence of anatomical variants has been described in this sample, which points to low genetic diversity in this Neanderthal group. Even so, the high prevalence of anatomical variations detected in El Sidrón Neanderthal atlases needs to be confirmed by analysing more Neanderthal remains. In this context, we analysed the possibl…
Pentadactyl manus of the Metoposaurus krasiejowensis from the Late Triassic of Poland, the first record of pentadactyly among Temnospondyli
2020
Abstract Temnospondyli are commonly believed to have possessed four digits in the manus and five in the pes. However, actual finds of articulated autopodia are extremely rare. Therefore, an articulated, slightly incomplete forelimb skeleton with preserved manus of Metoposaurus krasiejowensis from the Late Triassic of Poland is important in providing new details about the structure and ossification sequence in the temnospondyl limb. The most important observation is the presence of five metacarpals in this specimen. This allows reconstructing the manus as pentadactyl. The number of phalanges and the distribution of distal articulation facets allow reconstruction of the digit formula as (2?)‐…
The angiotensin‐(1‐7)/Mas receptor axis protects from endothelial cell senescence via klotho and Nrf2 activation
2019
Endothelial cell senescence is a hallmark of vascular aging that predisposes to vascular disease. We aimed to explore the capacity of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) heptapeptide angiotensin (Ang)-(1-7) to counteract human endothelial cell senescence and to identify intracellular pathways mediating its potential protective action. In human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) cultures, Ang II promoted cell senescence, as revealed by the enhancement in senescence-associated galactosidase (SA-β-gal+) positive staining, total and telomeric DNA damage, adhesion molecule expression, and human mononuclear adhesion to HUVEC monolayers. By activating the G protein-coupled receptor Mas, Ang-(1…
Assessing statistical significance in multivariable genome wide association analysis
2016
Motivation: Although Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) genotype a very large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the data are often analyzed one SNP at a time. The low predictive power of single SNPs, coupled with the high significance threshold needed to correct for multiple testing, greatly decreases the power of GWAS. Results: We propose a procedure in which all the SNPs are analyzed in a multiple generalized linear model, and we show its use for extremely high-dimensional datasets. Our method yields P-values for assessing significance of single SNPs or groups of SNPs while controlling for all other SNPs and the family wise error rate (FWER). Thus, our method tests whe…
Reactome diagram viewer: data structures and strategies to boost performance
2017
Abstract Motivation Reactome is a free, open-source, open-data, curated and peer-reviewed knowledgebase of biomolecular pathways. For web-based pathway visualization, Reactome uses a custom pathway diagram viewer that has been evolved over the past years. Here, we present comprehensive enhancements in usability and performance based on extensive usability testing sessions and technology developments, aiming to optimize the viewer towards the needs of the community. Results The pathway diagram viewer version 3 achieves consistently better performance, loading and rendering of 97% of the diagrams in Reactome in less than 1 s. Combining the multi-layer html5 canvas strategy with a space partit…
The latent geometry of the human protein interaction network
2017
Abstract Motivation A series of recently introduced algorithms and models advocates for the existence of a hyperbolic geometry underlying the network representation of complex systems. Since the human protein interaction network (hPIN) has a complex architecture, we hypothesized that uncovering its latent geometry could ease challenging problems in systems biology, translating them into measuring distances between proteins. Results We embedded the hPIN to hyperbolic space and found that the inferred coordinates of nodes capture biologically relevant features, like protein age, function and cellular localization. This means that the representation of the hPIN in the two-dimensional hyperboli…
Reference genome assessment from a population scale perspective: an accurate profile of variability and noise.
2017
Abstract Motivation Current plant and animal genomic studies are often based on newly assembled genomes that have not been properly consolidated. In this scenario, misassembled regions can easily lead to false-positive findings. Despite quality control scores are included within genotyping protocols, they are usually employed to evaluate individual sample quality rather than reference sequence reliability. We propose a statistical model that combines quality control scores across samples in order to detect incongruent patterns at every genomic region. Our model is inherently robust since common artifact signals are expected to be shared between independent samples over misassembled regions …
REGGAE : a novel approach for the identification of key transcriptional regulators
2019
Abstract Motivation Transcriptional regulators play a major role in most biological processes. Alterations in their activities are associated with a variety of diseases and in particular with tumor development and progression. Hence, it is important to assess the effects of deregulated regulators on pathological processes. Results Here, we present REGulator-Gene Association Enrichment (REGGAE), a novel method for the identification of key transcriptional regulators that have a significant effect on the expression of a given set of genes, e.g. genes that are differentially expressed between two sample groups. REGGAE uses a Kolmogorov–Smirnov-like test statistic that implicitly combines assoc…