Search results for "Statistical"
showing 10 items of 4960 documents
FragClust and TestClust, two informatics tools for chemical structure hierarchical clustering analysis applied to lipidomics. The example of Alzheime…
2016
Lipidomic analysis is able to measure simultaneously thousands of compounds belonging to a few lipid classes. In each lipid class, compounds differ only by the acyl radical, ranging between C10:0 (capric acid) and C24:0 (lignoceric acid). Although some metabolites have a peculiar pathological role, more often compounds belonging to a single lipid class exert the same biological effect. Here, we present a lipidomics workflow that extracts the tandem mass spectrometry data from individual files and uses them to group compounds into structurally homogeneous clusters by chemical structure hierarchical clustering analysis (CHCA). The case-to-control peak area ratios of the metabolites are then a…
Dynamical Features of the MAP Kinase Cascade
2017
The MAP kinase cascade is an important signal transduction system in molecular biology for which a lot of mathematical modelling has been done. This paper surveys what has been proved mathematically about the qualitative properties of solutions of the ordinary differential equations arising as models for this biological system. It focuses, in particular, on the issues of multistability and the existence of sustained oscillations. It also gives a concise introduction to the mathematical techniques used in this context, bifurcation theory and geometric singular perturbation theory, as they relate to these specific examples. In addition further directions are presented in which the application…
Coupling News Sentiment with Web Browsing Data Improves Prediction of Intra-Day Price Dynamics
2015
The new digital revolution of big data is deeply changing our capability of understanding society and forecasting the outcome of many social and economic systems. Unfortunately, information can be very heterogeneous in the importance, relevance, and surprise it conveys, affecting severely the predictive power of semantic and statistical methods. Here we show that the aggregation of web users' behavior can be elicited to overcome this problem in a hard to predict complex system, namely the financial market. Specifically, our in-sample analysis shows that the combined use of sentiment analysis of news and browsing activity of users of Yahoo! Finance greatly helps forecasting intra-day and dai…
Association between Leptin and Complement in Hepatitis C Patients with Viral Clearance: Homeostasis of Metabolism and Immunity
2016
Background The association between leptin and complement in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection remains unknown. Methods A prospective study was conducted including 474 (250 genotype 1, 224 genotype 2) consecutive chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients who had completed an anti-HCV therapy course and undergone pre-therapy and 24-week post-therapy assessments of interferon λ3-rs12979860 and HCV RNA/genotypes, anthropometric measurements, metabolic and liver profiles, and complement component 3 (C3), C4, and leptin levels. Results Of the 474 patients, 395 had a sustained virological response (SVR). Pre-therapy leptin levels did not differ between patients with and without an SVR. Univariate and mul…
Adolescent and adult mice display differential sensitivity to the effects of bupropion on the acquisition of a water maze task.
2017
Abstract Background Adolescence is characterized by major neurobiological changes, and the effects of some psychoactive drugs seem to differ between adolescents and adults. Bupropion, an antidepressant that is also used to treat nicotine addiction, induces behavioral actions in both adolescent and adult rodents. However, the effects of this drug on spatial ability have not been compared in animals at different stages of their development. The present study was conducted to assess the effects of bupropion on spatial learning and memory in adolescent and adult mice. Methods Adolescent (post-natal day: PND35-36) and adult (PND >65) NMRI mice received bupropion (10, 20 and 40 mg/kg) or saline d…
The Potential Role of Direct and Indirect Contacts on Infection Spread in Dairy Farm Networks.
2017
Animals’ exchanges are considered the most effective route of between-farm infectious disease transmission. However, despite being often overlooked, the infection spread due to contaminated equipment, vehicles, or personnel proved to be important for several livestock epidemics. This study investigated the role of indirect contacts in a potential infection spread in the dairy farm network of the Province of Parma (Northern Italy). We built between-farm contact networks using data on cattle exchange (direct contacts), and on-farm visits by veterinarians (indirect contacts). We compared the features of the contact structures by using measures on static and temporal networks. We assessed the d…
Expression quantitative trait loci for PAX8 contributes to the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma
2017
Paired-box family member PAX8 encodes a transcription factor that has a role in cell differentiation and cell growth and may participate in the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). By bioinformatics analysis, we identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within a newly identified long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) AC016683.6 as expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) for PAX8. Hence, we hypothesized that PAX8eQTLs in lncRNA AC016683.6 may influence the HCC prognosis. We then performed a case-only study to assess the association between the two SNPs as well as the prognosis of HCC in 331 HBV-positive HCC patients without surgical treatment. Cox proportional hazard models …
Quality of dietary fat intake and body weight and obesity in a Mediterranean population: Secondary analyses within the PREDIMED trial
2018
A moderately high-fat Mediterranean diet does not promote weight gain. This study aimed to investigate the association between dietary intake of specific types of fat and obesity and body weight. A prospective cohort study was performed using data of 6942 participants in the PREDIMED trial, with yearly repeated validated food-frequency questionnaires, and anthropometric outcomes (median follow-up: 4.8 years). The effects of replacing dietary fat subtypes for one another, proteins or carbohydrates were estimated using generalized estimating equations substitution models. Replacement of 5% energy from saturated fatty acids (SFA) with monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) or polyunsaturated fatty…
Towards development of a statistical framework to evaluate myotonic dystrophy type 1 mRNA biomarkers in the context of a clinical trial
2020
AbstractMyotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a rare genetic disorder, characterised by muscular dystrophy, myotonia, and other symptoms. DM1 is caused by the expansion of a CTG repeat in the 3’-untranslated region of DMPK. Longer CTG expansions are associated with greater symptom severity and earlier age at onset. The primary mechanism of pathogenesis is thought to be mediated by a gain of function of the CUG-containing RNA, that leads to trans-dysregulation of RNA metabolism of many other genes. Specifically, the alternative splicing (AS) and alternative polyadenylation (APA) of many genes is known to be disrupted. In the context of clinical trials of emerging DM1 treatments, it is important…
Antibacterial Activity of Propolis Extracts from the Central Region of Romania against Neisseria gonorrhoeae
2021
(1) Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are among the most common infections worldwide, many of these being caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG). Increased antimicrobial NG resistance has been reported in recent decades, highlighting the need for new sources of natural compounds with valuable antimicrobial activity. This study aims to determine the effect of propolis extracts on NG strains, including antibiotic-resistant strains. (2) Methods: First void urine samples from presumed positive STI subjects were harvested. DNA was extracted, purified, and amplified via PCR for the simultaneous detection of 6 STIs. The presence of the dcmH, gyrA, and parC genes was checked in the D…