BACKGROUND/AIM Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is increasingly applied in social epidemiological surveys among 'hidden populations' of hard drug users. The objective of the present study was to assess whether the profile of frequent crack users recruited through RDS differed from those surveyed in two random institutional samples, i.e. low-threshold opiate substitution treatment (ST) and user ...

Cytokine polymorphisms may contribute to the prevalence of respiratory distress syndrome. The present study was done to investigate the frequency of interleukin- (IL-) 10 and tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) α gene polymorphisms and their association with the risk of RDS in preterm infants. One-hundred and nineteen patients with RDS and 119 healthy preterm infants were enrolled. PCR restriction fr...

AIMS To develop a sensitive mutation screening procedure suitable for routine analysis of the peripherin/RDS gene, and to estimate the nature and prevalence of peripherin/RDS gene mutations in Swedish patients with autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. METHODS To make the method as sensitive as possible, as many as eight segments, covering the three exons and the flanking intron sequences ...

Logan, R. W., Crooks, S. M., Hutchison, J. H., and Kerr, M. M. (1973). Archives of Disease in Childhood, 48, 256. Blood carbonic anhydrase activity in the newborn. Erythrocyte carbonic anhydrase activity was measured in 7 adults, 12 mature newborn infants, 12 preterm low birthweight infants, 9 'dysmature' infants, 33 infants with the respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), and 5 infants who had re...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Newborns delivered late-preterm (between 340/7 and 366/7 weeks of gestation) are at increased risk of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Polymorphisms within the surfactant protein (SP) A and B gene have been shown to predispose to RDS in preterm neonates. The aim of this study was to investigate whether specific SP-A and/or SP-B genetic variants are also associated ...

With the rapid development of the economy over the past 20 years, the mortality rates from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and respiratory diseases (RDs) have changed in China. This study aimed to analyze the trends of mortality rates and years of life lost (YLLs) from CVDs and RDs in the rural and urban population from 1990 to 2015. Using data from Chinese yearbooks, joinpoint regression analys...

As well-known regulators of gene expression, microRNAs (miRNAs) are important not only in cell proliferation and differentiation, but also in tumorigenesis and organ development. It has been estimated that miRNAs may be responsible for regulating the expression of almost one third of the human genome. Simultaneously, with advances in neonatal care in the clinic, an increased number of premature...

Background: Respondent-driven sampling(RDS) is an increasingly widely used variant of a link tracing design for recruiting hidden populations. The role of the spatial distribution of the target population has not been robustly examined for RDS. We examine patterns of recruitment by location, and how they may have biased an RDS study findings. Methods: Total-population data were available on a r...

BACKGROUND Because respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) affects 1% of live births, accurate and rapid assessment of markers of fetal lung maturity is critical to clinicians in deciding whether to deliver a preterm infant. Our objective was to determine the optimal diagnostic cutoff value for the TDx-FLM II assay (Abbott Laboratories) for predicting clinically significant RDS. METHODS Amniotic ...

BACKGROUND In using regularly collected or existing surveillance data to characterize engagement in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) services among marginalized populations, differences in sampling methods may produce different pictures of the target population and may therefore result in different priorities for response. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to use existing data to ev...