BACKGROUND Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common chronic joint disease usually diagnosed at relatively advanced stages when there is irreparable damage to the joint(s). Recently, we have identified two novel biomarkers C3f and V65 which appear to be OA-specific and therefore potential markers of early disease. We report the development of immunoassays for quantitative measure of these two nove...

A microfluidic system was developed for blood plasma separation at high flow rate. This system uses only hydrodynamic forces to separate plasma from whole blood. The microfluidic network features a series of constrictions and bifurcations to enhance the product yield and purity. A maximum purity efficiency of 100% is obtained on blood with entrance hematocrit level up to 30% with a flow rate of...

The Neglected Tropical Disease onchocerciasis is a parasitic disease. Despite many control programmes by the World Health Organization (WHO), large communities in West and Central Africa are still affected. Besides logistic challenges during biannual mass drug administration, the lack of a robust, point-of-care diagnostic is limiting successful eradication of onchocerciasis. Towards the impleme...

INTRODUCTION Intervention studies have been designed to change dietary and lifestyle factors associated with chronic diseases, but self-reported behavior change may incorporate intervention-related bias. This study examines plasma nutrient concentration and correlations with self-reports in the Healthy Directions intervention study. The Healthy Directions intervention studies were designed to i...

We describe a novel study design for validating marker-based treatment strategies meant to select among possible therapeutic options using a biologic marker. Studying existing designs in realistic scenarios, we demonstrate that this design is more than four times more efficient for testing the interaction between a marker and its intended treatment. Our analysis employs a simple parametric fram...

objective(s): in recent years, there has been an increasing amount of study on early diagnosis of kidney injury through sensitive and specific biomarkers. we examined the practical applicability of the urinary levels of nag (n-acetyl-β-d-glucosaminidase), ap (alkaline phosphatase), and ldh (lactate dehydrogenase) as renal dysfunction screening biomarkers in full and pre-term newborns treated wi...

Ever since proteomics was proven to be capable of characterizing a large number of differences in both protein quality and quantity, it has been applied in various areas of biomedicine, ranging from the deciphering molecular pathogenesis of diseases to the characterization of novel drug targets and the discovery of potential diagnostic biomarkers. Indeed, the biomarker discovery in human plasma...

To date, there is no published detailed checklist with parameters referencing the DICOM tag information with respect to the quality control (QC) of PET/CT scans. The aims of these guidelines are to provide the know-how for effectively controlling the quality of PET/CT scans in multicenter studies, to standardize the QC, to give sponsors and regulatory agencies a basis for justification of the d...

BACKGROUND Protein biomarker candidates from discovery proteomics must be quantitatively verified in patient samples before they can progress to clinical validation. Here we demonstrate that peptide immunoaffinity enrichment coupled with stable isotope dilution mass spectrometry (SISCAPA-MRM) can be used to configure assays with performance suitable for candidate biomarker verification. As proo...

abstract background: sp-a and sp-d are hydrophilic proteins which regulate the inflammatory response of the lung. pasteurella multocida is one of the most common bacteria isolated from calves suffering from shipping fever pneumonia, one of the most problems in dairy herds. objective: evaluation of surfactant content may provide a valuable diagnostic tool for detection of calf pneumonia due to p...