BACKGROUND Diabetes has been identified as one of the national health priority areas in Australia. After 20 years of diabetes most patients can be expected to develop diabetic retinopathy which, if undetected, is likely to cause significant visual loss or blindness. This paper reports on a pilot study aimed to test the ability of Australian GPs to clinically recognise diabetic retinopathy follo...

A key issue when designing and using DNA-targeting nucleases is specificity. Ideally, an optimal DNA-targeting tool has only one recognition site within a genomic sequence. In practice, however, almost all designer nucleases available today can accommodate one to several mutations within their target site. The ability to predict the specificity of targeting is thus highly desirable. Here, we de...

UNLABELLED The study measured the accuracy of the Italian version of the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) as a screening instrument for bipolar disorders in a psychiatric setting. METHODS 154 consecutive subjects attending the Division of Psychiatry of the University of Cagliari (Italy), were screened for bipolar disorders using the Italian translation of the MDQ, and diagnostically intervie...

There has been recent interest in the application of machine learning techniques to neuroimaging-based diagnosis. These methods promise fully automated, standard PC-based clinical decisions, unbiased by variable radiological expertise. We recently used support vector machines (SVMs) to separate sporadic Alzheimer's disease from normal ageing and from fronto-temporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). I...

Analysis of the brain specific biomarkers amyloid beta(42) (Abeta(42)) and total tau (t-tau) protein in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has a sensitivity and specificity of more than 85% for differentiating Alzheimer's Disease (AD) from non-demented controls. International guidelines are contradictory in their advice on the use of CSF biomarkers in AD diagnostics, resulting in a lack of consistency i...

Working memory (WM) tasks engage a network of brain regions that includes primary, unimodal, and multimodal associative cortices. Little is known, however, about whether task practice influences these types of regions differently. In this experiment, we used event-related fMRI to examine practice-related activation changes in different region types over the course of a scanning session while pa...

The main aim of this article is to analyze the applicability resulting from the practice, a new method of designing information systems operationally named confrontational pattern design method. At the beginning of the work the specificity and assumptions a new methodology is presented and its compatibility with modern design methods. This is followed by studies, which verify of the application...

When a patient presents to the emergency department with a neurologic deficit and a cerebrovascular event is included in the differential diagnosis, the classic recommendation is to examine the carotid artery and assess for the presence of a bruit. The diagnostic yield and utility of this practice has seldom been called into question. This critical appraisal will review the practice of listenin...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the quality assurance of mammography results at a reference institution for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in southern Brazil, based on the BIRADS (Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System) 5th edition recommendations for auditing purposes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Retrospective cohort and cross-sectional study with 4502 patients (9668 mammographies)) who und...