An Evaluation of Patients' Willingness to Trade Symptom-Free Days for Asthma-Related Treatment Risks: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Background. Not taking treatment preferences into account may lead to patients' inappropriate use of asthma treatments. The objective of this study was to quantify these preferences, in terms of risk-benefits trade-offs, for six asthma treatment attributes using a discrete choice experiment (DCE). Methods. Adult asthma patients (n = 157) participated in the study. The custom-designed DCE measured preferences for treatment effectiveness (symptom-free days), potential risk (oral thrush and tremor/heart palpitation), ease of use (frequency of daily administration and number of inhalers required), and cost. A nested logit model was used to determine the relative preferences of each attribute, from which the marginal rates of substitution were calculated. Segmented models were used to test for interactions between cost and treatment benefit with socioeconomic status and medication use. Results. Relationships between preferences and all attributes were in the hypothesized direction. On average, patients were willing to pay an additional $14 per month to receive one additional symptom-free day, and $26, $79, and $112 monthly to avoid one, two, and three annual episodes of oral thrush, respectively. Income and the magnitude of short-acting β -agonist use also affected treatment preferences. Conclusions. Overall, asthma patients desired treatments that offered more symptom-free days, but they were willing to trade days without symptoms in exchange for a reduction in adverse events and greater convenience.     

Upwelling intrusion into shallow Puck Lagoon, a part of Puck Bay (the Baltic Sea)

In this short communication we present the results of field measurements which show the incidence of waters originating from the deeper layers of Puck Bay in shallow Puck Lagoon. The reason for such a situation is the occurrence of a small-scale upwelling. This phenomenon may play a significant role in shaping the ecosystem conditions of Puck Lagoon, which is unique in terms of its natural values.     

Hepatitis C virus quasispecies in chronically infected children subjected to interferon–ribavirin therapy

Accumulating evidence suggests that certain features of hepatitis C virus (HCV), especially its high genetic variability, might be responsible for the low efficiency of anti-HCV treatment. Here, we present a bioinformatic analysis of HCV-1a populations isolated from 23 children with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) subjected to interferon–ribavirin therapy. The structures of the viral quasispecies were established based on a 132-amino-acid sequence derived from E1/E2 protein, including hypervariable region 1 (HVR1). Two types of HCV populations were identified. The first type, found in non-responders, contained a small number of closely related variants. The second type, characteristic for sustained responders, was composed of a large number of distantly associated equal-rank variants. Comparison of 445 HVR1 sequences showed that a significant number of variants present in non-responding patients are closely related, suggesting that certain, still unidentified properties of the pathogen may be key factors determining the result of CHC treatment.     

MIMI: Multimodality,Multiresource, Information Integration Environment for Biomedical Core Facilities

The rapid expansion of biomedical research has brought substantial scientific and administrative data management challenges to modern core facilities. Scientifically, a core facility must be able to manage experimental workflow and the corresponding set of large and complex scientific data. It must also disseminate experimental data to relevant researchers in a secure and expedient manner that facilitates collaboration and provides support for data interpretation and analysis. Administratively, a core facility must be able to manage the scheduling of its equipment and to maintain a flexible and effective billing system to track material, resource, and personnel costs and charge for services to sustain its operation. It must also have the ability to regularly monitor the usage and performance of its equipment and to provide summary statistics on resources spent on different categories of research. To address these informatics challenges, we introduce a comprehensive system called MIMI (multimodality, multiresource, information integration environment) that integrates the administrative and scientific support of a core facility into a single web-based environment. We report the design, development, and deployment experience of a baseline MIMI system at an imaging core facility and discuss the general applicability of such a system in other types of core facilities. These initial results suggest that MIMI will be a unique, cost-effective approach to addressing the informatics infrastructure needs of core facilities and similar research laboratories.     

Methods for evaluation of cosmetic antioxidant capacity

The skin as the largest part of human body is one of the main targets for ultraviolet radiation, environmental pollution, toxic chemicals and some metal ions, which share responsibility for the formation of free radicals. The resulting free radicals, both oxygen and nitrogen species are one of the main causes of aging due to impaired regulation of cell respiratory metabolism involving incomplete oxygen reduction in mitochondria and production a superoxide anion, hydroxyl radicals et al. In modern cosmetology to minimize the adverse effects of free radicals, antioxidants, which inhibit free radical reactions, mainly autoxidation processes are used. Currently, not only many cosmetic products containing antioxidants are available, but a large diversity of methods for determination of cosmetics antioxidant activity is also accessible. These methods can be divided into three main groups: in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo as reported herein. Due to lack of standardization and validation it is necessary to use a variety of methods as well as conditions for those purposes, which are presented to the context.