Death with functioning kidney transplant: an obituarial analysis

Background  

Death with a functioning kidney graft (DWFG) is now a major cause of graft loss after renal transplantation, occurring in up to 40% of cases. Its occurrence provides insight into the medical care of subjects with a functioning kidney transplant. In this study, we used the time to DWFG as an endpoint, to test whether improved medical care has contributed to better kidney transplant outcomes.     

MassARRAY spectrometry is more sensitive than PreTect HPV-Proofer and consensus PCR for type-specific detection of high-risk oncogenic human papillomavirus genotypes in cervical cancer

Type-specific detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) is indicated for better risk stratification and clinical management of women testing positive for HPV and for epidemiologic surveillance. MassARRAY spectrometry (MassARRAY; Sequenom) is a novel method for type-specific detection of 15 high-risk oncogenic HPV types: HPV-16, -18, -31, -33, -35, -39, -45, -51, -52, -56, -58, -59, -66, -68, and -73. PreTect HPV-Proofer (Proofer; Norchip) is a type-specific assay that detects E6/E7 mRNA from five high-risk oncogenic HPV types: HPV-16, -18, -31, -33, and -45. The performance of these tests for type-specific identification of HPV was assessed with cervical specimens from 192 cases of cervical cancer in comparison with consensus MY09/MY11 PCR followed by nucleotide sequencing (consensus PCR). The overall HPV detection rates were 94.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 91.7, 97.9), 83.3% (95% CI, 78.1, 88.5), and 86.5% (95% CI, 81.7, 91.3) for MassARRAY, Proofer, and consensus PCR, respectively. All tests were negative in six (3.1%) of the 192 cases. Considering only the specimens that contained at least one of the five types targeted by Proofer, the detection rates were 96.6%, 91.4%, and 86.9% for MassARRAY, Proofer, and consensus PCR, respectively. MassARRAY detected multiple infections in 14.1%, Proofer detected multiple infections in 3.6%, and consensus PCR failed to detect any multiple infections. The agreement was highest at 86.0% (kappa = 0.76) between MassARRAY and Proofer and lowest at 81.8% (kappa = 0.69) between Proofer and consensus PCR. In conclusion, MassARRAY is a highly sensitive and accurate method for type-specific detection of oncogenic HPV in cervical cancer, with Proofer showing impressive performance.