A study of non-obese diabetes mellitus in adults in a tertiary care hospital in Kerala, India

The term Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA) was introduced to define adult diabetic patients initially non–insulin-requiring but with immune markers of type 1 diabetes that, in a number of cases, progress to insulin dependency. This term has been largely used in the last few years when referring to autoimmune forms of diabetes not requiring insulin initially. In the present study we looked for the clinical, biochemical and immunological parameters of non-obese type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults and studied the frequency of antibodies to glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) and pancreatic islet cell antibodies (PICA). Subjects of 30 years or older with a history of diabetes of duration not more than 36 months and body mass index (BMI) of less than 23 kg/m² were included. Fasting serum C-peptide, GAD antibody and islet cell auto antibody was estimated. GAD antibodies were positive in 25.81 %, ICA in 22.58 % and both in 9.70 % of lean diabetes. Fasting serum C-peptide was less than normal in 45.16 % of them.     

A Genomic Day in the Life of a Clinical Microbiology Laboratory

Next-generation sequencing technology is available to many clinical laboratories; however, it is not yet widely used in routine microbiology practice. To demonstrate the feasibility of using whole-genome sequencing in a routine clinical microbiology workflow, we sequenced the genome of every organism isolated in our laboratory for 1 day.     

Prognostic and therapeutic value of the Hippo pathway,RABL6A,and p53-MDM2 axes in sarcomas

Additional prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers effective across different histological types of sarcoma are needed. Herein we evaluate expression of TAZ and YAP, the p53-MDM2 axis, and RABL6A, a novel oncoprotein with potential ties to both pathways, in sarcomas of different histological types. Immunohistochemical staining of a tissue microarray including 163 sarcomas and correlation with clinical data showed that elevated YAP and TAZ independently predict worse overall and progression-free survival, respectively. In the absence of p53 expression, combined TAZ and YAP expression adversely affect overall, progression free, and metastasis free survival more than TAZ or YAP activation alone. RABL6A independently predicted shorter time to metastasis and was positively correlated with p53, MDM2 and YAP expression, supporting a possible functional relationship between the biomarkers. Network analysis further showed that TAZ is positively correlated with MDM2 expression. The data implicate all five proteins as clinically relevant downstream players in the Hippo pathway. Finally, a novel inhibitor of MDM2 (MA242), effectively suppressed the survival of sarcoma cell lines from different histological types regardless of p53 status. These findings suggest both independent and cooperative roles for all five biomarkers across different histological types of sarcoma in predicting patient outcomes and potentially guiding future therapeutic approaches.