White blood cells contribute to patient-specific warfarin dose for Han Chinese / 中华医学杂志(英文版)

<p><b>BACKGROUND</b>Warfarin is the most commonly prescribed anticoagulant worldwide. Factors which influence warfarin's inter-individual requirements including age, weight, and genetic factors explained about 50% of dose variance, and unidentified factors still remain. The aim of this study was to explore whether white blood cell count affects warfarin dose requirements.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Three hundred and twenty-two patients suffering from venous thromboembolism (VTE) and taking warfarin were recruited in this study. Genotyping of selected genes was conducted and other information was collected using the Epidata software. Dosing algorithms were constructed by multivariate linear regression analyses.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>In addition to well-known factors such as age, body weight, CYP2C9*3, and VKORC1 c.1173C > T, white blood cell counts negatively related to warfarin dose requirements and contributed to warfarin variability in Han Chinese by about 0.6%.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>White blood cell count has a small but significant contribution to warfarin dose requirements in Han Chinese.</p>

Proceedings of human mitochondrial DNA study and its applications to forensic medicine / 法医学杂志

The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a small circular genome located within the mitochondria in the cytoplasm of the cell. Evidence of its existence first arose over 30 years ago. Now the field of the mitochondria is one of the fastest growing disciplines in biomedicine which is driven by fundamentally interesting questions. These questions are mainly about the way of mitochondria evolving and energy producing. In addition, what the consequences of mitochondrial genome mutations in diseases are? How program cell death is regulated? What happens to mitochondria when aging? These questions remain to be answered and the basic understanding of them will contribute to anthropological and forensic analysis, as well as therapy of many diseases. The following review has brought this question to notice by summarizing recent mitochondria research.

Allele frequencies and species specificity of six short tandem repeat loci in Chinese population / 中华医学遗传学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To develop a set of new markers for forensic application, the authors have chosen 6 short tandem repeat(STR) loci to study the allele frequencies and species specificity in Chinese Han population in Chengdu.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>One hundred and ten EDTA-blood samples were collected from the unrelated individuals in Chengdu city, Sichuan province. DNA was extracted by Chelex-100 and amplified by the polymerase chain reaction(PCR). Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) and silver staining were used to analyze the PCR products.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The polymorphisms of all 6 STR loci have been obtained in Chinese Han population in Chengdu, the alleles of D4S2366, D4S2367, D6S474, D6S1281, D2S1396 and D20S601 being 7, 7, 6, 7, 5, 7, the observed heterozygosity of them being 0.802, 0.708, 0.770, 0.627, 0.542, 0.672, the discrimination power of them being 0.887, 0.828, 0.849, 0.848, 0.794, 0.865; and the power of exclusion of them being 0.602, 0.441, 0.544, 0.325, 0.227, 0.386. Evaluated by comparison with the data from 14 different animals as controls, the 6 STR loci contain good specificity of human beings.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The 6 STR loci are highly polymorphic and can play a key role in species identification. They are new candidate markers for forensic personal identification and paternity testing.</p>

Proceeding of research on X chromosome genetic markers / 法医学杂志

The development of Human Genome Project (HGP) makes it possible and more important to reveal the variations or polymorphisms precisely between different individuals and populations. Due to the characters of their high polymorphism and value in disease-linkage analysis as well as pharmacogenomnics, genetic markers on X chromosome have attracted much more attention of current medical and forensic scientists. This report summarized the proceeding of research on X chromosome genetic markers in the clinical and forensic context.