Practical Suitability of a Stand-Alone Oscillometric Central Blood Pressure Monitor: A Review of the Microlife WatchBP Office Central.

Accumulating evidence indicates that central blood pressure (CBP) is a better cardiovascular risk predictor than brachial blood pressure (BP). Although more additional benefits of CBP-based treatment above usual hypertension treatment are to be demonstrated, the demand for implementing CBP assessment in general clinical practice is increasing. For this, the measurement procedure must be noninvasive, easy to perform, and cost- and time-efficient. Therefore, oscillometric devices with the possibility to assess CBP seem the best option. Recently, such an oscillometric BP monitor, the Microlife WatchBP Office Central, was developed, which demonstrated its high accuracy in a validation study against invasive BP measurement. Calibration errors of this device are limited because the procedure is automated, standardized, and performed at the same place of and within 30 s from pulse wave assessment. The transformation from the peripheral pulse wave to CBP is done by means of an individual-based pulse wave analysis according to a theory of arterial compliance and wave reflections. In addition, the device has demonstrated to enable a more reliable diagnosis of hypertension by CBP than by peripheral BP, with a lower frequency of over- and underdiagnosis. Altogether, the available clinical evidence suggests that the Microlife WatchBP Office Central fulfills the criteria for general clinical use.

Discovery of genetic difference between asthmatic children with high IgE level and normal IgE level by whole genome linkage disequilibrium mapping using 763 autosomal STR markers.

The genome-wide linkage disequilibrium screen for loci associated with genetic difference between allergic and nonallergic asthma was conducted with 763 autosomal STR markers and included 190 asthmatic children. Evidence for association with differences between the two forms of asthma was observed for 36 STR markers. Marker-to-marker synergetic effect and by simulation resampling tests revealed D5S2011, D6S305, and D9S286 were important loci in allergic asthma while D6S1574, D8S1769, and D19S226 were important in nonallergic asthma. Our results show strong genetic evidence that these markers play an important role in defining allergic and nonallergic asthma and provides important candidates of susceptible genes in these two categories of asthma. This study further shows that asthma is, indeed, a heterogeneous group of underlying diseases and, although with similar clinical phenotypes, may have different clinical severities, outcomes, and need more tailor-made management.

Heterozygosities and allelic frequencies of 811 dinucleotide-repeat marker loci in the Taiwanese population.

To evaluate basic informativeness of commercially available microsatellite markers in theTaiwanese population, 190 unrelated Taiwanese children were genotyped using ABI PRISM Linkage Mapping Set-HD5. The average heterozygosity in Taiwanese was slightly lower than that in Caucasians among these 811 microsatellite markers. There were 50 marker loci with heterozygosities lower than 50%. Moreover, allelic distributions at many of the loci were significantly different in two ethnic groups. The results reported here represent a valuable database for disease genes mapping in the Taiwanese population. This database can be easily accessed at the Web site of Vita Genomics, Inc. (http://www.vitagenomics.com/str.html).

High false-positive rate of cytokeratin-19 in detecting circulating tumor cells for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) harbors a higher metastatic potential than other head and neck cancers. In order to seek a possible surrogate marker for early detection of recurrent or metastatic disease, we tested the feasibility of cytokeratin-19 (CK-19)-nested reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detecting circulating tumor cells in NPC patients. METHODS: Two tubes of blood were sequentially collected in individual draws from 7 NPC patients and 15 healthy persons. Total ribonucleic acid (RNA) was extracted from blood cells and treated with deoxyribonuclease. The RNA was then subjected to RT and nested PCR with specific CK-19 primers. The reaction products were run on an agarose gel and visualized under UV light. The sequences of the products were determined using an ABI377 automatic sequencer. RESULTS: Among the 7 NPC cases, 4 cases presented CK- 19 expression with 2 in both tubes, 1 in the first tube, and 1 in the second tube. In the control group, 8 of 15 cases also presented CK-19 expression with 6 in both tubes and 2 in the second tube resulting in a 53.3% false-positive rate. Incidentally, an aberrant splicing product lacking exon 4 of CK-19 messenger RNA was discovered. CONCLUSION: Results of the present study indicate that the CK-19-nested RT-PCR is not suitable for detecting circulating tumor cells in NPC patients because of a high false-positive rate in the control group. The reason for the high rate of false-positives may be attributed to pseudogenes, different blood cell separation methods, or illegitimate expression of CK-19 in blood cells.