ABSTRACT
A preponderance of females develop autoimmune disease, including juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), yet the reason for this bias remains elusive. Evidence suggests that genetic risk of disease may be influenced by sex. PTPN22 rs2476601 is associated with JIA and numerous other autoimmune diseases, and has been reported to show female-specific association with type 1 diabetes. We performed main effect and sex-stratified association analyses to determine whether a sex-specific association exists in JIA. As expected, rs2476601 was associated with JIA in our discovery (413 cases and 690 controls) and replication (1008 cases and 9284 controls) samples. Discovery sample sex-stratified analyses demonstrated an association specifically in females (odds ratio (OR)=2.35, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.52-3.63, P=0.00011) but not males (OR=0.91, 95% CI=0.52-1.60, P=0.75). This was similarly observed in the replication sample. There was evidence for genotype-by-sex interaction (Pinteraction=0.009). The association between rs2476601 and JIA appears restricted to females, partly accounting for the predominance of females with this disease.
Subject(s)
Arthritis, Juvenile/genetics , Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase, Non-Receptor Type 22/genetics , Case-Control Studies , Child , Female , Gene Frequency , Genetic Association Studies , Genetic Predisposition to Disease , Humans , Male , Odds Ratio , Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide , Sex FactorsABSTRACT
In a recent court case, a comparison was made between an impression of marks left in cheese at a murder scene and a set of study models of one of the suspects. The court was reluctant to accept the validity of the pattern-associated comparison that was used in the identification. This study compared marks made in cheese, butter and cooked potato with study models taken from volunteers. Pattern-associated comparison was the method used. Eighty pair-wise comparisons were made by two odontologists. The examiners correctly identified all the true matches from among the eighty comparisons as well as selecting the dental models for which there were no corresponding silicone impressions. In the absence of identifiable fingerprints or DNA samples, the method can be employed for matching left in foodstuffs to the dentitions of suspects.
Subject(s)
Bites, Human , Dentition , Forensic Dentistry/methods , Adolescent , Adult , Butter , Cheese , Child , Humans , Middle Aged , Reproducibility of Results , Solanum tuberosumABSTRACT
This article describes a research project in which nurses evaluated the effect of changes in a unit programme in a situation where staffing and other resources are severely limited. A quasi-experimental design was used in which the situation before the change was compared with the situation after implementation of the new programme. The dependent variables were patient symptoms and interaction patterns in the unit. The study was done in an acute female psychiatric inpatient unit in a large state psychiatric hospital in South Africa with predominantly black Zulu speaking patients. It was found that the changed programme did not increase the total interactions in the unit significantly, but that it did increase neutral interactions and decreased negative interactions. It also kept the rate of interaction steady over time between patients and staff and steadily increased interaction between patients themselves. In the control group all interactions decreased over time. No significant difference was found in symptoms between the two groups. It is concluded that the structured programme in a unit may change interaction patterns positively, even when poor staffing makes it possible only to plan nursing care for groups of patients rather than individuals. Whether these changes in interaction will be transferred to family and friends in the longer term, still has to be explored.
