Trends in Eligibility and Geographic Variations in Breast Cancer Screening Participation Among Underserved Women in South Dakota.

INTRODUCTION: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and early detection is critical to improve breast cancer survival. The All Women Count! (AWC!) Program, part of the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, provides breast and cervical screening services at no cost to underserved women in South Dakota. Aiming to investigate program participation, we examined trends in the number of women eligible for breast cancer screening services through the AWC! Program along with mammography screening participation by county. METHODS: Using the State-level Small Area Health Insurances Estimates data and the AWC! data, we calculated the proportion of South Dakotan women eligible for mammography screening under the AWC! Program from 2016 to 2019, and calculated the standardized participation ratio and 95 percent confidence interval by county (2019). To investigate differences in screening participation over time and by counties, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey statistical test were conducted, respectively. RESULTS: From 2016 to 2019, the number of women eligible for breast cancer screening services declined by 12 percent. Differences in screening participation were not statistically significant over the four-year period. Conversely, county-level variations in screening participation were found. In 2019, among the 59 counties with screening data, 15 percent presented statistically higher participation in screening. CONCLUSION: A decrease in the number of women eligible for breast cancer services provided by AWC! was observed. Additionally, screening participation varied by county. A more comprehensive investigation is needed to explain these geographic disparities so prevention strategies can reduce the burden of breast cancer among South Dakota underserved women.

Profiling of miRNAs in serum of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder shows significant alterations.

BACKGROUND: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a common psychiatric disorder, is identified by abnormal levels of impulsivity, inattention, and hyperactivity. MiRNAs play important roles in neural network development of the brain. Circulating miRNAs (cmiRNAs) are offered as promising noninvasive markers for psychiatric disorders. In this study, the expression level of neurologically relevant miRNAs was evaluated in serum samples of ADHD individuals. METHODS: RNA extraction was performed for 60 subjects with ADHD and 60 healthy controls, and the cDNAs were synthesized for all the miRNAs. The expression level of 84 cmiRNAs was then examined in 4 ADHD subjects and 4 controls. The altered expression of 10 cmiRNAs was further evaluated in validation cohort comprising 56 ADHD and 56 control samples by qPCR. The diagnostic power of the miRNAs was determined by use of Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The cmiRNAs target genes were predicted using DIANA mirPath software and gene ontology enrichment analysis was performed using Cytoscape CLUGO. RESULTS: Initially, 10 miRNAs showed differential expression in ADHD individuals. Further analysis confirmed four miRNAs (hsa-miR-101-3p, hsa-miR-130a-3p, hsa-miR-138-5p and hsa-miR-195-5p) upregulated and one miRNA (hsa-miR-106b-5p) downregulated. These miRNAs showed significant predictive values for discriminating ADHD individuals. Enrichment analysis highlighted the involvement of the deregulated cmiRNAs in many canonical neurobiological pathways and mechanisms. CONCLUSIONS: Our report is the first comprehensive study on the expression profiling of miRNAs in serum of ADHD subjects. These findings suggest a set of cmiRNAs as potential noninvasive biomarkers for ADHD.