Improved diabetes control and pancreatic function in a type 2 diabetic after omeprazole administration.

A 43-year-old man with type 2 diabetes, opposed to insulin use and poorly responsive to oral agents added sequentially over 6 years, was placed on 40 mg omeprazole twice daily. A linear decline in daily fasting blood glucose was observed over the first two-month treatment, and his hemoglobin A1c was reduced from 11.9% to 8.2%, then sustained at 8.1% after four months. Glucose, insulin, and C-peptide response to a 2-hour glucose tolerance test were consistently improved across this time period, and calculated beta-cell mass increased by 67%. We believe these responses are consistent with activation or neogenesis of pancreatic beta cells, possibly through a gastrin-mediated mechanism.

Extending the transposable payload limit of Sleeping Beauty (SB) using the Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV)/SB amplicon-vector platform.

The ability of a viral vector to safely deliver and stably integrate large transgene units (transgenons), which not only include one or several therapeutic genes, but also requisite native transcriptional regulatory elements, would be of significant benefit for diseases presently refractory to available technologies. The herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) amplicon vector has the largest known payload capacity of approximately 130 kb, but its episomal maintenance within the transduced cell nucleus and induction of host cell silencing mechanisms limits the duration of the delivered therapeutic gene(s). Our laboratory developed an integration-competent version of the HSV-1 amplicon by adaptation of the Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system, which significantly extends transgene expression in vivo. The maximum size limit of the amplicon-vectored transposable element remains unknown, but previously published plasmid-centric studies have established that DNA segments longer than 6-kb are inefficiently transposed. Here, we compared the transposition efficiency of SB transposase in the context of both the HSV amplicon vector as well as the HSV amplicon plasmid harboring 7 and 12-kb transposable reporter transgene units. Our results indicate that the transposition efficiency of the 12-kb transposable unit via SB transposase was significantly reduced as compared with the 7-kb transposable unit when the plasmid version of the HSV amplicon was used. However, the packaged HSV amplicon vector form provided a more amenable platform from which the 12-kb transposable unit was mobilized at efficiency similar to that of the 7-kb transposable unit via the SB transposase. Overall, our results indicate that SB is competent in stably integrating transgenon units of at least 12 kb in size within the human genome upon delivery of the platform via HSV amplicons.

Service line assessment and performance management through information integration: the case for cardiovascular services.

Understanding the performance of clinically sophisticated services has become increasingly vital to ensuring the success of a health care organization. Health care delivery systems and providers will require well-designed performance management systems, which is underscored by an operating environment of declining margins, increased capacity issues, and labor shortages in key areas. This article reviews the case for cardiovascular service line assessment and performance management, specifically as a case study example of strategic, focused, and actionable measurement and assessment of clinical and financial performance for both clinical and administrative leaders. The integration of administrative data for comprehensive and strategic assessment of clinically sophisticated services is explored in depth, along with product line definition and positioning.

Social identity and the true believer: responses to threatened self-stereotypes among the intrinsically religious.

That religion is an impactful social category has often been assumed but seldom tested. Based on social identity and self-categorization theories, it is argued that devout religious commitment reflects, at least in part, an individual's motivation to engage in religious self-stereotyping (i.e. to perceive oneself as an exemplary religious group member). In order to test this analysis, individuals scoring high or low on a measure of intrinsic religious orientation received false feedback that either threatened or bolstered their self-perceptions on a dimension of behaviour that was either important or not important to religious group membership. As expected, intrinsic orientation predicted increased religious self-stereotyping only when feedback was threatening and important to religious group membership; affective and behavioural indices revealed a similar pattern. Implications for the social identity/self-categorization literature, and for theory development in the psychology of religion, are subsequently discussed.

Deoxyribonucleic acid base compositions of selected mycoplasmas and L-phase variants.

Deoxyribonucleic acid base compositions were determined for 25 Mycoplasma strains and 6 L-phase variant strains. Values obtained correlated well with the results of other investigators.