Paradise lost or paradise regained? Changes in admission system affect academic performance and drop-out rates of medical students.

BACKGROUND: The Austrian State medical universities had to change their admission system in 2005. Until this year admission to medical studies was unrestricted. Innsbruck Medical University chose the Eignungstest für das Medizinstudium in der Schweiz (EMS) aptitude test for admission testing. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: Did the implementation of a selection process affect the academic performance and drop-out rates of students according to gender? METHODS: Two groups of students were compared: 'open admission' (2002-2004), and 'selected' (2006-2009). Academic performance was tested according to results in the final exams after year 1 (SIP 1; SIP, summative integrierte Prüfung) and after year 3 (SIP 3). Drop-out rates were recorded using the registration system of the university. RESULTS: Both, male and female 'selected' students had a higher passing rate regarding SIP 1 and they passed SIP 1 in shorter time and using fewer attempts than the open admission group. The percentage in passing SIP 3 did not change due to change in admission. The drop-out rates were significantly reduced for male and female students. 'Unselected' female students had a significantly higher drop-out ratio than 'unselected' male counterparts. After EMS testing, the drop-out ratios of female and male students were not significantly different. CONCLUSION: Selected applicants were more able and better motivated to study medicine.

CONAN: copy number variation analysis software for genome-wide association studies.

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) based on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) revolutionized our perception of the genetic regulation of complex traits and diseases. Copy number variations (CNVs) promise to shed additional light on the genetic basis of monogenic as well as complex diseases and phenotypes. Indeed, the number of detected associations between CNVs and certain phenotypes are constantly increasing. However, while several software packages support the determination of CNVs from SNP chip data, the downstream statistical inference of CNV-phenotype associations is still subject to complicated and inefficient in-house solutions, thus strongly limiting the performance of GWAS based on CNVs. RESULTS: CONAN is a freely available client-server software solution which provides an intuitive graphical user interface for categorizing, analyzing and associating CNVs with phenotypes. Moreover, CONAN assists the evaluation process by visualizing detected associations via Manhattan plots in order to enable a rapid identification of genome-wide significant CNV regions. Various file formats including the information on CNVs in population samples are supported as input data. CONCLUSIONS: CONAN facilitates the performance of GWAS based on CNVs and the visual analysis of calculated results. CONAN provides a rapid, valid and straightforward software solution to identify genetic variation underlying the 'missing' heritability for complex traits that remains unexplained by recent GWAS. The freely available software can be downloaded at http://genepi-conan.i-med.ac.at.