Efficacy and Safety of Pulse Magnetic Therapy System in Insomnia Disorder: A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial.

OBJECTIVE: This study's objective is to assess the efficacy and safety of Pulsed Magnetic Therapy System (PMTS) in improving insomnia disorder. METHODS: Participants with insomnia disorder were randomly assigned to receive either PMTS or sham treatment for four weeks (n= 153; PMTS: 76, sham: 77). Primary outcomes are the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) scores at week 0 (baseline), 1, 2, 3, 4 (treatment), and 5 (follow-up). Secondary outcomes are the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index at baseline and week 4, and weekly sleep diary-derived values for sleep latency, sleep efficiency, real sleep time, waking after sleep onset, and sleep duration. RESULTS: The ISI scores of the PMTS group and the sham group were 7.13±0.50, 11.07±0.51 at week 4, respectively. There was a significant group×time interaction for ISI (F3.214, 485.271=24.25, p<0.001, ηp 2=0.138). Only the PMTS group experienced continuous improvement throughout the study; in contrast, the sham group only experienced a modest improvement after the first week of therapy. At the end of the treatment and one week after it, the response of the PMTS group were 69.7% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 58.6%-79.0%), 75.0% (95% CI: 64.1%-83.4%), respectively, which were higher than the response of the sham group (p<0.001). For each of the secondary outcomes, similar group×time interactions were discovered. The effects of the treatment persisted for at least a week. CONCLUSION: PMTS is safe and effective in improving insomnia disorders.

DiSNPindel: improved intra-individual SNP and InDel detection in direct amplicon sequencing of a diploid.

BACKGROUND: Amplicon re-sequencing based on the automated Sanger method remains popular for detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion-deletion polymorphisms (InDels) for a spectrum of genetics applications. However, existing software tools for detecting intra-individual SNPs and InDels in direct amplicon sequencing of diploid samples are insufficient in analyzing single traces and their accuracy is still limited. RESULTS: We developed a novel computation tool, named DiSNPindel, to improve the detection of intra-individual SNPs and InDels in direct amplicon sequencing of a diploid. Neither reference sequence nor additional sample was required. Using two real datasets, we demonstrated the usefulness of DiSNPindel in its ability to improve largely the true SNP and InDel discovery rates and reduce largely the missed and false positive rates as compared with existing detection methods. CONCLUSIONS: The software DiSNPindel presented here provides an efficient tool for intra-individual SNP and InDel detection in diploid amplicon sequencing. It will also be useful for identification of DNA variations in expressed sequence tag (EST) re-sequencing.

CT60 single nucleotide polymorphism of the CTLA-4 gene is associated with susceptibility to Graves' disease in the Taiwanese population.

Graves' disease (GD) is an autoimmune disease but the underlying etiology has not been completely elucidated. Genetic susceptibility has been believed to play a major role. Recent studies showed that the CT60 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), which is in the 3'-noncoding region of the CTLA-4 gene, is strongly associated with some immune-mediated diseases. The aim of this study was to test for association between GD susceptibility and polymorphisms of CTLA-4 (ie, the CT60 SNP and the exon 1 +49 SNP) in the Taiwanese population. Our results demonstrate significant differences in the frequencies of the genotypes and alleles between 107 GD patients and 101 control subjects in the CT60 and exon 1 +49 SNPs (p <0.05). Significant differences in phenotypes were only found for CT60 SNP (78.4% vs 67.8% between patients and controls; chi2 = 3.93, p = 0.047). Furthermore, we found that the G/G genotype of both CT60 and exon 1 +49 was associated with increased risk for GD (p = 0.022, OR = 1.97). Significant linkage disequilibrium was found between the CT60 SNP and the exon 1 +49 SNP in both GD patients and control subjects (D' = 1.00). Because of tight linkage disequilibrium, a combination of these SNPs enhanced the role of the CTLA-4 gene in GD. The frequency of the disease-susceptible G allele of CT60 was comparable to that in Japanese and higher than in Caucasians. In conclusion, we provide evidence that CT60 SNP is associated with susceptibility to GD in the Taiwanese population.