[Applying Swanson's Caring Theory to a Patient With an Initial Diagnosis of Marfan's Syndrome With Aortic Dissection].

This article describes the author's experience using Swanson Care Theory in the provision of nursing care to a 20-year-old man, an exchange student from Hong Kong, following his initial diagnosis with Marfan's syndrome. This patient required emergency aortic root replacement surgery due to type A aortic dissection. Immediately after learning of his illness, the patient was faced with making a major surgical decision. The absence of relatives and friends close by to assist him made him unable to decide whether to agree to the operation. Because of the importance of evaluating the physical and mental needs of the case, which would affect his prognosis, the author conducted a four-facet physical, psychological, social, and spiritual assessment of the patient from April 13-18, 2020. The results confirmed the presence of significant health problems, including "body image disturbance" and "anxiety". The author applied the five processes of Swanson's caring theory in caring for this patient. The process of "Knowing" and "Being with" helped, through active companionship and care, establish a trusting relationship, elucidate the client's inner thoughts on the disease, evaluate the client's needs, and accept the negative emotions. The process of "Doing for" and "Enabling" were employed to serve as a bridge for family communication to help both parties achieve consensus and to encourage effective problem-facing, provide timely assistance, promote self-adjustment, and reduce psychological shock, unease, and anxiety. Health education was implemented to increase the patient's disease and postoperative-care knowledge and promote self-care abilities to facilitate his acceptance of the current situation and active participation in treatment. Finally, the process of "Maintaining belief" was used to elicit positive feedback through actual situations. Patients with conditions similar to this patient were introduced to share their experiences and provide empathy to provide our patient with the motivation necessary to maintain positive progress. Based on this experience, it is recommended that critical caregivers strengthen their caring ability to improve their quality of care. This experience is may be referenced by clinical workers.

Quantifying spatial heterogeneity of vulnerability to short-term PM2.5 exposure with data fusion framework.

The current estimations of the burden of disease (BD) of PM2.5 exposure is still potentially biased by two factors: ignorance of heterogeneous vulnerabilities at diverse urbanization levels and reliance on the risk estimates from existing literature, usually from different locations. Our objectives are (1) to build up a data fusion framework to estimate the burden of PM2.5 exposure while evaluating local risks simultaneously and (2) to quantify their spatial heterogeneity, relationship to land-use characteristics, and derived uncertainties when calculating the disease burdens. The feature of this study is applying six local databases to extract PM2.5 exposure risk and the BD information, including the risks of death, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and respiratory disease (RD), and their spatial heterogeneities through our data fusion framework. We applied the developed framework to Tainan City in Taiwan as a use case estimated the risks by using 2006-2016 emergency department visit data, air quality monitoring data, and land-use characteristics and further estimated the BD caused by daily PM2.5 exposure in 2013. Our results found that the risks of CVD and RD in highly urbanized areas and death in rural areas could reach 1.20-1.57 times higher than average. Furthermore, we performed a sensitivity analysis to assess the uncertainty of BD estimations from utilizing different data sources, and the results showed that the uncertainty of the BD estimations could be contributed by different PM2.5 exposure data (20-32%) and risk values (0-86%), especially for highly urbanized areas. In conclusion, our approach for estimating BD based on local databases has the potential to be generalized to the developing and overpopulated countries and to support local air quality and health management plans.

Higher hypertension prevalence, lower incidence, and aggressive treatment with decreasing mortality, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular incidence in Taiwan from 2005 to 2010: A 2 population-based cohorts study.

Hypertension continues to be an important public health concern because of its associated morbidity, mortality, and economic impact on society. The aims of this study are to compare the secular changes in age-stratified hypertension prevalence, incidence, co-morbidity, and 3 years of cardiovascular outcome in Taiwan in the years 2005 and 2010.We enrolled hypertensive individuals from the datasets of the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID) in 2005 and 2010 in Taiwan separately. We analyzed the hypertension prevalence, incidence, medication treatment, and associated morbidities. The risks of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events and all-causes mortalities among the hypertensive individuals were evaluated in 3 years of follow-up.There was an increased prevalence of hypertension but decreased incidence of hypertension in those over 65 from 2005 to 2010. Dyslipidemia was the highest rate of co-morbidity in 2005 and 2010. The most frequent categories of anti-hypertensive agents prescribed was 1 or 2 for both 2005 and 2010. Calcium channel blockers were the most common anti-hypertensive agents prescribed, followed by Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors/Angiotensin receptor blockers. After 3 years of follow-up, the risks of coronary artery disease (CAD), cerebrovascular diseases (CVD) as well as death were less in 2010 than in 2005 in Taiwan.Our study showed that hypertension individuals had an increased prevalence, younger age, decreased incidence, increased medication treatment associated with decreased the CAD, CVD, and mortalities in 2010 compared to 2005 in Taiwan.

Transient risk of ambient fine particulate matter on hourly cardiovascular events in Tainan City, Taiwan.

BACKGROUND: The association between daily changes in ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and cardiovascular diseases have been well established in mechanistic, epidemiologic and exposure studies. Only a few studies examined the effect of hourly variations in air pollution on triggering cardiovascular events. Whether the current PM2.5 standards can protect vulnerable individuals with chronic cardiovascular diseases remain uncertain. METHODS: we conducted a time-stratified, case-crossover study to assess the associations between hourly changes in PM2.5 levels and the vascular disease onset in residents of Tainan City, Taiwan, visiting Emergency Room of Chi Mei Medical Center between January 2006 and December 2016. There were 26,749 cases including 10,310 females (38.5%) and 16,439 males (61.5%) identified. The time of emergency visit was identified as the onset for each case and control cases were selected as the same times on other days, on the same day of the week in the same month and year respectively. Residential address was used to identify the ambient air pollution exposure concentrations from the closest station. Conditional logistic regression with the stepwise selection method was used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for the association. RESULTS: When we only included cases occurring at PM2.5>10 µg/m3 and PM2.5>25 µg/m3, very significant ORs could be observed for 10 µg/m3 increases in PM2.5 at 0 and 1 hour, implying fine particulate exposure could promptly trigger vascular disease events. Moreover, a very clear increase in risk could be observed with cumulative exposure from 0 to 48 hours, especially in those cases where PM2.5>25 µg/m3. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that transient and low concentrations of ambient PM2.5 trigger adult vascular disease events, especially cerebrovascular disease, regardless of age, sex, and exposure timing. Warning and delivery systems should be setup to protect people from these prompt adverse health impacts.

[Adaptation to Climate Change: Regional Revitalization and Community Health].

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published "The Adaptation Gap Report 2018" in December 2018 to promote adaptation to global climate change in the realm of public health. This report notes that we are still far from being able to cope with the impacts that many scientists are predicting. In addition, this report calls on countries to construct the Climate Resilience of Health System, which is a multidisciplinary approach to building the capacity necessary to prepare for and adapt to extreme weather. Strategies for adaptation require not only top-down integration from national and regional governments but also bottom-up participation from communities and individuals. This article aims to elucidate the concept of community-based adaptation to climate change and presents applications of this concept. Because the government is promoting the national policy of "Regional Revitalization", the sustainable community may be built if this policy takes into account adaptation to climate change.

Pollen of Broussonetia papyrifera: An emerging aeroallergen associated with allergic illness in Taiwan.

Pollen has long been recognized as a major allergen, having diverse patterns of allergenicity caused by differences in climate, geography, and vegetation. Our research aimed to explore the role of a regionally dominant pollen in Taiwan, Broussonetia papyrifera, on clinical sensitization and daily 5collected and extracted for a skin prick test on 30 volunteers recruited from a medical college. Daily atmospheric pollen levels were measured using a Burkard 7-day volumetric trap. The association between daily atmospheric pollen levels and clinic visits for allergic illness was examined using a generalized additive model with a normal assumption. After excluding four participants with a positive response to a negative control, 10 participants (38.4%) were determined to be sensitive to B. papyrifera pollen extract. The three-day lagged concentration of B. papyrifera pollen exhibited the highest risk of daily asthma visits (relative risk [RR] = 1.166, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.014-1.341) and allergic rhinitis visits (RR = 1.119, 95% CI: 0.916-1.367) when the pollen increased equally in magnitude to its mean. Our study is the first to provide evidence indicating that the most dominant airborne pollen in Taiwan, B. papyrifera, plays a major role in sensitization and clinic visits for asthma and allergic rhinitis, thus highlighting the need to integrate aeroallergen monitoring with clinical diagnosis.

HDAC2 and HDAC5 Up-Regulations Modulate Survivin and miR-125a-5p Expressions and Promote Hormone Therapy Resistance in Estrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer Cells.

Intrinsic or acquired resistance to hormone therapy is frequently reported in estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer patients. Even though dysregulations of histone deacetylases (HDACs) are known to promote cancer cells survival, the role of different HDACs in the induction of hormone therapy resistance in ER+ breast cancer remains unclear. Survivin is a well-known pro-tumor survival molecule and miR-125a-5p is a recently discovered tumor suppressor. In this study, we found that ER+, hormone-independent, tamoxifen-resistant MCF7-TamC3 cells exhibit increased expression of HDAC2, HDAC5, and survivin, but show decreased expression of miR-125a-5p, as compared to the parental tamoxifen-sensitive MCF7 breast cancer cells. Molecular down-regulations of HDAC2, HDAC5, and survivin, and ectopic over-expression of miR-125a-5p, increased the sensitivity of MCF7-TamC3 cells to estrogen deprivation and restored the sensitivity to tamoxifen. The same treatments also further increased the sensitivity to estrogen-deprivation in the ER+ hormone-dependent ZR-75-1 breast cancer cells in vitro. Kaplan-Meier analysis and receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of expression cohorts of breast tumor showed that high HDAC2 and survivin, and low miR-125a-5p, expression levels correlate with poor relapse-free survival in endocrine therapy and tamoxifen-treated ER+ breast cancer patients. Further molecular analysis revealed that HDAC2 and HDAC5 positively modulates the expression of survivin, and negatively regulates the expression miR-125a-5p, in ER+ MCF7, MCF7-TamC3, and ZR-75-1 breast cancer cells. These findings indicate that dysregulations of HDAC2 and HDAC5 promote the development of hormone independency and tamoxifen resistance in ERC breast cancer cells in part through expression regulation of survivin and miR-125a-5p.

[Confronting the Health-Related Challenges of Climate Change: Nursing Education for the Future].

Climate change is the greatest threat to public health in the 21st century. The increasing health impact of heat waves, the increasing magnitudes and spatial expansions of vector and water-borne diseases epidemics, and the increasing medical burdens of biological allergic illnesses, worsening local air pollution, and other related issues are expected to continue to increase in severity in the near future. All of these issues are global problems that must be faced. Adaptation strategies and action plans related to climate change are needed and emerging. Moreover, integrating the basic concepts, scientific evidences, and new technology into public and professional education systems is already recognized as a priority in the national adaptation program. Nurses stand on the frontlines of medical care and health communication. The integration of climate change and adaptation to climate change into nursing education and training is become increasingly important. This article reviews both the expected health impacts of climate change and the mitigation and adaptation strategies that have been proposed / adopted by medical care facilities around the world. Further, we outline the current, priority needs for action in medical care facilities in Taiwan in order to mitigate and adapt to climate-change-related healthcare issues. Additionally, we present an integrated strategic plan for educating healthcare professionals, including nurse, in the future. We hope that the ideas that are presented in this paper encourage multidisciplinary cooperation and help bridge the gap between technology development and practical application in Taiwan's medical care system.

Relationship between heat index and mortality of 6 major cities in Taiwan.

Increased mortality, linked to events of extreme high temperatures, is recognized as one critical challenge to the public health sector. Therefore, this ecological study was conducted to assess whether this association is also significant in Taiwan and the characteristics of the relationship. Daily mean heat indices, from 1994 through 2008, were used as the predictor for the risk of increased mortality in populations from 6 major Taiwanese cities. Daily mortality data from 1994 through 2008 were retrieved from the Taiwan Death Registry, Department of Health, Taiwan, and meteorological data were acquired from the Central Weather Bureau. Poisson regression analyses using generalized linear models were applied to estimate the temperature-mortality relationship. Daily mean heat indices were calculated and used as the temperature metric. Overall, increased risk ratios in mortality were associated with increased daily mean heat indices. Significantly increased risk ratios of daily mortality were evident when daily mean heat indices were at and above the 95th percentile, when compared to the lowest percentile, in all cities. These risks tended to increase similarly among those aged 65 years and older; a phenomenon seen in the cities of Keelung, Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, but not Chiayi. Being more vulnerable to heat stress is likely restricted to a short-term effect, as suggested by lag models which showed that there was dominantly an association during the period of 0 to 3 days. In Taiwan, predicting city-specific daily mean heat indices may provide a useful early warning system for increased mortality risk, especially for the elderly. Regional differences in health vulnerabilities should be further examined in relation to the differential social-ecological systems that affect them.

Paternal heredity and housing characteristics affect childhood asthma and allergy morbidity.

A birth cohort was initiated when each pregnant woman was asked for her own and her husband's history of asthma and allergic diseases at the time of recruitment. They were further inquired to verify their housing conditions, and current health status of children 3 to 5 years old at the time of interview. Paternal history was the most significant risk factor associated with reporting childhood morbidities at age of 3 to 5 years. Housing characteristics became meaningful variables only if the fathers were asthmatic or atopic. A 9-fold increase of risk was found if children with paternal history and also exposed to incense burning and water damage at home. This is the first epidemiological evidence of East Asia suggesting paternal heredity, with concurrent indoor hazardous exposures, as a predominant risk on developing childhood asthma and allergy.

Airborne fungi and bacteria in child daycare centers and the effectiveness of weak acid hypochlorous water on controlling microbes.

A three-week-long biological sampling scheme was conducted in two child daycare centers (CDCCs) in order to investigate interdiurnal and diurnal variations in indoor airborne microbes as well as the efficiency of weak acid hypochlorous water (WAHW) on disinfecting indoor microbes. During the second week of sampling, WAHW was sprayed using a fogger in the classroom after children had left and before they returned the next morning. An identical cycle of experiments was performed twice in the winter and spring. Without WAHW intervention, the respective mean of the indoor concentrations and I/O ratios were 8732-47581 CFU m(-3) and 0.96-2.53 for fungi, and 6706-28998 CFU m(-3) and 1.10-11.92 for bacteria, showing severe bio-contamination in the CDCCs. Moreover, a relatively high level of bacterial pollution was found at noon, whereas a greater fungal pollution could be detected in the morning and at noon. Among five school days, the fungal and bacterial pollution may be higher on Monday and on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, respectively. Furthermore, with WAHW intervention, the indoor microbial concentrations and I/O ratios were decreased significantly. The reduction of I/O ratios caused by WAHW disinfection was accomplished in the morning for bacteria and in the morning, at noon, and in the afternoon for fungi. In conclusion, this study clearly clarified the risky period during which children may be exposed to hazardous environments, and demonstrated the effectiveness of spraying WAHW the night before on decontaminating indoor airborne microbes on the following day, especially in the case of fungi.

Effects of extreme precipitation to the distribution of infectious diseases in Taiwan, 1994-2008.

The incidence of extreme precipitation has increased with the exacerbation of worldwide climate disruption. We hypothesize an association between precipitation and the distribution patterns that would affect the endemic burden of 8 infectious diseases in Taiwan, including water- and vector-borne infectious diseases. A database integrating daily precipitation and temperature, along with the infectious disease case registry for all 352 townships in the main island of Taiwan was analysed for the period from 1994 to 2008. Four precipitation levels, <130 mm, 130-200 mm, 200-350 mm and >350 mm, were categorized to represent quantitative differences, and their associations with each specific disease was investigated using the Generalized Additive Mixed Model and afterwards mapped on to the Geographical Information System. Daily precipitation levels were significantly correlated with all 8 mandatory-notified infectious diseases in Taiwan. For water-borne infections, extreme torrential precipitation (>350 mm/day) was found to result in the highest relative risk for bacillary dysentery and enterovirus infections when compared to ordinary rain (<130 mm/day). Yet, for vector-borne diseases, the relative risk of dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis increased with greater precipitation only up to 350 mm. Differential lag effects following precipitation were statistically associated with increased risk for contracting individual infectious diseases. This study's findings can help health resource sector management better allocate medical resources and be better prepared to deal with infectious disease outbreaks following future extreme precipitation events.

Feeding bottles usage and the prevalence of childhood allergy and asthma.

This study aimed to examine the association between the length of use of feeding bottles or pacifiers during childhood and the prevalence of respiratory and allergic morbidities. A large-scale questionnaire survey was performed in day care centers and kindergartens (with children's ages ranging from 2 to 7 years) in southern Taiwan, and a total of 14,862 questionnaires completed by parents were finally recruited for data analysis. Effects of using feeding bottles on children's wheezing/asthma (adjusted OR: 1.05, 95% CI 1.00-1.09), allergic rhinitis (adjusted OR: 1.04, 95% CI 1.00-1.08), and eczema (adjusted OR: 1.07, 95% CI 1.01-1.2) were found. Moreover, significant dose-dependent relationships were further established after an adjustment for confounders was performed that included children's ages, gender, gestational age, birth weight, length of breastfeeding, the age when first given infant formula or complementary foods, family history, parental educational levels, and smoking status, as well as the problem of indoor water damage. This study was the first to reveal the potential risk of using plastic consumer products such as feeding bottles on the reported health status of preschool children in Asian countries.

Cardiovascular mortality during heat and cold events: determinants of regional vulnerability in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the vulnerable regions with underlying susceptibility and poor adaptive capability in response to cold and heat events in Taiwan, and to characterise the determinants associated with such an increasing risk to design better adaptive strategies in view of predicted weather changes in the future. METHODS: The authors used spatial regression models to measure the relationships between the spatial characteristics of temperature, extracted factors from demographic and socio-economic parameters, and the mean cardiovascular mortality 2 weeks before and after cold or heat events from 1994 to 2003. RESULTS: Metropolitan regions were found to have a substantially lower mortality than rural areas after cold and heat events. Events of cold, compared with heat, had greater impacts on the mortality ratio in most townships. A negative association was identified, using a spatial lag model, between the mortality after cold and heat events and urbanisation, and the availability of medical resources. A higher percentage of older people, vulnerable and aborigines might have contributed to the increasing vulnerability of townships during cold and heat events. CONCLUSIONS: These data, using an island-wide spatial analysis, suggest that urban areas have a greater adaptive capability than rural areas, plausibly because people in urban areas have a higher socio-economic status and more medical resources. Social inequality across urban and rural townships is apparent and developing customised adaptation programmes for vulnerable regions to cope with heat and cold event should be prioritised.

Examining non-stationary effects of social determinants on cardiovascular mortality after cold surges in Taiwan.

Details about the impact of extreme cold on cardiovascular mortality are little known in the countries with warm winters like Taiwan. This study aimed to examine the ecological associations between various social determinants and cardiovascular mortality after cold surges in Taiwan with a spatial perspective focusing on spatial non-stationarity. The mortality rates at township level in Taiwan were observed from 1997 to 2003. Five social determinants (social disadvantage, lack of economic opportunity, stability, sensitive group, and rurality) were created with the 2000 Taiwan Census data. We analyzed the data using Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression. On average, an immediate increase in cardiovascular mortality was found right after cold surges. All of the five determinants were found to have spatial non-stationary effects on the cardiovascular mortality rates after cold surges. This finding provided an empirical basis for developing public health programs with local emphases on the impacts of extreme cold.

Higher temperature and urbanization affect the spatial patterns of dengue fever transmission in subtropical Taiwan.

Our study conducted spatial analysis to examine how temperature and other environmental factors might affect dengue fever distributions, and to forecast areas with potential risk for dengue fever endemics with predicted climatic change in Taiwan. Geographic information system (GIS) was used to demonstrate the spatial patterns of all studied variables across 356 townships. Relationships between cumulative incidence of dengue fever, climatic and non-climatic factors were explored. Numbers of months with average temperature higher than 18 degrees C per year and degree of urbanization were found to be associated with increasing risk of dengue fever incidence at township level. With every 1 degrees C increase of monthly average temperature, the total population at risk for dengue fever transmission would increase by 1.95 times (from 3,966,173 to 7,748,267). A highly-suggested warmer trend, with a statistical model, across the Taiwan Island is predicted to result in a sizable increase in population and geographical areas at higher risk for dengue fever epidemics.

Cold surge: a sudden and spatially varying threat to health?

While cold surge is one of the most conspicuous features of the winter monsoon in East Asia, its impact on human health remains underexplored. Based on the definition by the Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan, we identified four cold surges between 2000 and 2003 and collected the cardiovascular disease mortality data 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after these events. We attempted to answer the following research questions: 1) whether the cold surges impose an adverse and immediate effect on cardiovascular mortality; 2) whether the people living in temperate zones have a higher tolerance of extreme temperature drop than those in the subtropics. With geographic weighting techniques, we not only found that the cardiovascular disease mortality rates increased significantly after the cold surges, but also discovered a spatially varying pattern of tolerance to cold surges. Even within a small study area such as Taiwan, human reaction to severe weather drop differs across space. Needless to say, in the U.S., these findings should be considered in redirecting policy to address populations living in warm places when extreme temperature drops occur.

Weather as an effective predictor for occurrence of dengue fever in Taiwan.

We evaluated the impacts of weather variability on the occurrence of dengue fever in a major metropolitan city, Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan using time-series analysis. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models showed that the incidence of dengue fever was negatively associated with monthly temperature deviation (beta=-0.126, p=0.044), and a reverse association was also found with relative humidity (beta=-0.025, p=0.048). Both factors were observed to present their most prominent effects at a time lag of 2 months. Meanwhile, vector density record, a conventional approach often applied as a predictor for outbreak, did not appear to be a good one for diseases occurrence. Weather variability was identified as a meaningful and significant indicator for the increasing occurrence of dengue fever in this study, and it might be feasible to be adopted for predicting the influences of rising average temperature on the occurrence of infectious diseases of such kind at a city level. Further studies should take into account variations of socio-ecological changes and disease transmission patterns to better propose the increasing risk for infectious disease outbreak by applying the conveniently accumulated information of weather variability.

REMUS: a tool for identification of unique peptide segments as epitopes.

We provide a 'R(E)MUS' (reinforced merging techniques for unique peptide segments) web server for identification of the locations and compositions of unique peptide segments from a set of protein family sequences. Different levels of uniqueness are determined according to substitutional relationship in the amino acids, frequency of appearance and biological properties such as priority for serving as candidates for epitopes where antibodies recognize. R(E)MUS also provides interactive visualization of 3D structures for allocation and comparison of the identified unique peptide segments. Accuracy of the algorithm was found to be 70% in terms of mapping a unique peptide segment as an epitope. The R(E)MUS web server is available at http://biotools.cs.ntou.edu.tw/REMUS and the PC version software can be freely downloaded either at http://bioinfo.life.nthu.edu.tw/REMUS or http://spider.cs.ntou.edu.tw/BioTools/REMUS. User guide and working examples for PC version are available at http://spider.cs.ntou.edu.tw/BioTools/REMUS-DOCS.html, and details of the proposed algorithm can be referred to the documents as described previously [H. T. Chang, T. W. Pai, T. C. Fan, B. H. Su, P. C. Wu, C. Y. Tang, C. T. Chang, S. H. Liu and M. D. T. Chang (2006) BMC Bioinformatics, 7, 38 and T. W. Pai, B. H. Su, P. C. Wu, M. D. T. Chang, H. T. Chang, T. C. Fan and S. H. Liu (2006) J. Bioinform. Comput. Biol., 4, 75-92].

Unique peptide identification of RNase A superfamily sequences based on reinforced merging algorithms.

Human ribonuclease A (RNaseA) superfamily consists of eight RNases with high similarity in which RNase2 and RNase3 share 76.7% identity. The evolutionary variation of RNases results in differential structures and functions of the enzymes. To distinguish the characteristics of each RNase, we developed reinforced merging algorithms (RMA) to rapidly identify the unique peptide motifs for each member of the highly conserved human RNaseA superfamily. Many motifs in RNase3 identified by RMA correlated well with the antigenic regions predicted by DNAStar. Two unique peptide motifs were experimentally confirmed to contain epitopes for monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specifically against RNase3. Further analysis of homologous RNases in different species revealed that the unique peptide motifs were located at the correspondent positions, and one of these motifs indeed matched the epitope for a specific anti-bovine pancreatic RNaseA (bpRNaseA) antibody. Our method provides a useful tool for identification of unique peptide motifs for further experimental design. The RMA system is available and free for academic use at http://bioinfo.life.nthu.edu.tw/rma/ and http://spider.cs.ntou.edu.tw/bioinformatics/RMA.html.