Biomarkers : biochemical indicators of exposure, response, and susceptibility to chemicals
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Organophosphorus insecticides (OPs) have been used to control agricultural pests found in Washington state. Farmworkers (FW) have higher exposure to OP pesticides than non-farmworkers (NFW), and FW children may in turn have higher exposure than NFW children. ⋯ To our knowledge, this study is the first to report an association between pesticides in house dust and their biological metabolites in urine.
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To compare plasma levels of F-actin, G-actin and thymosin beta 4 (TB4) in humans with septic shock, noninfectious systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and healthy controls. ⋯ F-actin is significantly elevated in patients with septic shock as compared with noninfectious SIRS. F-actin and the F:G-actin ratio are potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of septic shock.
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Comparative Study
Comparing the prognostic performance of ASSIST to interleukin-6 and procalcitonin in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock.
We recently derived and validated a multi-biomarker-based model (ASSIST) to stratify patients with sepsis based on initial mortality risk. ⋯ ASSIST estimated the probability of mortality more reliably than IL6 and PCT in this cohort of patients with sepsis.
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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and cystic fibrosis (CF) are characterized by airway obstruction and an inflammatory process. Reaching early diagnosis and discrimination of subtypes of these respiratory diseases are quite a challenging task than other chronic illnesses. ⋯ In the last decade, metabolomics has already proved to be useful for the characterization of several pathological conditions and offers promises as a clinical tool. In this article, we review the current state of the metabolomics of COPD, asthma and CF with a focus on the different methods and instrumentation being used for the discovery of biomarkers in research and translation into clinic as diagnostic aids for the choice of patient-specific therapies.