Correction: Gadolinium-enhanced cardiac MR exams of human subjects are associated with significant increases in the DNA repair marker 53BP1, but not the damage marker γH2AX.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190890.].

Gadolinium-enhanced cardiac MR exams of human subjects are associated with significant increases in the DNA repair marker 53BP1, but not the damage marker γH2AX.

Magnetic resonance imaging is considered low risk, yet recent studies have raised a concern of potential damage to DNA in peripheral blood leukocytes. This prospective Institutional Review Board-approved study examined potential double-strand DNA damage by analyzing changes in the DNA damage and repair markers γH2AX and 53BP1 in patients who underwent a 1.5 T gadolinium-enhanced cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) exam. Sixty patients were enrolled (median age 55 years, 39 males). Patients with history of malignancy or who were receiving chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or steroids were excluded. MR sequence data were recorded and blood samples obtained immediately before and after MR exposure. An automated immunofluorescence assay quantified γH2AX or 53BP1 foci number in isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Changes in foci number were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Clinical and MR procedural characteristics were compared between patients who had a >10% increase in γH2AX or 53BP1 foci numbers and patients who did not. The number of γH2AX foci did not significantly change following cardiac MR (median foci per cell pre-MR = 0.11, post-MR = 0.11, p = .90), but the number of 53BP1 foci significantly increased following MR (median foci per cell pre-MR = 0.46, post-MR = 0.54, p = .0140). Clinical and MR characteristics did not differ significantly between patients who had at least a 10% increase in foci per cell and those who did not. We conclude that MR exposure leads to a small (median 25%) increase in 53BP1 foci, however the clinical relevance of this increase is unknown and may be attributable to normal variation instead of MR exposure.

Inference of ancestry: constructing hierarchical reference populations and assigning unknown individuals.

The ability to infer personal genetic ancestry is being increasingly utilised in certain medical and forensic situations. Herein, the unsupervised Bayesian clustering algorithms structure, is employed to analyse 377 autosomal short tandem repeats typed on 1,056 individuals from the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain Human Diversity Panel. Individuals of known geographical origin were hierarchically classified into a framework of increasingly homogeneous clusters to serve as reference populations into which individuals of unknown ancestry can be assigned. The groupings were characterised by the geographical affinities of cluster members and the accuracy of these procedures was verified using several genetic indices. Fine-scale substructure was detectable beyond the broad population level classifications that previously have been explored in this dataset. Metrics indicated that within certain lines, the strongest structuring signals were detected at the leaves of the hierarchy where lineage-specific groupings were identified. The accuracy of unknown assignment was assessed at each level of the hierarchy using a 'leave one out' strategy in which each individual was stripped of cluster membership and then re-assigned using the supervised Bayesian clustering algorithm implemented in GeneClass2. Although most clusters at all levels of resolution experienced highly accurate assignment, a decline was observed in the finer levels due to the mixed membership characteristics of some individuals. The parameters defined by this study allowed for assignment of unknown individuals to genetically defined clusters with measured likelihood. Shared ancestry data can then be inferred for the unknown individual.