Investigating multiple dysregulated pathways in rheumatoid arthritis based on pathway interaction network.

The traditional methods of identifying biomarkers in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have focussed on the differentially expressed pathways or individual pathways, which however, neglect the interactions between pathways. To better understand the pathogenesis of RA, we aimed to identify dysregulated pathway sets using a pathway interaction network (PIN), which considered interactions among pathways. Firstly, RA-related gene expression profile data, protein-protein interactions (PPI) data and pathway data were taken up from the corresponding databases. Secondly, principal component analysis method was used to calculate the pathway activity of each of the pathway, and then a seed pathway was identified using data gleaned from the pathway activity. A PIN was then constructed based on the gene expression profile, pathway data, and PPI information. Finally, the dysregulated pathways were extracted from the PIN based on the seed pathway using the method of support vector machines and an area under the curve (AUC) index. The PIN comprised of a total of 854 pathways and 1064 pathway interactions. The greatest change in the activity score between RA and control samples was observed in the pathway of epigenetic regulation of gene expression, which was extracted and regarded as the seed pathway. Starting with this seed pathway, one maximum pathway set containing 10 dysregulated pathways was extracted from the PIN, having an AUC of 0.8249, and the result indicated that this pathway set could distinguish RA from the controls. These 10 dysregulated pathways might be potential biomarkers for RA diagnosis and treatment in the future.

Survey and coping strategies for job stress of new nurses in pharmacy intravenous admixture service: a pilot study.

To survey the nurse stress and analyze stressors in new nurses from pharmacy intravenous admixture service (PIAS). A questionnaire survey referring to the revised stressor scale was carried out on 52 new nurses of PIAS in four hospitals in Harbin. The average stress score for all participants was 2.43±0.63, as medium level of stress. The stressors were classified into 6 categories: ensuring up-to-date knowledge of professional nursing skills, increased workload and work-time, interpersonal relationship, ensuring knowledge of equipments, attending educational programs, and decreased occupational demand. The most important stressors included fear of medical accident occurrence, fear of failure in performance assessment, fear of occupational injuries, feeling fatigue and lack of sleep. Considering the various kinds of stressors in the working places, it was necessary for managers' to use appropriate strategies to cope with the job stress in new nurses of PIAS.