Development and evaluation of an E-health system to care for patients with bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis.

OBJECTIVES: Bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis (BPS/IC) is a chronic disease that highly degrades the quality of life for patients. In the present study, Internet intervention was used to care for bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis patients to alleviate their pain and bothering symptoms. METHODS: Healthcare education was carried out through the Internet by asking the patients, who were randomly divided into study (40 patients) and control (40 patients) groups, to check possible sensitive foods, habits, and behaviors weekly to remind and consolidate important rules for promoting quality of life. The symptom flares consultation through short message service with the Internet used to elevate healthcare efficiency was undertaken. Questionnaires, including Short Form 36 health survey, O'Leary-Sant symptom and problem indices, as well as visual analog scales pain and urgency scales, were used to evaluate quality of life and disease severity improvements before and after information and communication technology intervention. The outcome was evaluated at week 8. RESULTS: The quality of life of both the control and study groups was significantly improved. The quality of life and visual analog scales for the patients in the study group with information and communication technology intervention showed a much greater improvement compared with the patients in the control group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The E-health system was shown to be effective in improving quality of life of bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis patients through intervention of Internet healthcare education and short message service for the consolidation of healthy behavior and lifestyle in the 8-week follow up.

Subtractive SELEX against two heterogeneous target samples: numerical simulations and analysis.

Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential (SELEX) is a revolutionary technology that integrates combinatorial chemistry with high throughput screening to generate from synthesized nucleic acid ligand libraries the high affinity nucleic acid ligands (aptamers) for interesting targets. Recently, the SELEX experiments have advanced from targeting the ligand libraries by a single purified target to multiple heterogeneous target samples. Having the potential of bringing enormous technical and economical advantages to drug discovery, the new application suffers from unpredictable performances. To gain an insight of the new method, we develop a computer model to numerically analyze the subtractive SELEX alternatively against two distinct heterogeneous samples of unknown targets. The model features the discretization of ligand library, the ligand-target binding equilibrium equations, and the separation efficiency of bound and unbound ligands in experiments. By computer simulations, we investigate how aptamers for desired targets embedded in undefined target mixtures are generated under different experimental conditions. We find the iterative screening scheme is fundamentally capable of developing desired aptamers. On the other hand, target sample configuration and separation efficiency may all together significantly diversify the screening dynamics and results.