The Role of Serum Secretoneurin Levels in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury.

BACKGROUND: Secretoneurin is a neuropeptide expressed from endocrine, neuroendocrine, and neural tissues. Our study aimed to investigate whether there was a relationship between secretoneurin levels and the severity of traumatic brain injury (TBI). METHODS: Ninety patients aged over 18 years who were admitted to the emergency department with head trauma between April 2020 and October 2020 and 20 healthy volunteers (control group) were included in the study. Patients were divided into three groups according to Glasgow Coma Scale scores: Mild TBI (n=33), moderate TBI (n=28), and severe TBI (n=29). The final status of the patients was evaluated in three groups: exitus, discharge with Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) ≤ 3 and discharge with GOS >3. RESULTS: The median secretoneurin levels of patients with severe TBI 31.71 (14.21-70.95) were found to be significantly higher than in those with moderate TBI [17.30 (10.71-69.27) (P=0.025), and patients with moderate TBI had a substantially higher level of secretoneurin than those with mild TBI 11.70 (6-16.25) (P<0.001). There was no statistically significant difference between the median secretoneurin levels in patients with mild TBI and the control group 10.73 (5.33-13.18) (P=0.999). The secretoneurin cut-off value of >18.13 ng/mL had a sensitivity of 83.87% and a specificity of 77.97% for poor neurologic outcomes (AUC 0.86, 95% CI: 0.77- 0.92). The secretoneurin cut-off value of >20.67 ng/mL had a sensitivity of 90.91% and a specificity of 74.68% for mortality (AUC 0.85, 95% CI: 0.76-0.92). CONCLUSION: Secretoneurin can be a useful biomarker in diagnosing patients with moderate-tosevere TBI. It may also guide physicians in predicting the clinical outcome of patients with TBI.

Genetic diversity of wild and cultivated grapevine accessions from southeast Turkey.

Wild grapevine genetic diversity in southeast Turkey has not been documented to date. In the present work, in order to clarify the relationships between wild and cultivated grape accessions from southeastern Turkey, 22 nuclear and three chloroplast microsatellite loci were used on 21 wild grapevine Vitis vinifera L. ssp. sylvestris (Gmelin) and 13 cultivated grapevine Vitis vinifera ssp. sativa accessions. The number of alleles per SSR locus ranged from 4 (VVIn16) to 20 (VVIv67) and the mean allele number per locus was 10.09. Expected locus heterozygosity ranged from 0.586 (locus VVIb01) to 0.898 (locus (VVIv67)). The three cpSSR molecular markers presented variation in size both in cultivars and in wild Turkish accessions. Two size variants were detected for cpSSR3 (106 and 107 bp) for cpSSR5 (104 and 105 bp), and for cpSSR10 (115 and 116 bp). The six alleles in wild grapevines fell into three haplotypes B, C and D. A genetic structure according to accessions taxonomic status (wild or cultivated) was revealed by UPGMA analysis. This highlighted a clear separation between domesticated and wild accessions in Turkish germplasm. The results pointed out the need to further collect and characterize this wild and cultivated grapevine germplasm.

Genetic diversity among Turkish local grape accessions (Vitis vinifera L.) using RAPD markers.

To estimate genetic relationships among 46 local grape cultivars, RAPD analysis was performed with 25 decamer primers selected from a total of 60 primers. Genetic relationships among these cultivars were determined by calculating similarity indexes, from which a dendogram was derived. There was high genetic variation among the cultivars, with values of genetic diversity ranging from 0.553 to 0.952 using the Jaccard coefficient. UPGMA analysis of a distance matrix produced a dendogram with six clusters. The relatively high genetic similarity ratios observed for the cultivars was also reflected in the dendogram. In general, no relationship was encountered between the genetic similarity ratios of the cultivars and the results of previous ampelographic analyses.