Conditional-ready mouse embryonic stem cell derived macrophages enable the study of essential genes in macrophage function.

The ability to differentiate genetically modified mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells into functional macrophages provides a potentially attractive resource to study host-pathogen interactions without the need for animal experimentation. This is particularly useful in instances where the gene of interest is essential and a knockout mouse is not available. Here we differentiated mouse ES cells into macrophages in vitro and showed, through a combination of flow cytometry, microscopic imaging, and RNA-Seq, that ES cell-derived macrophages responded to S. Typhimurium, in a comparable manner to mouse bone marrow derived macrophages. We constructed a homozygous mutant mouse ES cell line in the Traf2 gene that is known to play a role in tumour necrosis factor-α signalling but has not been studied for its role in infections or response to Toll-like receptor agonists. Interestingly, traf2-deficient macrophages produced reduced levels of inflammatory cytokines in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or flagellin stimulation and exhibited increased susceptibility to S. Typhimurium infection.

Using T3, an improved decision tree classifier, for mining stroke-related medical data.

OBJECTIVES: Medical data are a valuable resource from which novel and potentially useful knowledge can be discovered by using data mining. Data mining can assist and support medical decision making and enhance clinical management and investigative research. The objective of this work is to propose a method for building accurate descriptive and predictive models based on classification of past medical data. We also aim to compare this method with other well established data mining methods and identify strengths and weaknesses. METHOD: We propose T3, a decision tree classifier which builds predictive models based on known classes, by allowing for a certain amount of misclassification error in training in order to achieve better descriptive and predictive accuracy. We then experiment with a real medical data set on stroke, and various subsets, in order to identify strengths and weaknesses. We also compare performance with a very successful and well established decision tree classifier. RESULTS: T3 demonstrated impressive performance when predicting unseen cases of stroke resulting in as little as 0.4% classification error while the state of the art decision tree classifier resulted in 33.6% classification error respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This paper presents and evaluates T3, a classification algorithm that builds decision trees of depth at most three, and results in high accuracy whilst keeping the tree size reasonably small. T3 demonstrates strong descriptive and predictive power without compromising simplicity and clarity. We evaluate T3 based on real stroke register data and compare it with C4.5, a well-known classification algorithm, showing that T3 produces significantly more accurate and readable classifiers.

Endocrine response to selective embryocide in a gonadotropin-induced quintuplet pregnancy.

With the increase of medical induction of ovulation, the incidence of grand multiple pregnancy is becoming more frequent. We report the endocrine response of a quintuplet pregnancy that was reduced at 9 weeks' gestation to a twin pregnancy by selective embryocide and compared with quadruplet, triplet, and twin pregnancies. The human chorionic gonadotropin titer declined fourfold, but there were no clinically significant changes in the progesterone or estradiol levels. We conclude that, despite the drop in human chorionic gonadotropin, the placenta had attained adequate secretory maturation to prevent any significant decline in progesterone and estradiol levels, which demonstrates the efficacy of this procedure at this gestational age.

Perihepatitis associated with pelvic infection: the Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome.

Once regarded as rare, acute perihepatitis associated with pelvic inflammatory disease or Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome is being diagnosed with increasing frequency. At Waikato Hospital, Hamilton in recent months 16 cases of perihepatitis have been identified, of which 12 were confirmed by laparoscopy, one at laparotomy, and one by post mortem examination. The other two were diagnosed on clinical and laboratory criteria. Neisseria infection was demonstrated in one case only. It is suggested that perihepatitis is not as rare as was hitherto believed and taught, and that the more widespread use of the laparoscope as a diagnostic tool would confirm this.