NEW MURID RODENTS FROM THE LATE CENOZOIC OF YUSHE BASIN, SHANXI

<正> As scientific collaborators of the Chinese-American joint project "Neogene Rocks and Faunas, Yushe Basin, Shanxi, PRC", the present authors, with William R. Downs, Northern Arizona University, sampled the Yushe microfauna in the fall of 1987 and 1988. The fossil temains were retrieved by surface collection and by wet-sieving bulk quantities of sediment.     

Improved Detection of Common Variants Associated with Schizophrenia by Leveraging Pleiotropy with Cardiovascular-Disease Risk Factors

Several lines of evidence suggest that genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have the potential to explain more of the “missing heritability” of common complex phenotypes. However, reliable methods for identifying a larger proportion of SNPs are currently lacking. Here, we present a genetic-pleiotropy-informed method for improving gene discovery with the use of GWAS summary-statistics data. We applied this methodology to identify additional loci associated with schizophrenia (SCZ), a highly heritable disorder with significant missing heritability. Epidemiological and clinical studies suggest comorbidity between SCZ and cardiovascular-disease (CVD) risk factors, including systolic blood pressure, triglycerides, low- and high-density lipoprotein, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and type 2 diabetes. Using stratified quantile-quantile plots, we show enrichment of SNPs associated with SCZ as a function of the association with several CVD risk factors and a corresponding reduction in false discovery rate (FDR). We validate this “pleiotropic enrichment” by demonstrating increased replication rate across independent SCZ substudies. Applying the stratified FDR method, we identified 25 loci associated with SCZ at a conditional FDR level of 0.01. Of these, ten loci are associated with both SCZ and CVD risk factors, mainly triglycerides and low- and high-density lipoproteins but also waist-to-hip ratio, systolic blood pressure, and body mass index. Together, these findings suggest the feasibility of using genetic-pleiotropy-informed methods for improving gene discovery in SCZ and identifying potential mechanistic relationships with various CVD risk factors.     

Age at Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care Has No Relationship with Mortality for Childhood-Onset Type 1 Diabetes in Japan: Diabetes Epidemiology Research International (DERI) Mortality Study

Objective

To follow up Japanese patients with type 1 diabetes for a maximum of 40 years to examine when they transitioned from pediatric care to adult care and to explore whether the attending physician, i.e., pediatrician or internist, was associated with prognosis.

Methods

Participants consisted of 1,299 patients who had been diagnosed as having type 1 diabetes at less than 15 years old between 1965 and 1979 identified through two nationwide surveys. Patients were classified as having received either pediatric care or adult care at the age of 15 and 30, and were compared for differences in mortality associated with the attending physician.

Results

The attending physicians were confirmed for a total of 1,093 patients at the age of 15. Of these patients, 43.8% and 40.3% received pediatric care and adult care, respectively. Of the 569 patients receiving pediatric care, 74.2%, 56.6%, 53.4%, and 51.3% continued with pediatric care at 20, 30, 40, and 50 years old, respectively. The attending physicians (pediatrician or internist) at the age of 15 and 30 had no significant impact on their survival (P = 0. 892, 0.411, respectively).

Conclusions

More than half of the patients who had received pediatric care at the age of 15 continued to receive pediatric care even after the age of 30, suggesting that their transition was far from smooth, while the attending physician at the age of both 15 and 30 was not a prognostic factor for mortality. Thus, the timing for transition to adult care in these patients has no relationship with mortality in Japan.     

Practice advisory on liposuction

COMMITTEE STATEMENT: At the 69th annual meeting of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) in October of 2000, the ASPS Board of Directors convened the Task Force on Patient Safety in Office-Based Surgery Facilities. The task force was assembled in the wake of several highly publicized patient deaths involving plastic surgery and increasing state legislative and regulatory activity of office-based surgery facilities. In response to the increased scrutiny of the office-based surgery setting, the task force produced two practice advisories: "Procedures in the Office-Based Surgery Setting" and "Patient Selection in the Office-Based Surgery Setting." Since the task force's inception, professional and public awareness of patient safety issues has continued to grow. This heightened interest resulted in an increased need for plastic surgeons to communicate their views on the topic. To meet this challenge, the task force evolved into the Committee on Patient Safety, allowing the committee to address topics affecting the safety and welfare of plastic surgery patients, regardless of the facility setting. The "Practice Advisory on Liposuction" is the first advisory developed since the committee was formed. It was a lengthy and painstaking process for the committee, which included representatives from related plastic surgery organizations as well as the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). Committee members included Ronald E. Iverson, M.D., chair; Jeffery L. Apfelbaum, M.D., ASA representative; Bruce L. Cunningham, M.D., ASPS/Plastic Surgery Educational Foundation (PSEF) Joint Outcomes Task Force representative; Richard A. D'Amico, M.D., ASPS representative; Victor L. Lewis, Jr., M.D., ASPS Health Policy Analysis Committee representative; Dennis J. Lynch, M.D., ASPS representative; Noel B. McDevitt, M.D., ASPS Deep Vein Thrombosis Task Force representative; Michael F. McGuire, M.D., The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) representative; Louis Morales, Jr., M.D., American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons representative; Calvin R. Peters, M.D., Florida Ad Hoc Commission on Patient Safety representative; Robert Singer, M.D., American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities representative; Thomas Ray Stevenson, M.D., American College of Surgeons representative; Rebecca S. Twersky, M.D., ASA representative; Ronald H. Wender, M.D., ASA representative; and James A. Yates, ASAPS representative. The authors thank members of the committee for the insights they brought to this process. The final document represents their significant contributions to these efforts. They would also like to recognize DeLaine Schmitz and Pat Farrell of the ASPS staff for their work on and support of this project.     

Advanced high school biology in an era of rapid change: a summary of the biology panel report from the NRC Committee on Programs for Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in American High Schools

A recently released National Research Council (NRC) report, Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools, evaluated and recommended changes in the Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and other advanced secondary school science programs. As part of this study, discipline-specific panels were formed to evaluate advanced programs in biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Among the conclusions of the Content Panel for Biology were that AP courses in particular suffer from inadequate quality control as well as excessive pressure to fulfill their advanced placement function, which encourages teachers to attempt coverage of all areas of biology and emphasize memorization of facts rather than in-depth understanding. In this essay, the Panel's principal findings are discussed, with an emphasis on its recommendation that colleges and universities should be strongly discouraged from using performance on either the AP examination or the IB examination as the sole basis for automatic placement out of required introductory courses for biology majors and distribution requirements for nonmajors.     

CNTNAP2 is disrupted in a family with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a sporadic or inherited complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by involuntary motor and vocal tics. There is comorbidity with disorders like obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Until now linkage analysis has pointed to a number of chromosomal locations, but has failed to identify a clear candidate gene(s). We have investigated a GTS family with a complex chromosomal insertion/translocation involving chromosomes 2 and 7. The affected father [46,XY,inv(2) (p23q22),ins(7;2) (q35-q36;p21p23)] and two affected children [46,XX,der(7)ins(7;2)(q35-q36;p21p23) and 46,XY,der(7)ins(7;2)(q35-q36;p213p23)] share a chromosome 2p21-p23 insertion on chromosome 7q35-q36, thereby interrupting the contactin-associated protein 2 gene (CNTNAP2). This gene encodes a membrane protein located in a specific compartment at the nodes of Ranvier of axons. We hypothesize that disruption or decreased expression of CNTNAP2 could lead to a disturbed distribution of the K(+) channels in the nervous system, thereby influencing conduction and/or repolarization of action potentials, causing unwanted actions or movements in GTS.