International Journal of Obesity (2010) 34, 29-40; doi:10.1038/ijo.2009.177; published online 15 September 2009″
“PURPOSE. To determine the most effective objective tests, applied singly or in combination in the diagnosis of dry eye disease.\n\nMETHODS. AS1842856 Two groups of subjects-41 with dry eye and 32 with no ocular surface disease-had symptoms, tear film quality, evaporation, tear turnover rate (TTR), volume and osmolarity, and meibomian gland dropout score assessed.\n\nRESULTS. The subjects with dry eye had TTR, tear evaporation, and osmolarity significantly different from that of healthy normal subjects. Cutoff values between the groups were determined

from distribution curves for each aspect of tear physiology,

and the effectiveness of the cutoff was determined from receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves. Values of 12%/min for TTR, 33 g/m(-2)/h for evaporation, and 317 mOsmol/L for osmolarity were found to give sensitivities, specificities, and overall accuracies of 80%, 72%, XMU-MP-1 supplier and 77%; 51%, 96%, and 67%; and 78, 78%, and 79%, respectively when applied singly as diagnostic criteria in dry eye. In combination, they yielded sensitivities, specificities, and overall accuracy of 100%, 66%, and 86% (in parallel) and 38%, 100%, and 63% (in series), respectively. Discriminant function analysis incorporating these three factors in an equation allowed diagnosis with a sensitivity of 93%, specificity of 88%, and overall accuracy of 89%.\n\nCONCLUSIONS. Tear Alvocidib inhibitor osmolarity is the best single test for the diagnosis of dry eye, whereas a battery of tests employing a weighted comparison of TTR, evaporation, and osmolarity measurements derived from discriminant function analysis is the most effective.”
“Antimalarial drugs impose strong selective pressure on Plasmodium falciparum parasites and leave signatures of selection in the parasite genome(1,2); screening for genes under selection may suggest potential drug or immune targets(3).

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of parasite traits have been hampered by the lack of high-throughput genotyping methods, inadequate knowledge of parasite population history and time-consuming adaptations of parasites to in vitro culture. Here we report the first Plasmodium GWAS, which included 189 culture-adapted P. falciparum parasites genotyped using a custom-built Affymetrix molecular inversion probe 3K malaria panel array with a coverage of similar to 1 SNP per 7 kb. Population structure, variation in recombination rate and loci under recent positive selection were detected. Parasite half-maximum inhibitory concentrations for seven antimalarial drugs were obtained and used in GWAS to identify genes associated with drug responses. This study provides valuable tools and insight into the P. falciparum genome.