OBJECTIVE:To investigate the metabolomic profiles of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and to define the metabolic pathways potentially related to MS pathogenesis.
METHODS:Plasma samples from 73 ...patients with MS (therapy-free for at least 90 days) and 88 healthy controls (HC) were analyzed by H-NMR spectroscopy. Data analysis was conducted with principal components analysis followed by a supervised analysis (orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis OPLS-DA). The metabolites were identified and quantified using Chenomx software, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were calculated.
RESULTS:The model obtained with the OPLS-DA identified predictive metabolic differences between the patients with MS and HC (R2X = 0.615, R2Y = 0.619, Q2 = 0.476; p < 0.001). The differential metabolites included glucose, 5-OH-tryptophan, and tryptophan, which were lower in the MS group, and 3-OH-butyrate, acetoacetate, acetone, alanine, and choline, which were higher in the MS group. The suitability of the model was evaluated using an external set of samples. The values returned by the model were used to build the corresponding ROC curve (area under the curve of 0.98).
CONCLUSION:NMR metabolomic analysis was able to discriminate different metabolic profiles in patients with MS compared with HC. With the exception of choline, the main metabolic changes could be connected to 2 different metabolic pathwaystryptophan metabolism and energy metabolism. Metabolomics appears to represent a promising noninvasive approach for the study of MS.
Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche Internistiche, University of Cagliari, Italy. marongiu@pacs.unica.it
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Measurement of homocysteinemia, a risk factor for venous and arterial ...thrombosis, is carried out in patients fasting for 12 hours and after an oral methionine load (PML). The procedure is time-consuming and several of the patients suffer from nausea and malaise. We wondered whether methionine loading could sometimes be avoided by considering fasting homocysteinemia (tHcy) levels. DESIGN AND METHODS: We evaluated whether fasting tHcy levels were useful to predict PML and deltaPML tHcy with acceptable sensitivity and specificity in 381 patients with venous and arterial thrombosis through the generation of receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS: Both PML and deltaPML tHcy correlated with fasting tHcy values. The cut-off of fasting tHcy value yielding a 100% sensitivity in predicting normal PML and deltaPML tHcy was 6.5 and 5.0 micromol/L in females, and 7.1 and 7.2 micromol/L in males. Fasting tHcy values yielding a 95% specificity in predicting a positive PML and tHcy result ranged from 12.5 to 13.1 micromol/L in males and from 10.4 to 10.5 micromol/L in females. A 95% specificity in predicting a positive deltaPML tHcy result ranged from 10.8 to 11.6 micromol/L in females and from 15.9 to 17.0 micromol/L in men. Considering PML tHcy, 186 out of 381 patients could have avoided methionine loading while using deltaPML tHcy 123 out of 381 could have done so. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS: Nearly 50% of our patients considering PML tHcy, and about 30% considering deltaPML tHcy could have been spared the methionine loading test. We propose this model for those who wish to carry out this analysis on their own.
Cloud computing is gaining popularity to the extent that the new "XaaS" service category introduced will gradually take the place of many types of computational and storage resources used today. In ...this regard, grid computing, on which the large scale supply of cloud services is based, will play a key role in defining how those services will be provided.
This paper concerns the analysis and preliminary design of a real time financial system that relies on cloud computing technologies for performing macroeconomic analysis and forecasts of the financial markets and their instruments.
Cloud and grid paradigms generate different added values. Some of these are examined in the paper, for instance the use of an Instruction Set to interact with the Grid.
This work uses the results obtained in the Cybersar Project managed by the COSMOLAB Consortium (Italy). The system analyzed and described herein will be implemented in the Cybersar Computational Grid by autumn 2009.
This work will be consider the relationship between state authority, Internet policies and civil rights in three countries: Italy (EU), Serbia (Europe) and Burma-Myanmar1 (Asia). It will provide an ...overview about the debate existing in these countries, where it is possible to point out a common trend of restrictions of civil rights due to surveillance and control actions of the authorities on the ICTs. If, in the extreme case of Burma-Myanmar, these actions consist in a ban on using the Internet freely for the citizens, in the other countries they create legal contradictions not easily solved, which may prefigure increasing restrictive measures for the future and risks for the e-democracy.
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