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Objective: To compare the cardio- and cerebrovascular outcomes and survival rates of surgical and nonsurgical interventions for patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) based on a national population-based database. Study Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. Methods: We analyzed all cases of OSA among adults (age >20 years and confirmed with ICD-9-CM) from January 2001 to December 2013. We compared the patients with OSA who received upper airway surgery with age-, sex-, and comorbidity index–matched controls with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. The risk of myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke after treatment of OSA-related surgery versus CPAP was investigated. Results: During follow-up, 112 and 92 incident cases of MI occurred in the OSA surgery and CPAP treatment groups, respectively (rates of 327 and 298 per 100,000 person-years). Furthermore, 50 and 39 cases were newly diagnosed with stroke in the OSA surgery and CPAP treatment groups (rates of 144 and 125 per 100,000 person-years). Cox proportional hazard regressions showed that the OSA treatment groups (OSA surgery vs CPAP) were not significantly related to MI (hazard ratio, 1.03 [95% CI, 0.781-1.359]; P =.833) and stroke (hazard ratio, 1.12 [95% CI, 0.736-1.706]; P =.596) at follow-up, after adjustment for sex, age at index date, days from diagnosis to treatment, and comorbidities. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that there was no difference of cardio- and cerebrovascular results between CPAP and surgery for patients with OSA in a 13-year follow-up. Level of Evidence: 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a highly sensitive, substrate-specific, label-free, and multiplexed protease assay which reports proteases activities as an optical bar chart, allowing test results to be easily assessed by laymen with the naked eye. First, an oligopeptide microarray having six rows of immobilized oligopeptides, with well-controlled orientations and concentration gradients, is immersed in a buffer solution containing proteases. Then, a thin layer liquid crystal is supported on the microarray to transduce the oligopeptide cleavage event into an optical bar chart of different colors and lengths. This type of optical bar chart provides very rich information such as protease concentration, incubation time, surface densities of oligopeptides, etc. Both trypsin and chymotrypsin can be detected by using this assay within 3 h. The capability of the multiplexed protease assay opens up possibilities for detecting toxins such as botulinum neurotoxins which are known to cleave proteins and affect the docking and fusing synaptic vesicles.

In this article, we report a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM)-based detection method which allows the identification and quantification of two neonicotinoid pesticides, imidacloprid and thiacloprid, in aqueous solutions and celery juice. To achieve high selectivity, molecular imprinted monolayers (MIMs), which can either recognize 1 [micro]M of imidacloprid or 1 [micro]M of thiacloprid, are prepared from alkanethiols self-assembled on QCM sensor chips with preadsorbed templates (either imidacloprid or thiacloprid). Our experimental results show that the detection limit can be improved by using alkanethiols having longer hydrocarbon chains. For example, MIMs prepared from hexadecanethiol have dissociation constants 2-5 times smaller than those prepared from octanethiol. To detect two neonicotinoids in vegetable samples simultaneously, we also develop a new type of MIM with two different templates. A single QCM decorated with this MIM can respond to 10 [micro]M of imidacloprid and 10 [micro]M thiacloprid in celery juice in a real-time manner.

Author(s): Jianzhong He [1]; Kirsti M. Ritalahti [1]; Kun-Lin Yang [1]; Stephen S. Koenigsberg [2]; Frank E. Löffler (corresponding author) [1, 3] Tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE) are ideal solvents [...]