Objective. The aim was to assess work-loss days before and after commencement of anti-TNF treatment in patients with non-radiographic axial spondylarthritis (nr-axSpA). Methods. Bionaïve nr-axSpA patients (n = 75), aged 17-62 years, fulfilling the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society criteria for axial spondyloarthritis and starting anti-TNF treatment during 2004-11, were retrieve

Objectives: Care managers and professional caregivers of home care services are sometimes unaware of the psychosocial approaches to the challenging behaviour of dementia. Therefore, we developed a Behaviour Analytics & Support Enhancement (BASE) programme. We investigated the effects of the programme on the attitudes towards dementia care among professionals. Method: Forty-six participants in

Caveolae are membrane invaginations present at high densities in muscle and fat. Recent work has demonstrated that myocardin family coactivators (MYOCD, MKL1), which are important for contractile differentiation and cell motility, increase caveolin (CAV1, CAV2, CAV3) and cavin (CAVIN1, CAVIN2, CAVIN3) transcription, but several aspects of this control mechanism remain to be investigated. Here, usi

Objective: To explore whether having long-term type 1 diabetes (>45 years) is associated with a higher prevalence of radiographic hand OA, erosive hand OA and increased hand pain, disability and stiffness. Methods: In total N = 96 persons with type 1 diabetes diagnosed before 1970 were included (mean [SD] age: 62.2 [7.4], mean [SD] HbA1c: 7.43 [0.80] and N = 49 [51%] men). Regular measurements of

Background - Small observational studies have indicated better outcome with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) guidance when performing unprotected left main coronary artery (LMCA) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but the overall picture remains inconclusive and warrants further investigation. We studied the impact of IVUS guidance on outcome in patients undergoing unprotected LMCA PCI in a

Objectives. The arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase activating protein (ALOX5AP) regulates synthesis of leukotrienes (LTs), which are important mediators of inflammation and connective tissue remodelling. The aim of this study was to evaluate if single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of ALOX5AP confer risk of SSc and/ or SSc-related organ involvement. Methods. Seven SNPs of ALOX5AP (rs17222814, rs17216473

Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) usually refers to GAD65 autoantibodies (GADAb)-positive diabetes with onset after 35 years of age and no insulin treatment within the first 6 months after diagnosis. However, it is not always easy to distinguish LADA fromtype 1 or type 2 diabetes. In this study, we examined whether metabolite profiling could help to distinguish LADA (n = 50) from type 1

Reduced pancreatic b-cell function or mass is the critical problem in developing diabetes. Insulin release from b-cells depends on Ca2+ influx through high voltage- gated Ca2+ channels (HVCCs). Ca2+ influx also regulates insulin synthesis and insulin granule priming and contributes to β-cell electrical activity. The HVCCs aremultisubunit protein complexes composed of a pore-forming a1 and auxiliar

Bariatric surgery results in notable weight loss and alleviates hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). We aimed to characterize the vascular effects of a mixedmeal and infusion of exogenous glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) in the splanchnic region in 10 obese patients with T2D before and after bariatric surgery and in 10 lean control subjects. The experiments were

We have previously reported that once-weekly albiglutide was noninferior to thrice-daily lispro for glycemic lowering, with decreased weight and risk of hypoglycemia, in patients inadequately controlled on basal insulin over 26 weeks. Findings after 52 weeks reveal similar responses to albiglutide as an add-on to insulin glargine.

Land surface phenology is frequently derived from remotely sensed data. However, over regions with seasonal snow cover, remotely-sensed land surface phenology may be dominated by snow seasonality, rather than showing true plant phenology. Overlooking snow influences may lead to inaccurate plant phenology estimation, and consequently to misinterpretation of climate-vegetation interactions. To addre

The class of information set decoding algorithms is the best known way of decoding general codes, i.e. codes that admit no special structure, in the Hamming metric. Stern's algorithm is the origin of the most efficient algorithms in this class. In this paper we consider the same decoding problem but for a channel with soft information. We give a version of Stern's algorithm for a channel with soft

Metaphorical phrases appear frequently in practitioner and academic texts on internal branding and depict employees as ‘brand ambassadors’ who ‘embody the brand’ and ultimately turn into ‘living brands’. In this article, I examine how these metaphorical phrases rhetorically construct the concept of internal branding and thereby also impact our thoughts on organizations, employees and their relatio

NTRU is a public-key cryptosystem, where the underlying mathematical problem is currently safe against large-scale quantum computer attacks. The system is not as well investigated, as for example RSA, and the company behind NTRU has created the NTRU Challenges, to remedy this. These challenges consist of 27 different public keys of increasing size, where the task in each challenge is to calculate

Objectives: This paper estimates the effect of tertiary education eligibility on crime in Sweden. The hypothesis tested is that continuing to higher education decreases crime rates since it allows young people to escape inactivity and idleness, which are known to trigger crime. However, to qualify for tertiary education, individuals have to meet the eligibility requirements in upper-secondary scho

A ripe strawberry looks red to our eyes in sunlight and in the green light of a forest, although the spectrum of light reflected from its surface differs dramatically. This is caused by two effects: colour constancy and our ability to learn relative colour cues - the ripe strawberry remains relatively 'redder' than an unripe green strawberry. While colour constancy - the ability to recognize colou

Background Late blight (caused by Phytophthora infestans) is a devastating potato disease that has been found to occur earlier in the season over the last decades in Fennoscandia. Up until now the reasons for this change have not been investigated. Possible explanations for this change are climate alterations, changes in potato production or changes in pathogen biology, such as increased fitness o

Bacterial centromeres-also called parS, are cis-acting DNA sequences which, together with the proteins ParA and ParB, are involved in the segregation of chromosomes and plasmids. The specific binding of ParB to parS nucleates the assembly of a large ParB/DNA complex from which ParA-the motor protein, segregates the sister replicons. Closely related families of partition systems, called Bsr, were i

The hydrogen bond (H bond) is one of the most important interactions that form the foundation of secondary and tertiary protein structure. Beyond holding protein structures together, H bonds are also intimately involved in solvent coordination, ligand binding, and enzyme catalysis. The H bond by definition involves the light atom, H, and it is very difficult to study directly, especially with X-ra

Mechanical behavior of the shear connections has a significant influence on both the load-carrying capacity and the bending stiffness of timber-concrete composite (TCC) beams. All the studies reported so far have concentrated on the performance of TCC connections in mature concrete. The performance of shear connections for TCC beams at early concrete ages, however, has not been investigated yet. T