Patients with continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices have a high risk of gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) and recurrent bleeding. Studies have shown octreotide can reduce the risk of GIB. This retrospective, case-crossover study, evaluated the efficacy of octreotide for the prevention of recurrent GIB in patients with left ventricular assist devices between August 2008 and October 2018. A total of 32 patients received octreotide and were included in the study. Hospital admission for GIB was evaluated before and after the initiation of octreotide. Each case served as his/her own control. Most patients were on a reduced aspirin dose (56.2%) and had a reduced international normalized ratio goal (59.4%) before starting monthly octreotide. The most common dose of long-acting octreotide was 30 mg every 28 days. Overall, octreotide decreased the frequency of GIB (4.3 vs. 0.9 events/year, p < 0.001). Nineteen (59.4%) patients did not have a subsequent gastrointestinal bleed. Of the 13 patients who rebled after initiation of octreotide, the frequency of events decreased by 2.6 bleeds per patient per year (4.8 vs. 2.2; p = 0.043). In high-risk patients who have failed conventional therapy, octreotide can be useful for the prevention of recurrent GIB.

BackgroundMany plant genes have been identified through whole genome and deep transcriptome sequencing and other methods; yet our knowledge on the function of many of these genes remains limited. The integration and analysis of large gene-expression datasets gives researchers the ability to formalize hypotheses concerning the functionality and interaction between different groups of correlated genes.ResultsWe applied the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm to the AtGenExpress dataset which consists of 783 microarray samples (29 separate experimental series) conducted on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We identified 15 metagenes, which are groups of genes with correlated expression. Functional roles of these metagenes are established by observing the enriched gene ontology (GO) categories using gene set enrichment analyses (GSEA). Activity levels of these metagenes in various experimental conditions are also analyzed to associate metagenes with stimuli/conditions. A metagene correlation network, constructed based on the results of NMF analysis, revealed many new interactions between the metagenes. Comparison of these metagenes with an earlier large-scale clustering analysis indicates many statistically significant overlaps.ConclusionsThis study identifies a network of correlated metagenes composed of Arabidopsis genes acting in a highly correlated fashion across a broad spectrum of experimental stimuli, which may shed some light on the function of many of the un-annotated genes.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a complication associated with vancomycin. Previous studies demonstrated that the combination of vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam increases the risk of AKI compared to vancomycin with meropenem or cefepime.

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Recent advances in microarray technologies have resulted in a flood of genomics data. This large body of accumulated data could be used as a knowledge base to help researchers interpret new experimental data. ArraySearch finds statistical correlations between newly observed gene expression profiles and the huge source of well-characterized expression signatures deposited in the public domain. A search query of a list of genes will return experiments on which the genes are significantly up- or downregulated collectively. Searches can also be conducted using gene expression signatures from new experiments. This resource will empower biological researchers with a statistical method to explore expression data from their own research by comparing it with expression signatures from a large public archive.