Two major wine proteins that contribute significantly to Muscat of Alexandria wine heat haze have been purified by anion-exchange chromatography. These proteins had Mrs of32 000 and 24 000, and although the amino acid composition of each protein was distinct, both contained a high proportion of asparagine and/or aspartic acid, glycine, and either serine or threonine. The Mr 24 000 protein produced about 50% more haze than the Mt 32 000 protein per unit of weight. All of the wine proteins, and in particular the Mt 24 000 protein, were resistant to proteolysis at 15 °C. Such resistance was not due to the presence of inhibitors or wine polysaccharides acting as protective colloids, suggesting that wine proteins are naturally resistant to proteolytic degradation.

No abstract

No abstract

Digital and online symptom checkers are an increasingly adopted class of health technologies that enable patients to input their symptoms and biodata to produce a set of likely diagnoses and associated triage advice. However, concerns regarding the accuracy and safety of these symptom checkers have been raised. This systematic review evaluates the accuracy of symptom checkers in providing diagnoses and appropriate triage advice. MEDLINE and Web of Science were searched for studies that used either real or simulated patients to evaluate online or digital symptom checkers. The primary outcomes were the diagnostic and triage accuracy of the symptom checkers. The QUADAS-2 tool was used to assess study quality. Of the 177 studies retrieved, 10 studies met the inclusion criteria. Researchers evaluated the accuracy of symptom checkers using a variety of medical conditions, including ophthalmological conditions, inflammatory arthritides and HIV. A total of 50% of the studies recruited real patients, while the remainder used simulated cases. The diagnostic accuracy of the primary diagnosis was low across included studies (range: 19–37.9%) and varied between individual symptom checkers, despite consistent symptom data input. Triage accuracy (range: 48.8–90.1%) was typically higher than diagnostic accuracy. Overall, the diagnostic and triage accuracy of symptom checkers are variable and of low accuracy. Given the increasing push towards adopting this class of technologies across numerous health systems, this study demonstrates that reliance upon symptom checkers could pose significant patient safety hazards. Large-scale primary studies, based upon real-world data, are warranted to demonstrate the adequate performance of these technologies in a manner that is non-inferior to current best practices. Moreover, an urgent assessment of how these systems are regulated and implemented is required.

No abstract