Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

About: Belfast Health and Social Care Trust is a healthcare organization based out in Belfast, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 1589 authors who have published 1907 publications receiving 52053 citations.

Hyperglycemia and adverse pregnancy outcomes

Abstract: Background It is controversial whether maternal hyperglycemia less severe than that in diabetes mellitus is associated with increased risks of adverse pregnancy outcomes Methods A total of 25,505 pregnant women at 15 centers in nine countries underwent 75-g oral glucose-tolerance testing at 24 to 32 weeks of gestation Data remained blinded if the fasting plasma glucose level was 105 mg per deciliter (58 mmol per liter) or less and the 2-hour plasma glucose level was 200 mg per deciliter (111 mmol per liter) or less Primary outcomes were birth weight above the 90th percentile for gestational age, primary cesarean delivery, clinically diagnosed neonatal hypoglycemia, and cord-blood serum C-peptide level above the 90th percentile Secondary outcomes were delivery before 37 weeks of gestation, shoulder dystocia or birth injury, need for intensive neonatal care, hyperbilirubinemia, and preeclampsia Results For the 23,316 participants with blinded data, we calculated adjusted odds ratios for adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with an increase in the fasting plasma glucose level of 1 SD (69 mg per deciliter [04 mmol per liter]), an increase in the 1-hour plasma glucose level of 1 SD (309 mg per deciliter [17 mmol per liter]), and an increase in the 2-hour plasma glucose level of 1 SD (235 mg per deciliter [13 mmol per liter]) For birth weight above the 90th percentile, the odds ratios were 138 (95% confidence interval [CI], 132 to 144), 146 (139 to 153), and 138 (132 to 144), respectively; for cord-blood serum C-peptide level above the 90th percentile, 155 (95% CI, 147 to 164), 146 (138 to 154), and 137 (130 to 144); for primary cesarean delivery, 111 (95% CI, 106 to 115), 110 (106 to 115), and 108 (103 to 112); and for neonatal hypoglycemia, 108 (95% CI, 098 to 119), 113 (103 to 126), and 110 (100 to 112) There were no obvious thresholds at which risks increased Significant associations were also observed for secondary outcomes, although these tended to be weaker Conclusions Our results indicate strong, continuous associations of maternal glucose levels below those diagnostic of diabetes with increased birth weight and increased cord-blood serum C-peptide levels

QuPath: Open source software for digital pathology image analysis

Abstract: QuPath is new bioimage analysis software designed to meet the growing need for a user-friendly, extensible, open-source solution for digital pathology and whole slide image analysis. In addition to offering a comprehensive panel of tumor identification and high-throughput biomarker evaluation tools, QuPath provides researchers with powerful batch-processing and scripting functionality, and an extensible platform with which to develop and share new algorithms to analyze complex tissue images. Furthermore, QuPath’s flexible design makes it suitable for a wide range of additional image analysis applications across biomedical research.

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis

Abstract: Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

QuPath: Open source software for digital pathology image analysis

Abstract: QuPath is new bioimage analysis software designed to meet the growing need for a user-friendly, extensible, open-source solution for digital pathology and whole slide image analysis. In addition to offering a comprehensive panel of tumor identification and high-throughput biomarker evaluation tools, QuPath provides researchers with powerful batch-processing and scripting functionality, and an extensible platform with which to develop and share new algorithms to analyze complex tissue images. Furthermore, QuPath9s flexible design make it suitable for a wide range of additional image analysis applications across biomedical research.