Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

About: Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg is a education organization based out in Halle, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Liquid crystal. The organization has 20232 authors who have published 38773 publications receiving 965004 citations. The organization is also known as: MLU & University of Wittenberg.

Adrenergic and Muscarinic Receptors in the Human Heart

Abstract: Cardiac function is controlled by the autonomic nervous system (i.e., the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems), which act via adrenoceptors and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, respectively. At least nine adrenoceptor subtypes and five muscarinic receptor subtypes exist. In recent

Capecitabine Plus Oxaliplatin Compared With Fluorouracil and Folinic Acid As Adjuvant Therapy for Stage III Colon Cancer

Abstract: Purpose This multicenter, randomized trial compared capecitabine plus oxaliplatin (XELOX) with bolus fluorouracil (FU) and folinic acid (FA) as adjuvant therapy for patients with stage III colon cancer. Patients and Methods Patients who had undergone curative resection were randomly assigned to XELOX (oxaliplatin 130 mg/m 2 on day 1 plus capecitabine 1,000 mg/m 2 twice daily on days 1 to 14 every 3 weeks for 24 weeks) or a standard bolus FU/FA adjuvant regimen (Mayo Clinic for 24 weeks or Roswell Park for 32 weeks). The primary study end point was disease-free survival (DFS). Results The intention-to-treat population comprised 1,886 patients; 944 patients were randomly assigned to XELOX and 942 to FU/FA (Mayo Clinic, n 664; Roswell Park, n 278). After 57 months of follow-up for the primary analysis, 295 patients (31.3%) in the XELOX group had relapsed, developed a new primary colon cancer, or died compared with 353 patients (37.5%) in the FU/FA group (hazard ratio [HR] for DFS, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.69 to 0.93; P .0045). The 3-year DFS rate was 70.9% with XELOX and 66.5% with FU/FA. The HR for overall survival (OS) for XELOX compared to FU/FA was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.72 to 1.05; P .1486). The 5-year OS for XELOX and FU/FA were 77.6% and 74.2%, respectively. Follow-up is ongoing. Preplanned multivariate and subgroup analyses supported the robustness of these findings. Conclusion The addition of oxaliplatin to capecitabine improves DFS in patients with stage III colon cancer. XELOX is an additional adjuvant treatment option for these patients. J Clin Oncol 29. © 2011 by American Society of Clinical Oncology

Psychiatric genome-wide association study analyses implicate neuronal, immune and histone pathways

Abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of psychiatric disorders have identified multiple genetic associations with such disorders, but better methods are needed to derive the underlying biological mechanisms that these signals indicate. We sought to identify biological pathways in GWAS data from over 60,000 participants from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. We developed an analysis framework to rank pathways that requires only summary statistics. We combined this score across disorders to find common pathways across three adult psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, major depression and bipolar disorder. Histone methylation processes showed the strongest association, and we also found statistically significant evidence for associations with multiple immune and neuronal signaling pathways and with the postsynaptic density. Our study indicates that risk variants for psychiatric disorders aggregate in particular biological pathways and that these pathways are frequently shared between disorders. Our results confirm known mechanisms and suggest several novel insights into the etiology of psychiatric disorders.