Institution
University of Kiel
Education•Kiel, Germany•
About: University of Kiel is a education organization based out in Kiel, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 27816 authors who have published 57114 publications receiving 2061802 citations. The organization is also known as: Christian Albrechts University & Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
••
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the safety and efficacy of using 0.1% tacrolimus ointment for long-term treatment of atopic dermatitis and found that up to 1 year of ointments use was safe and effective.
Abstract: Objective To investigate the safety and efficacy of using 0.1% tacrolimus ointment for long-term treatment of atopic dermatitis. Design Open-label, noncomparative study with 6 to 12 months of follow-up. Settings Outpatient departments in 30 study centers in 11 European countries. Patients We enrolled 316 patients aged 18 years and older with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, 200 for 6 months and 116 for 12 months; 77.5% of patients completed the study. Intervention Twice-daily application of 0.1% tacrolimus ointment on all affected skin. Visits were scheduled on day 1; after 1, 2, and 4 weeks of treatment; and monthly thereafter. Main Outcome Measures Safety assessments included monitoring of adverse events, clinical laboratory values, and tacrolimus blood concentrations. Efficacy end points included a combined score (modified Eczema Area and Severity Index) and an investigator's global assessment. Results Local irritation, adverse events such as burning sensation (47% of patients), pruritus (24% of patients), and erythema (12% of patients) were common but tended to occur only when initiating treatment. Laboratory values showed no marked changes over time. Systemic absorption was minimal, with the maximum tacrolimus blood concentration being less than 1 ng/mL in 76% of patients. All efficacy end points showed improvement. The mean (SD) modified Eczema Area and Severity Index score was 23.7 (12.6) at day 1, 13.5 (11.3) at week 1, 6.1 (9.2) at month 6, and 6.1 (8.1) at month 12. Marked or excellent improvement or clearance of disease was reported in 54%, 81%, and 86% of patients at week 1, month 6, and month 12, respectively. Conclusion Up to 1 year of tacrolimus ointment use was safe and effective in patients with atopic dermatitis.
343 citations
••
TL;DR: Vita is considerably faster than Boruta and thus more suitable for large data sets, but only Boruta can also be applied in low-dimensional settings, while Vita was the most robust approach under a pure null model without any predictor variables related to the outcome.
Abstract: Machine learning methods and in particular random forests are promising approaches for prediction based on high dimensional omics data sets. They provide variable importance measures to rank predictors according to their predictive power. If building a prediction model is the main goal of a study, often a minimal set of variables with good prediction performance is selected. However, if the objective is the identification of involved variables to find active networks and pathways, approaches that aim to select all relevant variables should be preferred. We evaluated several variable selection procedures based on simulated data as well as publicly available experimental methylation and gene expression data. Our comparison included the Boruta algorithm, the Vita method, recurrent relative variable importance, a permutation approach and its parametric variant (Altmann) as well as recursive feature elimination (RFE).
In our simulation studies, Boruta was the most powerful approach, followed closely by the Vita method. Both approaches demonstrated similar stability in variable selection, while Vita was the most robust approach under a pure null model without any predictor variables related to the outcome. In the analysis of the different experimental data sets, Vita demonstrated slightly better stability in variable selection and was less computationally intensive than Boruta.
In conclusion, we recommend the Boruta and Vita approaches for the analysis of high-dimensional data sets. Vita is considerably faster than Boruta and thus more suitable for large data sets, but only Boruta can also be applied in low-dimensional settings.
342 citations
••
TL;DR: This work summarizes recent discoveries on FTi regulators in crop species emphasizing crop-specific genes lacking homologs in Arabidopsis thaliana and highlights pleiotropic effects on agronomically important characters, impact on adaptation to new geographical/climate conditions and future perspectives for crop improvement.
341 citations
••
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that afferent feedback from ankle extensors is of significant importance for the activation of these muscles in the stance phase of human walking.
Abstract: In the cat, the basic walking pattern is generated by a spinal network that is under the control of supraspinal structures (Grillner, 1981; Armstrong, 1988). In addition, sensory feedback from the skin and the moving muscles has repeatedly been shown to play a significant role in the regulation of the network activity and the locomotor movements. Graham Brown (1914) demonstrated that cats with supracollicular lesions of the brainstem are able to adjust their locomotion to the speed and slope of the treadmill at which they are walking. Furthermore, Grillner & Rossignol (1978) demonstrated in spinalised cats that changes in the hip position have a significant effect on the timing and amplitude of the locomotor bursts. Several recent studies have demonstrated a resetting of the locomotion movements in the cat by stimulation of different afferents such as group Ib afferents (Conway et al. 1987) and the afferents involved in flexor reflexes (FRA afferents; Schomburg et al. 1998). This indicates that the sensory feedback mediated by these afferents is closely integrated into the activity of the spinal network generating the locomotion. Several studies have demonstrated a positive contribution of feedback activity in group I afferents to the locomotor activity, either relatively directly or via an effect on the spinal locomotor network (Gossard et al. 1994; McCrea, 1998; Pearson et al. 1998; Hiebert & Pearson, 1999). Other studies have shown that the basic muscle activation profile in the stance phase of walking is not substantially altered by short latency afferent input in the very early part of stance whereas a significant sensory contribution later in stance was argued (Gorassini et al. 1994). Group II afferents also activate a group of interneurones in the midlumbar region, which are believed to be closely integrated into the spinal locomotor circuitry and thereby to add significantly to the generation of the locomotor activity (Edgley et al. 1988).
It is still unclear to what extent a spinal network is involved in the generation of human walking and whether sensory feedback to the spinal cord plays a similarly significant role in human muscle activation as in the cat. In large parts of the stance phase of human walking, the ankle extensors undergo eccentric contractions, which make the large and fast conducting muscle afferents from these muscles increase their discharge strongly (e.g. Prochazka, 1995). Through monosynaptic or polysynaptic projections, muscle afferents might, therefore, be expected to make a significant contribution to the activation of the muscle ankle extensors in the stance phase of walking. Consequently, several studies have attempted to evaluate the contribution of muscle afferent feedback to the EMG activity during walking by measuring stretch reflex activity in different phases of the walking cycle (Yang et al. 1991; Sinkjaer et al. 1996, 1999). However, such data only provide evidence of the significance of the muscle afferents in the generation of the correction of possible unexpected external perturbations of the gait, but do not reveal much about the involvement of the muscle afferent activity in generating the EMG activity during unperturbed movements.
In the present study, a portable device was used to unload the ankle extensors in the stance phase of walking (Andersen & Sinkjaer, 1995). The idea was that if the muscle afferents contributed significantly to the background EMG, unloading of the ankle extensors would diminish the firing of the muscle afferents from the ankle extensors and thereby reduce the background EMG. Unloading of the ankle extensors did indeed reduce the soleus EMG at a latency of around 64 ms. The reduction of EMG activity was still present when transmission in Ia afferents was blocked by ischaemia and when transmission in the antagonist nerve was blocked by local anaesthesia. On this basis group Ib and/or group II afferents are suggested to make a significant contribution to the extensor EMG activity in the stance phase of human walking.
341 citations
••
TL;DR: Consideration of these patterns of gene distribution underscores the likely significance of gene loss during animal evolution whilst indicating ancient origins for many components of the vertebrate innate immune system.
Abstract: Background
Characterization of the innate immune repertoire of extant cnidarians is of both fundamental and applied interest - it not only provides insights into the basic immunological 'tool kit' of the common ancestor of all animals, but is also likely to be important in understanding the global decline of coral reefs that is presently occurring. Recently, whole genome sequences became available for two cnidarians, Hydra magnipapillata and Nematostella vectensis, and large expressed sequence tag (EST) datasets are available for these and for the coral Acropora millepora.
341 citations
Authors
Showing all 28103 results
Name | H-index | Papers | Citations |
---|---|---|---|
Stefan Schreiber | 178 | 1233 | 138528 |
Jun Wang | 166 | 1093 | 141621 |
William J. Sandborn | 162 | 1317 | 108564 |
Jens Nielsen | 149 | 1752 | 104005 |
Tak W. Mak | 148 | 807 | 94871 |
Annette Peters | 138 | 1114 | 101640 |
Severine Vermeire | 134 | 1086 | 76352 |
Peter M. Rothwell | 134 | 779 | 67382 |
Dusan Bruncko | 132 | 1042 | 84709 |
Gideon Bella | 129 | 1301 | 87905 |
Dirk Schadendorf | 127 | 1017 | 105777 |
Neal L. Benowitz | 126 | 792 | 60658 |
Thomas Schwarz | 123 | 701 | 54560 |
Meletios A. Dimopoulos | 122 | 1371 | 71871 |
Christian Weber | 122 | 776 | 53842 |