Glycated hemoglobin measurements from dried blood spots: Reliability and relation to results obtained from whole blood samples

Background: Main objective was to measure glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) in dried blood spots on paper filter and in whole blood samples in diabetic patients to evaluate relationship between two methods and their respective reliability. Methods: The 20�10 μl of venous blood samples of 33 diabetics were blotted onto the filter paper allowed to dry at room temperature and then stored at 25°C and 4°C. HbA1c was measured via the Turbidimetric Inhibition Immunoassay Technique. The relation was evaluated with correlation and linear regression tests using STATA software and SPSS. Agreement between the results obtained from the dried blood spots and others was evaluated using the Bland and Altman. The pitman's permutation test was also employed to compare the difference in variance. Results: A high positive correlation was detected between whole blood samples and dried blood spots stored at 4°C (r2 =0.90) and at 25°C (r2 = 0.95). The Bland and Altman graphs, as well as the Pitman tests, showed statistically significant differences in variability between the values obtained from whole blood samples and those derived from dried spots stored at 4°C (p=0.05) or 25°C (p=0.004). Conclusion: HbA1c measurements from dried blood spots on the filter paper yielded reliable results. That the Hitachi autoanalyzer is available in most countries renders this assay less costly than the High Performance Liquid Chromatography Method (HPLC). In addition, the filter paper method for Immuno-turbidimetric estimations of HbA1c at different temperatures is reliable and may be particularly useful in outpatient diabetes clinic

Camiot: Recognizing and Interacting with Distant IoT Objects using a wrist-worn outward-facing camera

CamIoT is an eort to add Articial intelligence into the emerging technologies of SmartHome services. The Features embedded in the device also enable CamIoT to be used as an assistive technology for visually impaired people. CamIoT is the rst wrist-worn platform that uses an outward-facing camera to recognize and interact with distant IoT objects. It provides a novel technique using the index nger's orientation to locate an IoT object in the camera view while supporting disambiguating selection in the presence of multiple objects. Our study ends with the full evaluation of the contributed methods and CamIoT's performance, highlighting the best case appliance recognition accuracy of 96%

Investigating the relationship between client importance and audit quality: Evidence from TSE

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of client importance on audit quality in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The results of previous researches in some countries suggest that the auditor independence may be affected by the economic importance of certain clients, which can affect audit quality. The results of this study, using a sample comprising of 1164 year-company observations during 2005 to 2012 from among listed companies in TSE and using logistic regression analysis showed that there is no significant relationship between the client importance and qualified audit opinion (as a measure of audit quality). In other words, it can be said that the independence and audit quality in Iran's capital market is not affected by the economic importance of clients. The results after controlling other factors that based on the previous researches can affect the qualified audit opinion showed that the probability of revealing qualified audit report has a positive relationship with financial leverage and performance of the previous year and has a negative relationship with the concentration of ownership, the size of the auditor, returns on assets and liquidity ratios

Investigating the relationship between client importance and audit quality: Evidence from TSE

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of client importance on audit quality in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The results of previous researches in some countries suggest that the auditor independence may be affected by the economic importance of certain clients, which can affect audit quality. The results of this study, using a sample comprising of 1164 year-company observations during 2005 to 2012 from among listed companies in TSE and using logistic regression analysis showed that there is no significant relationship between the client importance and qualified audit opinion (as a measure of audit quality). In other words, it can be said that the independence and audit quality in Iran's capital market is not affected by the economic importance of clients. The results after controlling other factors that based on the previous researches can affect the qualified audit opinion showed that the probability of revealing qualified audit report has a positive relationship with financial leverage and performance of the previous year and has a negative relationship with the concentration of ownership, the size of the auditor, returns on assets and liquidity ratios

Investigating the relationship between client importance and audit quality: Evidence from TSE

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of client importance on audit quality in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The results of previous researches in some countries suggest that the auditor independence may be affected by the economic importance of certain clients, which can affect audit quality. The results of this study, using a sample comprising of 1164 year-company observations during 2005 to 2012 from among listed companies in TSE and using logistic regression analysis showed that there is no significant relationship between the client importance and qualified audit opinion (as a measure of audit quality). In other words, it can be said that the independence and audit quality in Iran's capital market is not affected by the economic importance of clients. The results after controlling other factors that based on the previous researches can affect the qualified audit opinion showed that the probability of revealing qualified audit report has a positive relationship with financial leverage and performance of the previous year and has a negative relationship with the concentration of ownership, the size of the auditor, returns on assets and liquidity ratios

The urgent need to develop novel strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of snakebites

Snakebite envenoming (SBE) is a priority neglected tropical disease, which kills over one hundred thousand people per year. However, many millions of survivors also suffer through disabilities and long-term health consequences. The only treatment, antivenom, has a number of major associated problems, not least, adverse reactions and limited availability. This emphasises the necessity for urgent improvements to the management of this disease. Administration of antivenom is too frequently based on symptomatology, which results in wasting crucial time. The majority of SBE-affected regions rely on broad-spectrum polyvalent antivenoms that have a low content of case-specific efficacious immunoglobulins. Research into small molecular therapeutics such as varespladib/methyl-varespladib (PLA2 inhibitors) and batimastat/marimastat (metalloprotease inhibitors) suggest that such adjunctive treatments could be hugely beneficial to victims. Progress into toxin-specific monoclonal antibodies as well as alternative binding scaffolds such as aptamers hold much promise for future treatment strategies. SBE is not implicit during snakebite, due to venom metering. Thus, the delay between bite and symptom presentation is critical and when symptoms appear it may often already be too late. The development of reliable diagnostical tools could therefore initiate a paradigm shift in the treatment of SBE. While the complete eradication of SBE is an impossibility, mitigation is in the pipeline, and new treatments are emerging

The Effects of Industry Specialization on Auditor's Opinion in Iran

The current study aims to provide evidences regarding the audit industry expertise as one of the criteria of auditing quality. For this purpose, in this research the relation between audit industry expertise and auditor's type of opinion is studied using the financial information extracted from listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2004 - 2012. The previous studies indicated the positive effect of this criterion on quality of auditing in companies. To support the evidences of the former studies, after control of other relevant environmental factors, the results of this study showed that there is a positive and significant relation between audit industry expertise and auditor's qualified opinions. The obtained evidences supported this idea that audit firm specialization could lead to improved quality of financial information of the capital market. Regarding other used variables of the research, the results showed that the auditor size and return of assets negatively, and the company's size and performance of the previous year positively are dependent on the type auditor’s opinion. The results of this study add to the literature of audit quality through study of the role of audit industry expertise as well as the study of the relevant factors to the type of auditor's opinion. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1p39

Design of an expression system for rapid production of tri-functional antibody substitution of hybrid hybridoma technology

Tri-functional antibodies, as an effective novel tumor targeting agents, are composed of anti-CD3 rat IgG2b and an anti-tumor antigen antibody. We have intended to develop a novel drug system to induce the apoptosis of HER2-expressing tumor cells, activate and engage cytotoxic T lymphocytes, natural killer cells, and macrophages. In addition, the drug can inhibit programmed death ligand 1 (PDL-1)-expressing tumor cells. We have designed a mammalian vector system suitable to express the trifunctional antibody composed of antiHER2�human-CD80: human-IgG1Fc antibody. This antibody contains four chains of anti-HER2/CL, anti-HER2/CH1-3, B7.1/CL, and B7.1/CH1-3 within the human IgG1 framework and so the vector system will simultaneously express the four chains. The amino acid/nucleotide sequences datasets were retrieved from the GenBank, UniProtKB and PDB databases. The heavy and light chains variable domain framework regions and complementarity determining regions of scA21 antibody were determined by IMGT/V-QUEST and Paratome software. The amino acid sequences of tri-functional antibody chains manually were assembled and converted to DNA sequences by sequence manipulation suite software. The adapting codon usage of these DNA sequences was performed by JCAT software. Finally, the secondary structures of obtained RNAs from the DNAs were individually analyzed by RNAfold program. The Prodigy equilibrium dissociation constant, a ratio of koff/kon, between the antibody and its antigen for hantiHER2VHCH-HER2, hantiHER2VLCL-HER2, CD80CH-CD28, and CD80CL-CD28 were equal to 3.60E-10, 3.10E-9, 1.10E-8 and 2.70E-10; respectively. These findings were confirmed the composition and nano-molar affinity of the respective constructs. A single specific no-cloning expression vector, pHuchiTriomAb, was designed in silico with a desirable length of 8.292 Kbps and bidirectional expression potential for the four chimeric antibody chains. This construct was designed, and gene codon usage adapted to be expressed within CHO cells and secreted a trifunctional antibody into the cell culture medium by interleukin 21 signal peptide.This robust expression system for rapid production of tri-functional antibody has been designed to substitute hybrid hybridoma technology (quadroma and trioma)with the facilitated purification of the trifunctional antibody from the antibody variants. © 2018 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Immunohistochemical discrimination of wild-type EGFR from EGFRvIII in fixed tumour specimens using anti-EGFR mAbs ICR9 and ICR10

Background:The human epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is an important therapeutic target in oncology, and three different types of EGFR inhibitors have been approved for the treatment of cancer patients. However, there has been no clear association between the expression levels of EGFR protein in the tumours determined by the FDA-approved EGFR PharmDx kit (Dako) or other standard anti-EGFR antibodies and the response to the EGFR inhibitors.Method:In this study, we investigated the potential of our anti-EGFR monoclonal antibodies (mAbs; ICR9, ICR10, ICR16) for immunohistochemical diagnosis of wild-type EGFR and/or the type-III deletion mutant form of EGFR (EGFRvIII) in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded human tumour specimens.Results:We found that the anti-EGFR mAb in the EGFR PharmDx kit stained both wild-type and EGFRvIII-expressing cells in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections. This pattern of EGFR immunostaining was also found with our anti-EGFR mAb ICR16. In contrast, mAbs ICR10 and ICR9 were specific for the wild-type EGFR.Conclusion:We conclude that mAbs ICR9 and ICR10 are ideal tools for investigating the expression patterns of wild-type EGFR protein in tumour specimens using immunohistochemistry, and to determine their prognostic significance, as well as predictive value for response to therapy with EGFR antibodies.British Journal of Cancer advance online publication, 7 February 2012; doi:10.1038/bjc.2012.27 www.bjcancer.com