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Biomedical subjects

Amit Kulkarni

Publications and source records attributed to Amit Kulkarni.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Quality of life in patients with psoriasis.

Psoriasis is one of the prevalent skin conditions in the United States. This chronic condition has a significant negative impact on patients' quality of life. Psoriasis has been linked to the depression and suicidal tendencies in the patients. The costs associated with decrements in quality of life, lost productivity, and work absenteeism may be enormous, increasing overall costs associated with the disease management. This review attempts to outline different quality of life measures available for psoriasis and describes their use in studies examining patient reported outcomes associated with pharmacological interventions for psoriasis. Factors associated with quality of life in psoriasis patients are described. It further describes physician's role in the psoriasis management to improve patients' overall well-being.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed2006

The negative impact of psoriasis on the workplace.

BACKGROUND: The health-related quality of life and economic impact of psoriasis has been documented. However, the negative impact of psoriasis on the workplace is poorly understood. AIM/METHODS: Through anonymous surveys from 30 subjects of each of three psoriasis severity groups we aim to quantify the workplace impact experienced by psoriasis patients and factors that may contribute to this impact. Data were collected using several previously validated measures including the Work Productivity Assessment Index (WPAI), SF-8, Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HADS) and past medical/psoriasis history. RESULTS: Psoriasis patients experienced negative impact at work as measured by the WPAI; this impact is directly associated with disease severity. The other instruments confirmed the negative impact of psoriasis though the degree of impact did not always correlate with disease severity or work impact. Owing to the relatively small numbers, the significance of these findings is not certain. CONCLUSIONS: This preliminary study finds that psoriasis is associated with a reduction in work productivity and social functioning; this may explain the relatively high cost of this disease on both a macro- and microeconomic level. As there was a lack of significant trends in this study, formal inferences are limited and further investigation is warranted.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Recurrent hypoglycemia and hypothermia in a patient with Hodgkin's disease.

A 60-year-old woman presented to her primary care physician with fatigue and anemia. Laboratory evaluation revealed a hemoglobin level of 9.8 g/dL and an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) of 64 mm/hour. She subsequently developed nocturnal episodes of diaphoresis, confusion, and hypothermia. Capillary glucose measurements during the spells revealed hypoglycemia. During two supervised fasts, the patient's plasma glucose levels fell to 35 mg/dL and 32 mg/dL, respectively. Plasma insulin and C-peptide levels were appropriately suppressed, but a low concentration of beta-hydroxy-butyrate and normal increase of plasma glucose concentration after a glucagon injection suggested the presence of an insulin-like substance. Computed tomographic (CT) scan of the abdomen and subsequent positron emission tomographic (PET) scan revealed extensive lymphadenopathy. Biopsy of periaortic lymph nodes revealed Hodgkin's disease of the mixed cellularity type. Following chemotherapy, a complete remission ensued, the spells abated, and hypoglycemia was not induced by a 23-hour fast. We believe that the patient's Hodgkin's disease was producing an insulin-like substance. The observations of others suggest that this substance may be an autoantibody to the insulin receptor.

Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols↗
PubMed2005

Second-generation shRNA libraries covering the mouse and human genomes.

Loss-of-function phenotypes often hold the key to understanding the connections and biological functions of biochemical pathways. We and others previously constructed libraries of short hairpin RNAs that allow systematic analysis of RNA interference-induced phenotypes in mammalian cells. Here we report the construction and validation of second-generation short hairpin RNA expression libraries designed using an increased knowledge of RNA interference biochemistry. These constructs include silencing triggers designed to mimic a natural microRNA primary transcript, and each target sequence was selected on the basis of thermodynamic criteria for optimal small RNA performance. Biochemical and phenotypic assays indicate that the new libraries are substantially improved over first-generation reagents. We generated large-scale-arrayed, sequence-verified libraries comprising more than 140,000 second-generation short hairpin RNA expression plasmids, covering a substantial fraction of all predicted genes in the human and mouse genomes. These libraries are available to the scientific community.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Production of complex nucleic acid libraries using highly parallel in situ oligonucleotide synthesis.

Generation of complex libraries of defined nucleic acid sequences can greatly aid the functional analysis of protein and gene function. Previously, such studies relied either on individually synthesized oligonucleotides or on cellular nucleic acids as the starting material. As each method has disadvantages, we have developed a rapid and cost-effective alternative for construction of small-fragment DNA libraries of defined sequences. This approach uses in situ microarray DNA synthesis for generation of complex oligonucleotide populations. These populations can be recovered and either used directly or immortalized by cloning. From a single microarray, a library containing thousands of unique sequences can be generated. As an example of the potential applications of this technology, we have tested the approach for the production of plasmids encoding short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) targeting numerous human and mouse genes. We achieved high-fidelity clone retrieval with a uniform representation of intended library sequences.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Predicting Caco-2 cell permeation coefficients of organic molecules using membrane-interaction QSAR analysis.

A methodology termed membrane-interaction QSAR (MI-QSAR) analysis has been developed in order to predict the behavior of organic compounds interacting with the phospholipid-rich regions of biological membranes. One important application of MI-QSAR analysis is to estimate ADME properties including the transport of organic solutes through biological membranes as a computational approach to forecasting drug intestinal absorption. A training set of 30 structurally diverse drugs, whose permeability coefficients across the cellular membranes of Caco-2 cells were measured, was used to construct significant MI-QSAR models of Caco-2 cell permeation. Cellular permeation is found to depend primarily upon aqueous solvation free energy (solubility) of the drug, the extent of drug interaction with a model phospholipid (DMPC) monolayer, and the conformational flexibility of the solute within the model membrane. A test set of eight drugs was used to evaluate the predictivity of the MI-QSAR models. The permeation coefficients of the test set compounds were predicted with the same accuracy as the compounds of the training set.

Caco-2 Cells↗