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Biomedical subjects

Florent Baty

Publications and source records attributed to Florent Baty.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Analysis with respect to instrumental variables for the exploration of microarray data structures.

BACKGROUND: Evaluating the importance of the different sources of variations is essential in microarray data experiments. Complex experimental designs generally include various factors structuring the data which should be taken into account. The objective of these experiments is the exploration of some given factors while controlling other factors. RESULTS: We present here a family of methods, the analyses with respect to instrumental variables, which can be easily applied to the particular case of microarray data. An illustrative example of analysis with instrumental variables is given in the case of microarray data investigating the effect of beverage intake on peripheral blood gene expression. This approach is compared to an ANOVA-based gene-by-gene statistical method. CONCLUSION: Instrumental variables analyses provide a simple way to control several sources of variation in a multivariate analysis of microarray data. Due to their flexibility, these methods can be associated with a large range of ordination techniques combined with one or several qualitative and/or quantitative descriptive variables.

Algorithms↗

Outcome of treated advanced non-small cell lung cancer with and without central airway obstruction.

OBJECTIVE: In patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with chemotherapy, we compared survival in patients with treated central airway obstruction to those who did not have central airway obstruction. METHODS: One hundred forty-four patients with advanced and inoperable NSCLC were included. These consisted of 52 consecutive patients treated with therapeutic bronchoscopy plus chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy (group A) and 92 consecutive patients who did not have central airway obstruction treated with chemotherapy alone (group B). Chemotherapy consisted of cisplatin or carboplatin, and one third-generation chemotherapy agent. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the survival of patients with and without central airway obstruction (p = 0.395). There was no influence of the histologic subtype on survival in both groups combined and also in each group separately. Median survival in patients belonging to group A was 8.4 months and those in group B was 8.2 months; 3-, 6-, and 12-month survival rates in patients in group A were 90%, 71%, and 40%, respectively, and those in group B were 82%, 63%, and 34%. CONCLUSION: Patients having advanced NSCLC with locally treated malignant central airway obstruction in combination with chemotherapy do not have a worse survival compared to those with advanced NSCLC without central airway obstruction. Therapeutic bronchoscopy should be offered to patients with NSCLC and central airway obstruction.

Adenocarcinoma↗

Progressive pulmonary sarcoidosis--a fibroproliferative process potentially triggered by EGR-1 and IL-6.

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE WORK: Sarcoidosis is a chronic granulomatous disorder of unknown etiology. In most patients the disease is self-limited, although for reasons unclear, others progress or die from progressive organ fibrosis. Growth factors have been implicated in the pathogenesis of other fibrotic lung conditions. We have, therefore, examined the relationship between growth factor expression and disease phenotype in sarcoidosis. METHODS: Adopting a target gene approach utilizing gene expression arrays, growth factor gene expression profile was analyzed in the peripheral blood of 12 patients and 12 healthy controls. Expression, functional activity and the effect of oligonucleotide antisense treatment on selected proteins differentially expressed in progressive sarcoidosis were then tested in vitro on primary human lung fibroblasts. RESULTS: Genes regulating angiogenesis were preferentially upregulated in the self-limited form of disease, while early growth response-1 and interleukin-6 were predominantly activated in progressive sarcoidosis. Increased expression of early growth response-1 in sarcoid lung was confirmed by immunohistochemistry. Stimulated human fibroblasts also rapidly expressed interleukin-6 and early growth response-1 and these proteins were found to mediate serum-induced fibroblast proliferation as proliferation could be significantly abrogated with interleukin-6 and early growth response-1 antisense oligonucelotides. CONCLUSION: We conclude that progressive pulmonary sarcoidosis is characterized by a fibroproliferative dysregulation potentially triggered by early growth response-1 and interleukin-6. Our disease model underlines the inability of steroids to prevent ongoing fibroproliferation in the lung.

Case-Control Studies↗

Optimized between-group classification: a new jackknife-based gene selection procedure for genome-wide expression data.

BACKGROUND: A recent publication described a supervised classification method for microarray data: Between Group Analysis (BGA). This method which is based on performing multivariate ordination of groups proved to be very efficient for both classification of samples into pre-defined groups and disease class prediction of new unknown samples. Classification and prediction with BGA are classically performed using the whole set of genes and no variable selection is required. We hypothesize that an optimized selection of highly discriminating genes might improve the prediction power of BGA. RESULTS: We propose an optimized between-group classification (OBC) which uses a jackknife-based gene selection procedure. OBC emphasizes classification accuracy rather than feature selection. OBC is a backward optimization procedure that maximizes the percentage of between group inertia by removing the least influential genes one by one from the analysis. This selects a subset of highly discriminative genes which optimize disease class prediction. We apply OBC to four datasets and compared it to other classification methods. CONCLUSION: OBC considerably improved the classification and predictive accuracy of BGA, when assessed using independent data sets and leave-one-out cross-validation. AVAILABILITY: The R code is freely available [see Additional file 1] as well as supplementary information [see Additional file 2].

Algorithms↗

Estimating the bacterial lag time: which model, which precision?

The objective of this work was to explore the large number of bacterial growth models recently proposed in the field of predictive microbiology, concerning their capacity to give reliable estimates of the lag phase duration (lambda). We compared these models on the basis of their underlying biological explanations of the lag phenomenon, their mathematical formulation and their statistical fitting properties. Results show that a variety of biological interpretations of the lag phase exists, although different biological hypotheses sometimes converge to give identical mathematical equations. The fit of the different models provides relatively close lambda estimates, especially if we consider that the imprecision of the lambda estimates is generally larger than the differences between the models. In addition, the consistency of the lambda estimates closely depends on the quality of the dataset on which models were fitted.

Bacteria↗

Simple table for estimating confidence interval of discrepancy frequencies in microbiological safety evaluation.

We provide a simple tool to determine discrepancies confidence interval (CI) in microbiology validation studies such as technical accuracy of a qualitative test result. This tool enables to determine exact confidence interval (binomial CI) from an observed frequency when normal approximation is inadequate, that is, in case of rare events. This tool has daily applications in microbiology and we are presenting an example of its application to antimicrobial susceptibility systems evaluation.

Binomial Distribution↗

Sedative drug requirements during flexible bronchoscopy.

BACKGROUND: There is a paucity of data comparing doses of sedative medication during bronchoscopy in immunosuppressed and non-immunosuppressed patients. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to define the sedative medication doses used in specific patient groups during bronchoscopy. METHODS: Bronchoscopy was performed under local anesthesia, sedation with intermittent boluses of intravenous midazolam and intravenous hydrocodone 5 mg. Two hundred and thirty-nine consecutive bronchoalveolar lavage procedures were included. Procedures in non-immunosuppressed patients were classified as controls (n = 91). Procedures in immunosuppressed patients who received midazolam consisted of stem cell transplant (34), solid organ transplant (25), chemotherapy (33), HIV with drug abuse (10), HIV (5), prednisone (17) and immunosuppression for other diseases (12). Intravenous propofol was administered during 12 procedures due to inability to achieve optimal sedation with midazolam in a previous bronchoscopy (stem cell transplant recipient 1, lung transplant for cystic fibrosis 5) and during the same bronchoscopy due to inadequate sedation with a high dose of midazolam--renal transplant recipient 1, drug abuse (HIV 1, renal transplant recipient 1), bronchoscopy combined with gastroscopy (2) and a hypoxemic patient (1). The mean dose of propofol administered was 2.8 +/- 1.3 mg/kg. RESULTS: Midazolam requirement was significantly higher in patients with stem cell transplantation (0.09 +/- 0.05 mg/kg) compared with controls (0.06 +/- 0.03 mg/kg; p = 0.0002). In the HIV patients with drug abuse (0.12 +/- 0.10 mg/kg), there was a tendency for the need of a higher dose of midazolam compared with the control group (p = 0.0754). CONCLUSION: Stem cell transplant recipients and selected HIV patients with drug abuse need higher doses of midazolam for bronchoscopy.

Bronchoalveolar Lavage↗