OECI TuBaFrost harbors a complete infrastructure for the exchange of frozen tumor samples between European countries. OECI TuBaFrost consists of: * A code of conduct on how to exchange human residual samples in Europe, * A central database application accessible over the Internet (www.tubafrost.org) where data can be uploaded and searched from samples that can be selected and ordered, * Access rules with incentives for collectors, * Standardization needed to enable the analysis of high quality samples derived from different centers, * Virtual Microscopy to support sample selection with difficult pathology. The entire infrastructure was, after completion, which was entirely financed by the European Commission, implemented in the OECI. But so far it has not been used to its capacity. A recent survey held amongst the OECI members shed light on the causes. The main conclusion is that all responders see OECI TuBaFrost as a good platform for exchange of samples, however, the biggest bottleneck found was that potential users are too unfamiliar with the communication between their own biobank tracking system and the TuBaFrost central database application. Therefore, new future plans are drawn. In addition, new infrastructure plans have been developed and the first preparatory steps have been set. For biobanks the BBMRI project has started aiming for Pan-European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure.
Abstract Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most frequent arrhythmia among those encountered in the emergency department. It’s well known that elevated values of cardiac troponin in "stable” conditions is generally indicative of myocardial cytonecrosis and is associated with a worse prognosis in various clinical conditions. The role of cardiac biomarkers in the context of an AF episode has not yet been fully understood and is a source of debate in the cardiology community. Recent studies suggest the association of elevated troponin values in the context of an AF episode with an increased incidence of major cardiovascular events. Consequently, its measurement could be extensively taken into consideration also in the Emergency Department and implemented for risk stratification. There is currently insufficient evidence to support the dosing of cardiac troponins in all AF patients for risk stratification. The aim of this study is to investigate the significance of elevated troponin values during AF and whether these are related to an increased cardiovascular risk. Methods and Results This is a retrospective and observational study and focuses on a population of patients who arrived in the Emergency Department of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan between the 1st of January 2018 and 22nd May 2021 with atrial fibrillation. Data were collected for 625 patients of whom 232 were enrolled for statistical analysis. The population was stratified based on cardiovascular risk factors and prior AF ablation. At 12–month follow–up we found that elevated troponin values during atrial fibrillation in the Emergency Department do not correlate with an increase of deaths from any cause, major cardiovascular events or hospitalizations for heart failure. The presence of elevated cardiac troponin was not associated with an increased rate of CAD at coronary CT nor coronaru angiography. A weak association was seen between non–elevated cTnT–hs and higher rate of AF ablation. Conclusions Our data reject the hypothesis according to which elevated levels of highly sensitive cardiac troponin measured during an atrial fibrillation episode could be correlated with an higher incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events at 1–year follow up.
Background Stratification of colorectal cancer (CRC) risk within the population offers potential to refine surveillance guidelines and inform preventative interventions. Recent discoveries have shown that 10 common genetic susceptibility variants individually influence CRC risk. We investigated the utility of genetic risk profiling in 42,333 subjects from eight populations of European descent. Methods Binary logistic regression was used to assess the effects of age, gender, family history (FH) and genotypes at all 10 CRC susceptibility loci. Risk models were generated by incorporating genotypes alone (n=39,266), or in combination with gender, age and FH (n=11,324). Discriminatory performance was assessed by generating ROC curves from 10-fold internal cross-validation and an independent case-control set (n=3,067). 10-year absolute risk was estimated by modelling genotype and FH with ageand gender-specific population risk. Findings There was a highly significant difference in mean and median number of risk alleles in cases compared to controls (median in cases = 10 alleles vs. 9 in controls, p<2.2 x 10). However, model discriminative performance across the risk spectrum was limited for genotypes alone (area under curve (AUC) 0.57) or incorporating genotype, age, gender, FH (AUC 0.59). Genotyping of an external case/control set validated the association between number of risk alleles and CRC risk (p=1.2x10). Mean per-allele increase in risk was 9% (OR 1.09; 95% CI 1.05-1.13). Modelling genotype, FH, age, gender with population risk enabled identification of a population subgroup (4 per 1000) with a predicted 10-year absolute risk of CRC greater than 5%. Interpretation This study demonstrates that population subgroups can be identified with a predicted absolute CRC risk sufficiently high as to merit surveillance/intervention, although individualized CRC risk profiling is not currently feasible. Nonetheless, the findings provide the first tangible evidence of public health relevance for data from genomewide studies in CRC. Funding Multiple charitable and government grants.
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