Factors associated with poor outcomes in patients with lupus nephritis

The objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with important clinical outcomes in a case-control study of 213 patients with lupus nephritis. Included were 47% Hispanics, 44% African Americans and 9% Caucasians with a mean age of 28 years. Fifty-four (25%) patients reached the primary composite outcome of doubling serum creatinine, end-stage renal disease or death during a mean follow-up of 37 months. Thirty-four percent African Americans, 20% Hispanics and 10% Caucasians reached the primary composite outcome ( P < 0.05). Patients reaching the composite outcome had predominantly proliferative lupus nephritis (WHO classes: 30% III, 32% IV, 18% V and 5% II, P < 0.025) with higher activity index score (7 ± 6 versus 5 ± 5, P<0.05), chronicity index (CI) score (4 ± 3 versus 2 ± 2 unit, P<0.025), higher baseline mean arterial pressure (MAP) (111 ± 21 versus 102 ± 14 mmHg, P<0.025) and serum creatinine (1.9 ± 1.3 versus 1.3 ± 1.0 mg/dL, P<0.025), but lower baseline hematocrit (29 ± 6 versus 31 + 5%, P<0.025) and complement C3 (54 ± 26 versus 65 + 33 mg/dL, P<0.025) compared to controls. More patients reaching the composite outcome had nephrotic range proteinuria compared to controls (74% versus 56%, P<0.025). By multivariate analysis, CI (hazard ratio [95% CI] 1.18 [1.07-1.30] per point), MAP (HR 1.02 [1.00-1.03] per mmHg), and baseline serum creatinine (HR 1.26 [1.04-1.54] per mg/dL) were independently associated with the composite outcome. We concluded that hypertension and elevated serum creatinine at the time of the kidney biopsy as well as a high CI are associated with an increased the risk for chronic renal failure or death in patients with lupus nephritis.

A molecular linkage map of cultivated oat

A molecular linkage map of cultivated oat composed of 561 loci has been developed using 71 recombinant inbred lines from a cross between Avena byzantina cv. Kanota and A. sativa cv. Ogle. The loci are mainly restriction fragment length polymorphisms detected by oat cDNA clones from leaf, endosperm, and root tissue, as well as by barley leaf cDNA clones. The loci form 38 linkage groups ranging in size from 0.0 to 122.1 cM (mean, 39 cM) and consist of 2-51 loci each (mean, 14). Twenty-nine loci remain unlinked. The current map size is 1482 cM and the total size, on the basis of the number of unlinked loci, is estimated to be 2932.0 cM. This indicates that this map covers at least 50% of the cultivated oat genome. Comparisons with an A-genome diploid oat map and between linkage groups exhibiting homoeology to each other indicate that several major chromosomal rearrangements exist in cultivated oat. This map provides a tool for marker-assisted selection, quantitative trait loci analyses, and studies of genome organization in oat.

14th International HLA and Immunogenetics Workshop: report on mapping microsatellite markers in the major histocompatibility complex region

This paper describes the use of the program e-pcr to localize 687 known major histocompatability complex (MHC) microsatellite primer pairs to their sequence positions in several genomic assemblies across the MHC region. The sequences used were the Sequences of Sanger Institute's MHC Haplotype Project: COX, PGF, QBL, as well as the Celera, and Reference (PGF across extended MHC) sequences from the NCBI genomic build 36. More than 95% (664/687) of the markers mapped unambiguously to the Reference assembly sequence. All primer pairs used in this analysis, and those were previously unknown to UniSTS, have now been assigned permanent public UniSTS identifiers. Mapping and descriptive data for each primer pair are available at the publicly accessible dbMHC microsatellite resource: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mhc/xslcgi.fcgi?cmd=mssearch.