Browsing by Author "Lin, Wei-Chun"

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Increased Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease in Rheumatoid Arthritis Associated with Cardiovascular Complications - A National Population-Based Cohort Study
(2015-09-25)
Chiu, Hsien-Yi
;
Huang, Hui-Ling
;
Li, Chien-Hsun
;
Chen, Hung-An
;
Yeh, Chia-Lun
Background and Objectives There have been few large population-based studies of the association between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) and glomerulonephritis. This nationwide cohort study investigated the risks of developing CKD and glomerulonephritis in patients with RA, and the associated risks for cardiovascular complications. Methods From the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, we identified a study cohort of 12,579 patients with RA and randomly selected 37,737 subjects without RA as a control cohort. Each subject was individually followed for up for 5 years, and the risk of CKD was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Results During the follow-up period, after adjusting for traditional cardiovascular risk factors RA was independently associated with a significantly increased risk of CKD (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 1.31; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.23-1.40) and glomerulonephritis (aHR 1.55; 95% CI 1.37-1.76). Increased risk of CKD was also associated with the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, cyclosporine, glucocorticoids, mycophenolate mofetil, and cyclophosphamide. Patients with comorbidities had even greater increased risk of CKD. Moreover, RA patients with concurrent CKD had significantly higher likelihood of developing ischemic heart disease and stroke. Conclusions RA patients had higher risk of developing CKD and glomerulonephritis, independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors. Their increased risk of CKD may be attributed to glomerulonephritis, chronic inflammation, comorbidities, and renal toxicity of antirheumatic drugs. Careful monitoring of renal function in RA patients and tight control of their comorbid diseases and cardiovascular risk factors are warranted.
SCMMTP: identifying and characterizing membrane transport proteins using propensity scores of dipeptides
(2015-12-09)
Liou, Yi-Fan
;
Vasylenko, Tamara
;
Yeh, Chia-Lun
;
Lin, Wei-Chun
;
Chiu, Shih-Hsiang
Background: Identifying putative membrane transport proteins (MTPs) and understanding the transport mechanisms involved remain important challenges for the advancement of structural and functional genomics. However, the transporter characters are mainly acquired from MTP crystal structures which are hard to crystalize. Therefore, it is desirable to develop bioinformatics tools for the effective large-scale analysis of available sequences to identify novel transporters and characterize such transporters. Results: This work proposes a novel method (SCMMTP) based on the scoring card method (SCM) using dipeptide composition to identify and characterize MTPs from an existing dataset containing 900 MTPs and 660 non-MTPs which are separated into a training dataset consisting 1,380 proteins and an independent dataset consisting 180 proteins. The SCMMTP produced estimating propensity scores for amino acids and dipeptides as MTPs. The SCMMTP training and test accuracy levels respectively reached 83.81% and 76.11%. The test accuracy of support vector machine (SVM) using a complicated classification method with a low possibility for biological interpretation and position-specific substitution matrix (PSSM) as a protein feature is 80.56%, thus SCMMTP is comparable to SVM-PSSM. To identify MTPs, SCMMTP is applied to three datasets including: 1) human transmembrane proteins, 2) a photosynthetic protein dataset, and 3) a human protein database. MTPs showing a-helix rich structure is agreed with previous studies. The MTPs used residues with low hydration energy. It is hypothesized that, after filtering substrates, the hydrated water molecules need to be released from the pore regions. Conclusions: SCMMTP yields estimating propensity scores for amino acids and dipeptides as MTPs, which can be used to identify novel MTPs and characterize transport mechanisms for use in further experiments. Availability: http://iclab.life.nctu.edu.tw/iclab_webtools/SCMMTP/
Three-Dimensional Nanoscale Imaging of Polymer Bulk-Heterojunction by Scanning Electrical Potential Microscopy and C(60)(+) Cluster Ion Slicing
(2009-11-01)
Yu, Bang-Ying
;
Lin, Wei-Chun
;
Huang, Jen-Hsien
;
Chu, Chih-Wei
;
Lin, Yu-Chin
Solution-processable fullerene and copolymer bulk-heterojunctions are widely used as the active layer of solar cells. It is known that the controlled phase-separation in the film provides a pathway for carrier transportation and is crucial to efficiency. In this work, scanning electrical potential microscopy (SEPM) is used to examine the surface distribution of [6,6]phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester and poly(3-hexylthiophene), which form the bulk-heterojunction. Because the two components have different energies in the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), the differences in contact potential yield strong contrast in SEPM. A cluster ion beam (C(60)(+)) is used to remove the surface in order to determine the structure below, and SEPM is used to analyze the newly exposed surface. With the SEPM images acquired from different depth through the material stacked, a 3D volume image is obtained. It is demonstrated that using SEPM with cluster ion slicing is an effective tool for studying the 3D nanostructures of soft materials.
Three-Dimensional Nanoscale Imaging of Polymer Bulk-Heterojunction by Scanning Electrical Potential Microscopy and C-60(+) Cluster Ion Slicing
(2009-11-01)
Yu, Bang-Ying
;
Lin, Wei-Chun
;
Huang, Jen-Hsien
;
Chu, Chih-Wei
;
Lin, Yu-Chin
Solution-processable fullerene and copolymer bulk-heterojunctions are widely used as the active layer of solar cells. It is known that the controlled phase-separation in the film provides a pathway for carrier transportation and is crucial to efficiency. In this work, scanning electrical potential microscopy (SEPM) is used to examine the surface distribution of [6,6]phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester and poly(3-hexylthiophene), which form the bulk-heterojunction. Because the two components have different energies in the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), the differences in contact potential yield strong contrast in SEPM. A cluster ion beam (C-60(+)) is used to remove the surface in order to determine the structure below, and SEPM is used to analyze the newly exposed surface. With the SEPM images acquired from different depth through the material stacked, a 3D volume image is obtained. It is demonstrated that using SEPM with cluster ion slicing is an effective tool for studying the 3D nanostructures of soft materials.