Advancing health research through research governance

Good governance practices are crucial for advancing research for health in LAC countries, argue Luis Alejandro Salicrup and colleagues

Merging and scoring molecular interactions utilising existing community standards: tools, use-cases and a case study

The evidence that two molecules interact in a living cell is often inferred from multiple different experiments. Experimental data is captured in multiple repositories, but there is no simple way to assess the evidence of an interaction occurring in a cellular environment. Merging and scoring of data are commonly required operations after querying for the details of specific molecular interactions, to remove redundancy and assess the strength of accompanying experimental evidence. We have developed both a merging algorithm and a scoring system for molecular interactions based on the proteomics standard initiative–molecular interaction standards. In this manuscript, we introduce these two algorithms and provide community access to the tool suite, describe examples of how these tools are useful to selectively present molecular interaction data and demonstrate a case where the algorithms were successfully used to identify a systematic error in an existing dataset.

Liver transplantation in patients with fulminant hepatic failure

Fulminant hepatic failure without liver transplantation is associated with a high mortality rate (80-100 per cent). Some 254 liver transplantations were performed on 202 patients between April 1986 and February 1992. Of these, 26 patients had fulminant hepatic failure. The median age was 31.5 (range 3-60) years. Reduced-size grafts were used in seven patients. The preoperative mortality rate was six of 26 patients, and five patients died during follow-up. Ten patients underwent retransplantation and two a second retransplant. The overall mortality rate was 16 of 26 and actuarial survival rate was 62.7 per cent at 12 months and 48.7 per cent at 36 months. The preoperative mortality rate is relatively high but liver transplantation is currently recommended as a last-resort treatment for patients with fulminant hepatic failure in the absence of response to medical treatment.