Background and Purpose-Acute stroke management requires minimization of prehospital time. This study addresses the value of helicopter transport compared with other means of transportation to a stroke unit and compares their rates of thrombolysis on a nationwide basis. Methods-Prospective data collection and prespecified evaluation of data from 32 stroke units between 2003 and 2009 were used. We distinguished between patients transported either directly to a stroke unit or transferred indirectly via a peripheral hospital. Thus, there were 6 transport groups: helicopter emergency service (HEMS) direct and indirect, ambulance accompanied by an emergency physician direct and indirect, and ambulance without physician direct and indirect. Demographic and clinical factors, time delays, and rates of thrombolysis of patients transported by helicopter were compared with factors of patients transported otherwise. Results-Of 21 712 ischemic stroke patients, 905 patients (4.1%) were transported by helicopter. Of these, 752 patients (3.4%) were transported by direct HEMS, and 153 patients (0.7%) were transported by indirect HEMS. Thrombolysis rates were highest for HEMS (24% direct, 29% indirect) transport, followed by ambulance accompanied by an emergency physician (18% direct, 15% indirect). The probability of receiving thrombolysis was highest for indirect HEMS transport (OR 3.6, 2.2-6.0), followed by indirect ambulance accompanied by an emergency physician transport (OR 1.5, 1.1-1.9). The shortest times, 90 minutes or less from stroke onset to hospital arrival, were achieved with direct AMBP and direct HEMS transport. Conclusions-The shortest hospital arrival times and highest thrombolysis rates were seen in ischemic stroke patients transported by helicopter. (Stroke. 2011;42:1295-1300.)

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miRNAs are regulatory RNA molecules. The analytical interest rose over the past 10 years especially in clinical diagnostics as miRNAs show specific expression patterns in several human diseases like diabetes or cancer. Therefore, it is expected that miRNA profiles might be used as biomarkers in early diagnosis. The idea of establishing biomarkers is also present in veterinary drug analysis, e.g. in the surveillance of illegal use of anabolics. Transcriptomics is a promising approach in the detection of anabolics misuse. However, miRNA expression patterns have shown their superiority over mRNA patterns in clinical diagnostics. Thus, the influence of anabolic steroids on miRNA expression in bovine liver should be investigated and an expression pattern should be validated, which might be used as a treatment biomarker. An animal experiment was conducted with 18 heifers equally allocated to a control and a treatment group, which was implanted with TBA plus E2. Liver samples were screened for miRNA expression using PCR arrays. Expression of 11 prominent miRNAs was validated via single assay qPCR. Herein, the following expression pattern could be found with an up-regulation of miR-29c and miR-103 and a down-regulation of miR-34a, miR-181c, miR-20a and miR-15a (p<0.05 each). Using principal components analysis (PCA), the control group could clearly be distinguished from the treatment group, when integrating gene expression results from both miRNA and mRNA. So, the combination of different transcribed targets (mRNA plus miRNA) might be a promising approach to find a valid expression pattern to be used for anabolic treatment screening.

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In quantitative single-cell studies, the critical part is the low amount of nucleic acids present and the resulting experimental variations. In addition biological data obtained from heterogeneous tissue are not reflecting the expression behaviour of every single-cell. These variations can be derived from natural biological variance or can be introduced externally. Both have negative effects on the quantification result. The aim of this study is to make quantitative single-cell studies more transparent and reliable in order to fulfil the MIQE guidelines at the single-cell level. The technical variability introduced by RT, pre-amplification, evaporation, biological material and qPCR itself was evaluated by using RNA or DNA standards. Secondly, the biological expression variances of GAPDH, TNFα, IL-1β, TLR4 were measured by mRNA profiling experiment in single lymphocytes. The used quantification setup was sensitive enough to detect single standard copies and transcripts out of one solitary cell. Most variability was introduced by RT, followed by evaporation, and pre-amplification. The qPCR analysis and the biological matrix introduced only minor variability. Both conducted studies impressively demonstrate the heterogeneity of expression patterns in individual cells and showed clearly today's limitation in quantitative single-cell expression analysis.