Patient-to-patient transmission of HCV likely resulted from contamination of single-use medication vials that were used for multiple patients during anesthesia administration. The resulting public health notification of approximately 50,000 persons was the largest of its kind in United States health care. This investigation highlighted breaches in aseptic technique, deficiencies in oversight of outpatient settings, and difficulties in detecting and investigating such outbreaks.

These findings demonstrate that testosterone regulates the expression of numerous genes in the mouse meibomian gland and that many of these genes are involved in lipid metabolic pathways.

Sex-related differences exist in the structure and function of the major glands in a variety of species. Moreover, many of these variations appear to be unique to each tissue. We hypothesized that this sexual dimorphism is due, at least in part, to gland-specific differences in gene expression between males and females. Glands were collected from male and female BALB/c mice (n = 5/sex/experiment), and total RNA was isolated. Samples were analyzed for differentially expressed mRNAs with CodeLink microarrays, and data were evaluated by GeneSifter. Our results demonstrate that significant (P < 0.05) sex-related differences exist in the expression of numerous genes in the major salivary glands, and many of these differences were tissue-specific. These findings support our hypothesis that sex-related differences in the salivary glands are due, at least in part, to tissue-specific variations in gene expression.