Browsing by Author "Thomas, S"
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Item Open Access An evaluation of physician predictions of discharge on a general medicine service.(J Hosp Med, 2015-12) Sullivan, B; Ming, D; Boggan, JC; Schulteis, RD; Thomas, S; Choi, J; Bae, JThe goal of this study was to evaluate general medicine physicians' ability to predict hospital discharge. We prospectively asked study subjects to predict whether each patient under their care would be discharged on the next day, on the same day, or neither. Discharge predictions were recorded at 3 time points: mornings (7-9 am), midday (12-2 pm), or afternoons (5-7 pm), for a total of 2641 predictions. For predictions of next-day discharge, the sensitivity (SN) and positive predictive value (PPV) were lowest in the morning (27% and 33%, respectively), but increased by the afternoon (SN 67%, PPV 69%). Similarly, for same-day discharge predictions, SN and PPV were highest at midday (88% and 79%, respectively). We found that although physicians have difficulty predicting next-day discharges in the morning prior to the day of expected discharge, their ability to correctly predict discharges continually improved as the time to actual discharge decreased. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2015;10:808-810. © 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine.Item Open Access Irisin - a myth rather than an exercise-inducible myokine.(Sci Rep, 2015-03-09) Albrecht, E; Norheim, F; Thiede, B; Holen, T; Ohashi, T; Schering, L; Lee, S; Brenmoehl, J; Thomas, S; Drevon, CA; Erickson, HP; Maak, SThe myokine irisin is supposed to be cleaved from a transmembrane precursor, FNDC5 (fibronectin type III domain containing 5), and to mediate beneficial effects of exercise on human metabolism. However, evidence for irisin circulating in blood is largely based on commercial ELISA kits which are based on polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) not previously tested for cross-reacting serum proteins. We have analyzed four commercial pAbs by Western blotting, which revealed prominent cross-reactivity with non-specific proteins in human and animal sera. Using recombinant glycosylated and non-glycosylated irisin as positive controls, we found no immune-reactive bands of the expected size in any biological samples. A FNDC5 signature was identified at ~20 kDa by mass spectrometry in human serum but was not detected by the commercial pAbs tested. Our results call into question all previous data obtained with commercial ELISA kits for irisin, and provide evidence against a physiological role for irisin in humans and other species.