Matemática e Estatística / Mathematics and Statistics
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Browsing Matemática e Estatística / Mathematics and Statistics by Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) "03:Saúde de Qualidade"
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- Acid phosphatase, some genetic polymorphism and obesity risk factors in adult womenPublication . Carolino, E.; Oliveira, T.; Silva, A. P.; Carvalho, R; Bicho, M.Recent works point out to a relation between some genetic factors and the predisposition for obesity. We believe, therefore, to be relevant to conduct this kind of study in the Portuguese population. In the present work the following genetic factors are considered: Haptoglobin phenotype, the Acid Phosphatasehenotype and two blood group systems, the MN System and the Lewis System. In addition, it was also considered one demographic factor, age, and one enzymatic activity, the Acid Phosphatase Activity. Haptoglobin (Hp) is a hemoglobin-binding protein of the immune system expressed by a genetic polymorphism with three major phenotypes. This protein is associated in some works with susceptibility for common pathological situations, such as some disorders related with obesity. The Acid phosphatase, more precisely the Acid phosphatase locus 1 (ACP1), is a highly polymorphic enzyme that has an important role in flavoenzyme activity and in the control of insulin receptor activity. High ACP1 activity was positively associated with high glycemic levels and with high body mass index (BMI) values. The MN blood system is a blood group system with three phenotypes each one showing different associations with some diseases, including some related with obesity. Finally, the Lewis System was focused on a single locus with two antigens, Le a and Le b. Confirming this characteristic as a genetic marker of obesity may contribute to the explanation of individual differences in the prevalence of obesity. The group under study involves 85 Portuguese adult women with complete data for all variables, taken from a data base with 714 subjects from the Genetic Laboratory, Centre of Endocrinology and Metabolism of University of Lisbon. The aim of the study is to explore and examine the relationship between the weight categories and the explanatory variables, with emphasis on risk for obesity. Therefore, an ordinal regression model was tried, considering as the regressor variables the Haptoglobin phenotype, Acid phosphatase (ACP1) phenotype, MN blood group system, Lewis system, the enzymatic activity of ACP1, age and some association effects between these factors. Some significant main effects were found at a 5% significance level: the phenotypeLe(a-b+) of Lewis System (p-value=0,021) and age (p-value=0,002). The phenotype Le(a-b+) of Lewis System is associated with a decreased risk for obesity (odds ratio 0,139; CI95%(0,016; 0,754)); age (as expected) is associated with an increased risk for obesity (odds ratio 1,11; CI95%(1,038; 1,190))
- Comparison of discriminant analysis methods: Application to occupational exposure to particulate matterPublication . Ramos, Maria do Rosário; Carolino, E.; Viegas, Carla; Viegas, SandraHealth effects associated with occupational exposure to particulate matter have been studied by several authors. In this study were selected six industries of five different areas: Cork company 1, Cork company 2, poultry, slaughterhouse for cattle, riding arena and production of animal feed. The measurements tool was a portable device for direct reading. This tool provides information on the particle number concentration for six different diameters, namely 0.3 μm, 0.5 μm, 1 μm, 2.5 μm, 5 μm and 10 μm. The focus on these features is because they might be more closely related with adverse health effects. The aim is to identify the particles that better discriminate the industries, with the ultimate goal of classifying industries regarding potential negative effects on workers' health. Several methods of discriminant analysis were applied to data of occupational exposure to particulate matter and compared with respect to classification accuracy. The selected methods were linear discriminant analyses (LDA); linear quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), robust linear discriminant analysis with selected estimators (MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimators), MVE (Minimum Volume Elipsoid), "t", MCD (Minimum Covariance Determinant), MCD-A, MCD-B), multinomial logistic regression and artificial neural networks (ANN). The predictive accuracy of the methods was accessed through a simulation study. ANN yielded the highest rate of classification accuracy in the data set under study. Results indicate that the particle number concentration of diameter size 0.5 μm is the parameter that better discriminates industries.
- Microarray experiments on risk analysis using RPublication . Oliveira, Teresa A.; Oliveira, Amilcar; Monteiro, Andreia A.The microarray technique is a powerful biotechnological tool, expanding in a interesting way the vision with which issues in medicine are studied. Microarray technology, allows simultaneous evaluation of the expression of thousands of genes in different tissues of a given organism, and in different stages of development or environmental conditions. However, experiments with microarrays are still substantially costly and laborious, and as a consequence, they are usually conducted with relatively small sample sizes, thereby requiring a careful experimental design and statistical analysis. This paper adopts some applications of microarrays in risk analysis using R statistical software.
- Two-way MANCOVA: an application to public healthPublication . Ramos, Maria do Rosário; Carolino, E.; Oliveira, T.; Bicho, M.The aim of this work is to use the MANCOVA model to study the influence of the phenotype of an enzyme – Acid phosphatase – and a genetic factor – Haptoglobin genotype – on two dependent variables - Activity of Acid Phosphatase (ACP1) and the Body Mass Index (BMI). Therefore it's used a general linear model, namely a multivariate analysis of covariance (Two-way MANCOVA). The covariate is the age of the subject. This covariate works as control variable for the independent factors, serving to reduce the error term in the model. The main results showed that only the ACP1 phenotype has a significant effect on the activity of ACP1 and the covariate has a significant effect in both dependent variables. The univariate analysis showed that ACP1 phenotype accounts for about 12.5% of the variability in the activity of ACP1. In respect to this covariate it can be seen that accounts for about 4.6% of the variability in the activity of ACP1 and 37.3% in the BMI.