A total of 130 dyads (260 subjects) composed of AYAs 14 20 years old with cancer and their family decision maker (≥ 18 years old) will be recruited from pediatric oncology programs at Akron Children's Hospital and St . Jude Childrens Research Hospital.
The training set of subjects composed of 20 children with invasive S. aureus infections (median age 7.5 years; 11 methicillin-resistant S. aureus, MRSA, and 9 methicillin-susceptible S. aureus, MSSA) and 10 healthy controls (median age 6 years) matched for age, sex, and race, were initially analyzed to identify the gene expression profile in PBMCs from S. aureus-infected patients.
All participants provided written informed consent Three population samples were recruited and phenotyped in Jamaica: 177 healthy blood donors from Kingston (Afro-Caribbean group, AC); 631 healthy subjects composed of families and unrelated individuals (Afro-German group, AG) from Seaford Town, Westmoreland; and 75 healthy European expatriates.
The population was ethnically diverse, with 45.9% of subjects composed of nonwhite racial/ethnic groups.
A total of 1,565 subjects, composed of 593 cases and 972 controls, were genotyped using the TaqMan® (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA) method.
Second, the sample size was not very large, with some subgroups (eg, frail subjects) composed of a very limited number of participants.
Samples were obtained from 50 subjects, composed of patients randomly selected among patients from the same region attending the same health centers.
A sample of 66 subjects, composed of 25 outpatients with schizophrenia, 18 siblings of these patients and 23 healthy controls, was subjected to the personality assessment test SWAP-200 by trained clinical interviewers.
There is another potential and unexplored category of subjects composed of individuals with subtle cognitive impairment with normal neuronal injury biomarkers (SCINIB) independent of the presence or absence of amyloid deposition.
However, most of the studies concerning the health of NKRs were limited to topics on mental health and nutrition/growth, and even the few studies on the general health of NKRs were based on a small number of subjects composed of their self-reports and self-ratings.
