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Introduction

The Introduction should provide readers with the background information needed to understand your study, and the reasons why you conducted your experiments.

The Introduction should answer the question:

What question/problem was studied?

While writing the background, make sure your citations are:

  • Well balanced: If experiments have found conflicting results on a question, have you cited studies with both kinds of results?
  • Current: Every field is different, but you should aim to cite references that are not more than 10 years old if possible.
  • Relevant: This is the most important requirement. The studies you cite should be strongly related to your research question.

Tip!

DO NOT write a literature review in your Introduction, but DO cite reviews where readers can find more information if they want it.

Once you have provided background material and stated the problem or question for your study, tell the reader the purpose of your study. Usually the reason is to fill a gap in the knowledge or to answer a previously unanswered question. For example, if a drug is known to work well in one population, but has never been tested in a different population, the purpose of a study could be to test the efficacy and safety of the drug in the second population.

The final thing to include at the end of your Introduction is a clear and exact statement of your study aims. You might also explain (very briefly!) how you conducted the study.

Example

Article title:

Quantitative PCR Tissue Expression Profiling of the Human SGLT2 Gene and Related Family Members

Source:

Diabetes Therapy 2010, 1(2):57–92, DOI: 10.1007/s13300-010-0006-4.

BACKGROUND

As a worldwide medical and economic problem type 2 diabetes is expanding internationally. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that in 2010 approximately 285 million individuals have type 2 diabetes across the world;1 this number is expected to expand to 439 million individuals by 2030. Diabetes imposes a significant health and economic burden, and factoring in the additional costs of undiagnosed diabetes, prediabetes, and gestational diabetes, the total cost of diabetes in the US in 2007 amounted to $218 billion.2 Despite the availability of several oral and injectable therapies for type 2 diabetes, there remains significant unmet medical need in this disease, justifying the search for more efficacious and safe treatments that can prevent disease progression and protect patients from microvascular and macrovascular complications. Among the types of therapies under development, inhibitors of SGLT2 (for “Sodium Glucose coTransporter” protein 2) represent a promising new class.3,4

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

There have been conflicting reports about the mRNA expression profile of SGLT2 in human tissues. It was initially reported to be expressed predominantly in the kidney using northern blot techniques;9,20however, Wright and colleagues have subsequently reported a broader pattern of tissue expression of SGLT2 beyond the kidney using Rnase protection methods, although no detailed methods or data were presented.21 In 2003, Zhou et al.22 employed quantitative RT-PCR techniques to show that SGLT2 was ubiquitously expressed in most human tissues. In 2005, however, Tazawa et al.16 used the same methodological approach but reported contradictory findings: SGLT2 was primarily expressed in the kidney and to a smaller degree in the small intestine. It has also been reported that in mice, SGLT2 is specifically expressed in kidney proximal tubule.23 Because SGLT2 inhibitor compounds are being developed by several pharmaceutical companies as antidiabetic agents which inhibit renal glucose reabsorption, it has become increasingly important to verify the tissue expression profile of SGLT2.

PURPOSE

We have evaluated the expression pattern of SGLT2 and related family members by quantitative reverse transcription real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) methodology to better understand the potential impact of a selective SGLT2 inhibitor in vivo.

AIM AND WHAT WAS DONE

Therefore, we chose to verify the expression profile of seven SGLT family members in human tissues by quantitative PCR methods across a broad panel of human tissues.

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Original URL: http://www.springer.com/authors/journal+authors/journal+authors+academy?SGWID=0-1726414-12-837807-0

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