A 39-year-old woman presented to the dermatology department in January 2022 with a 3-week history of a progressively enlarging and intensely pruritic erythematous annular nodule on her left hand. The lesion started as a small blister, which was initially presumed to be a flare up of her pompholyx dermatitis. On her physician's advice, she applied clobetasol propionate ointment twice daily for 5 days; however the blister continued to increase in size until it burst, revealing raw inflamed skin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe controlled expression of two or more proteins at a defined and stable ratio remains a substantial challenge, particularly in the bi- and multispecific antibody field. Achieving an optimal ratio of protein subunits can facilitate the assembly of multimeric proteins with high efficiency and minimize the production of by-products. In this study, we propose a solution based on alternative splicing, enabling the expression of a tunable and predefined ratio of two distinct polypeptide chains from the same pre-mRNA under the control of a single promoter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Metatarsalgia is a common affliction in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), often requiring aggressive pharmacologic treatment that carries associated adverse effects. The aim of this study was to investigate whether simple insoles would have a beneficial effect on forefoot pain, disability, and functional limitation in participants with RA experiencing forefoot pain.
Method: A prospective, quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest trial was performed at a rheumatology outpatient clinic.
BACKGROUND Autologous blood-derived products can target specific inflammatory molecular pathways and have potentially beneficial therapeutic effects on inflammatory pathologies. The purpose of this study was to assess in vitro the anti-inflammatory and anti-catabolic potential of an autologous blood product as a possible treatment for COVID-19-induced cytokine storm. MATERIAL AND METHODS Blood samples from healthy donors and donors who had recovered from COVID-19 were incubated using different techniques and analyzed for the presence of anti-inflammatory, anti-catabolic, regenerative, pro-inflammatory, and procatabolic molecules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCisplatin analogues with an attached DNA-binding moiety represent a potentially effective class of DNA-damaging anti-tumour agents because they possess higher affinities for DNA and different DNA damage profiles compared with cisplatin. In this study, the interaction of four 9-aminoacridine carboxamide Pt complexes with purified DNA was investigated: firstly, using a fluorescent intercalator displacement (FID) assay with ethidium bromide; and secondly, with a DNA unwinding assay. The relative capacity of these compounds to perturb the fluorescence induced by DNA-bound ethidium bromide at clinically relevant drug concentrations was assessed over a 24-h period using an FID assay.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF