Hypnotherapy for agoraphobia-Feasibility and efficacy investigated in a pilot study.

Unlabelled: A number of case studies describing hypnotherapy in the treatment of anxiety disorder patients have already been published. Only a few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigated the efficacy of hypnotherapy but focused mainly on symptoms rather than specific mental disorders. The goal of this study was to investigate whether hypnotherapy (HT) was superior to a waitlist control group (WL) in the reduction of agoraphobia-related symptoms.

Flagellin hypervariable region determines symbiotic properties of commensal Escherichia coli strains.

Escherichia coli represents a classical intestinal gram-negative commensal. Despite this commensalism, different E. coli strains can mediate disparate immunogenic properties in a given host.

: A Novel Invertebrate Model to Distinguish Intestinal Symbionts From Pathobionts.

Insects and mammals share evolutionary conserved innate immune responses to maintain intestinal homeostasis. We investigated whether the larvae of the greater wax moth may be used as an experimental organism to distinguish between symbiotic and pathobiotic , which are mammalian intestinal commensals. Oral application of the symbiont or pathobiont to resulted in clearly distinguishable innate immune responses that could be verified by analyzing similar innate immune components in mice and .

Outer membrane vesicles blebbing contributes to B. vulgatus mpk-mediated immune response silencing.

The Gram negative intestinal symbiont Bacteroides vulgatus mpk is able to prevent from induction of colonic inflammation in Rag1 mice and promotes immune balance in Il2 mice. These inflammation-silencing effects are associated with B. vulgatus mpk-mediated induction of semi-mature dendritic cells, especially in the colonic lamina propria (cLP).

Symbiotic gut commensal bacteria act as host cathepsin S activity regulators.

Cathepsin S (CTSS) is a lysosomal protease whose activity regulation is important for MHC-II signaling and subsequent activation of CD4 T cell mediated immune responses. Dysregulation of its enzymatic activity or enhanced secretion into extracellular environments is associated with the induction or progression of several autoimmune diseases. Here we demonstrate that commensal intestinal bacteria influence secretion rates and intracellular activity of host CTSS and that symbiotic bacteria, i.

A novel approach for reliable detection of cathepsin S activities in mouse antigen presenting cells.

Cathepsin S (CTSS) is a eukaryotic protease mostly expressed in professional antigen presenting cells (APCs). Since CTSS activity regulation plays a role in the pathogenesis of various autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, atherosclerosis, Sjögren's syndrome and psoriasis as well as in cancer progression, there is an ongoing interest in the reliable detection of cathepsin S activity. Various applications have been invented for specific detection of this enzyme.

TLR signaling-induced CD103-expressing cells protect against intestinal inflammation.

Background: Toll-like receptor (TLR) expression in patients with inflammatory bowel disease is increased when compared with healthy controls. However, the impact of TLR signaling during inflammatory bowel disease is not fully understood.

Methods: In this study, we used a murine model of acute phase inflammation in bone marrow chimeric mice to investigate in which cell type TLR2/4 signal induction is important in preventing intestinal inflammation and how intestinal dendritic cells are influenced.

Regulatory T-cell impairment in cystic fibrosis patients with chronic pseudomonas infection.

Rationale: Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease have chronic airway inflammation driven by disrupted balance of T-cell (Th17 and Th2) responses. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) dampen T-cell activation, but their role in CF is incompletely understood.

Objectives: To characterize numbers, function, and clinical impact of Tregs in CF lung disease.

NOD2 stimulation by Staphylococcus aureus-derived peptidoglycan is boosted by Toll-like receptor 2 costimulation with lipoproteins in dendritic cells.

Mutations in the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 2 (NOD2) play an important role in the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease. NOD2 is an intracellular pattern recognition receptor (PRR) that senses bacterial peptidoglycan (PGN) structures, e.g.