Evaluation of CD43 expression in non-hematopoietic malignancies.

Objectives: CD43 is normally expressed only on the surface of leukocytes, and is considered a sensitive and specific marker for hematologic malignancies. As such, it may have diagnostic utility in confirming hematolymphoid lineage in cases that are negative for CD45. Aberrant CD43 expression has been described in non-hematopoietic tumors, although literature data on this topic is variable and sometimes contradictory.

IL-4 induces protection of vascular endothelial cells against killing by complement and melittin through lipid biosynthesis.

We have shown previously that cytokines IL-4 and IL-13 induce protection in porcine vascular endothelial cells (EC) against killing by the membrane attack complex (MAC) of human complement. This protection is intrinsic, not due to changes in complement regulatory proteins, and requires activation of Akt and sterol receptor element binding protein-1 (SREBP-1), which regulates fatty acid and phospholipid synthesis. Here we report that, compared to EC incubated in medium, IL-4-treated EC had a profound reduction in complement-mediated ATP loss and in killing assessed by vital dye uptake, but only a slight reduction in permeability disruption measured by calcein release.

The effect of signal averaging on the reproducibility and reliability of measures of T-wave morphology.

Electrocardiographic repolarization abnormalities characterized by T-wave morphology parameters such as the principal component analysis ratio and the relative and the absolute T-wave residuum (TWR(rel) and TWR(abs)) are predictive of cardiovascular and/or all-cause mortality. However, when using a "10-second median beat" for analysis, the reported mean values for TWR(rel) vary widely and parameter reproducibility is somewhat suspect. In repeated electrocardiographic recordings conducted 1 month and 1 year apart on 15 and 27 healthy individuals, respectively, we studied the said T-wave morphology parameters in single complexes and in reduced noise signal averages containing 10 and 200 complexes.