Cellular and humoral immune responsiveness to inactivated Leptospira interrogans in dogs vaccinated with a tetravalent Leptospira vaccine.

Vaccination is commonly used to protect dogs against leptospirosis, however, memory immune responses induced by canine Leptospira vaccines have not been studied. In the present study, antibody and T cell mediated responses were assessed in dogs before and 2 weeks after annual revaccination with a commercial tetravalent Leptospira vaccine containing serogroups Canicola and Australis. Vaccination significantly increased average log IgG titers from 6.

Use of rituximab in adults with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: a systematic literature review.

Rituximab is used as an off-label treatment for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS); however, the comparative efficacy and safety of rituximab versus currently licensed disease-modifying drugs (DMDs) for RRMS is unknown. A systematic literature review was conducted to evaluate the available data pertaining to efficacy and safety of rituximab in adult patients with RRMS and highly active relapsing multiple sclerosis (HA-RMS); data quality was critically assessed via risk of bias (RoB) assessment. Biomedical literature databases were searched until mid-2018 and key proceedings were searched from 2016 to 2018.

Health state utilities for infertility and subfertility.

Background: Health state utility values allow for comparison of treatments across different diseases. Utility values for fertility-impaired health states are currently unavailable. Such values are necessary in order to determine the relative costs-effectiveness of fertility treatments.

Estimation of phosphene spatial variability for visual prosthesis applications.

Visual prostheses are the focus of intensive research efforts to restore some measure of useful vision to blind or near-blind patients. The development of such technology is being guided to an extent by tools that simulate prosthesis behavior for healthy sighted subjects in order to assess system requirements and configurations. These simulators, however, typically assume purely deterministic phosphene properties and thus do not apply any variability to phosphene size, intensity, or location.

Measurement of evoked potentials after electrical stimulation of the human optic nerve.

Purpose: To examine the visual evoked potentials (VEP) and electroretinograms (ERG) generated during electrical stimulation of the human optic nerve using the optic nerve visual prosthesis.

Methods: Two volunteers blind from retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and with no light perception each received a chronically implanted optic nerve visual prosthesis. Cortical evoked potentials were recorded using 16 scalp electrodes, and antidromic ERGs were obtained using DTL electrodes while the optic nerve was electrically stimulated.