Development of a highly effective combination monoclonal antibody therapy against Herpes simplex virus.

Background: Infections with Herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1 or -2 usually present as mild chronic recurrent disease, however in rare cases can result in life-threatening conditions with a large spectrum of pathology. Monoclonal antibody therapy has great potential especially to treat infections with virus resistant to standard therapies. HDIT101, a humanized IgG targeting HSV-1/2 gB was previously investigated in phase 2 clinical trials.

Combining Spectral-Domain OCT and Air-Puff Tonometry Analysis to Diagnose Keratoconus.

Purpose: To investigate the diagnostic capacity of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) combined with air-puff tonometry using artificial intelligence (AI) in differentiating between normal and keratoconic eyes.

Methods: Patients who had either undergone uneventful laser vision correction with at least 3 years of stable follow-up or those who had forme fruste keratoconus (FFKC), early keratoconus (EKC), or advanced keratoconus (AKC) were included. SD-OCT and biomechanical information from air-puff tonometry was divided into training and validation sets.

Anti-addiction Drug Ibogaine Prolongs the Action Potential in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes.

Ibogaine is a plant alkaloid used as anti-addiction drug in dozens of alternative medicine clinics worldwide. Recently, alarming reports of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias and cases of sudden death associated with the ingestion of ibogaine have accumulated. Using whole-cell patch clamp recordings, we assessed the effects of ibogaine and its main metabolite noribogaine on action potentials in human ventricular-like cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.

Lack of MG53 in human heart precludes utility as a biomarker of myocardial injury or endogenous cardioprotective factor.

Aims: Mitsugumin-53 (MG53/TRIM72) is an E3-ubiquitin ligase that rapidly accumulates at sites of membrane injury and plays an important role in membrane repair of skeletal and cardiac muscle. MG53 has been implicated in cardiac ischaemia-reperfusion injury, and serum MG53 provides a biomarker of skeletal muscle injury in the mdx mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. We evaluated the clinical utility of MG53 as a biomarker of myocardial injury.

Clinical characteristics of emergency department heart failure patients initially diagnosed as non-heart failure.

Background: Since previous studies suggest the emergency department (ED) misdiagnosis rate of heart failure is 10-20% we sought to describe the characteristics of ED patients misdiagnosed as non-decompensated heart failure in the ED.

Methods: We analyzed a prospective convenience sample of 439 patients at 4 emergency departments who presented with signs or symptoms of decompensated heart failure. Patients with a cardiology criterion standard diagnosis of decompensated heart failure and an ED diagnosis of decompensated heart failure were compared to patients with a criterion standard of decompensated heart failure but no ED diagnosis of decompensated heart failure.

The combined utility of an S3 heart sound and B-type natriuretic peptide levels in emergency department patients with dyspnea.

Background: Emergency department (ED) patients with undifferentiated dyspnea are a diagnostic dilemma. We hypothesized that electronic detection of an S3 would be more accurate in determining decompensated heart failure than physician auscultation, and that combining electronic heart sounds with B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) would provide additional decision making information to the emergency physician, especially in the BNP indeterminate range (100-500 pg/mL).

Methods And Results: We collected demographic, clinical, and laboratory data in a convenience sample of ED patients presenting with signs or symptoms of acute decompensated heart failure between September 2003 and June 2004.