Host immune response against DENV and ZIKV infections.

Dengue is a major public health concern, affecting almost 400 million people worldwide, with about 70% of the global burden of disease in Asia. Despite revised clinical classifications of dengue infections by the World Health Organization, the wide spectrum of the manifestations of dengue illness continues to pose challenges in diagnosis and patient management for clinicians. When the Zika epidemic spread through the American continent and then later to Africa and Asia in 2015, researchers compared the characteristics of the Zika infection to Dengue, considering both these viruses were transmitted primarily through the same vector, the female mosquitoes.

The Cytokines CXCL10 and CCL2 and the Kynurenine Metabolite Anthranilic Acid Accurately Predict Patients at Risk of Developing Dengue With Warning Signs.

Background: The resolution or aggravation of dengue infection depends on the patient's immune response during the critical phase. Cytokines released by immune cells increase with the worsening severity of dengue infections. Cytokines activate the kynurenine pathway (KP) and the extent of KP activation then influences disease severity.

Investigation of the Tissue Distribution and Physiological Roles of Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase-2.

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase-2 (IDO2) is 1 of the 3 enzymes that can catalyze the first step in the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism. Of the 2 other enzymes, tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase is highly expressed in the liver and has a role in tryptophan homeostasis, whereas indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase-1 (IDO1) expression is induced by inflammatory stimuli. Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase-2 is reportedly expressed comparatively narrow, including in liver, kidney, brain, and in certain immune cell types, and it does not appear to contribute significantly to systemic tryptophan catabolism under normal physiological conditions.

Tryptophan-catabolizing enzymes - party of three.

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) and tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) are tryptophan-degrading enzymes that have independently evolved to catalyze the first step in tryptophan catabolism via the kynurenine pathway (KP). The depletion of tryptophan and formation of KP metabolites modulates the activity of the mammalian immune, reproductive, and central nervous systems. IDO and TDO enzymes can have overlapping or distinct functions depending on their expression patterns.

Improved spectrophotometric human interferon-gamma bioassay.

Interferon gamma (IFNγ) is a cytokine involved in many anti-viral and immunoregulatory processes. One of the major mechanisms through which IFNγ exerts these effects is by inducing expression of indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase-1 (IDO1), an enzyme that catalyses the first, rate-limiting step of the kynurenine pathway. In this pathway, tryptophan can be catabolised to many products, including picolinic acid and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.

Integrating an open-source course management system (Moodle) into the teaching of a first-year medical physiology course: a case study.

Educators in medical schools around the world are presently experimenting with innovative ways of using web-based learning to supplement the existing teaching and learning process. We have recently used a popular open-source course management system (CMS) called the modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (Moodle) to construct an online site (DPhysiol) to facilitate our face-to-face teaching of physiology to a group of first-year students in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery program. The integration of the Moodle site into our teaching was assessed using online log activity, student examination marks, and feedback from students.