Acoustic Droplet Vaporization Efficiency and Oxygen Scavenging in Whole Blood.

Objective: Acoustic droplet vaporization (ADV) is the liquid-to-gas phase transition of perfluorocarbon (PFC) droplets to microbubbles upon ultrasound insonation. After ADV, gases dissolved in the surrounding fluid diffuse into microbubbles, enabling oxygen scavenging. Characterization of oxygen scavenging and transition efficiency (TE) in whole blood has so far been limited.

Refined CLARITY-Based Tissue Clearing for Three-Dimensional Fibroblast Organization in Healthy and Injured Mouse Hearts.

Cardiovascular disease is the most prevalent cause of mortality worldwide and is often marked by heightened cardiac fibrosis that can lead to increased ventricular stiffness with altered cardiac function. This increase in cardiac ventricular fibrosis is due to activation of resident fibroblasts, although how these cells operate within the 3-dimensional (3-D) heart, at baseline or after activation, is not well understood. To examine how fibroblasts contribute to heart disease and their dynamics in the 3-D heart, a refined CLARITY-based tissue clearing and imaging method was developed that shows fluorescently labeled cardiac fibroblasts within the entire mouse heart.

The antiprotease SPINK7 serves as an inhibitory checkpoint for esophageal epithelial inflammatory responses.

Loss of barrier integrity has an important role in eliciting type 2 immune responses, yet the molecular events that initiate and connect this with allergic inflammation remain unclear. We reveal an endogenous, homeostatic mechanism that controls barrier function and inflammatory responses in esophageal allergic inflammation. We show that a serine protease inhibitor, SPINK7 (serine peptidase inhibitor, kazal type 7), is part of the differentiation program of human esophageal epithelium and that SPINK7 depletion occurs in a human allergic, esophageal condition termed eosinophilic esophagitis.

TGFBI functions similar to periostin but is uniquely dispensable during cardiac injury.

Extracellular matrix production and accumulation stabilize the heart under normal conditions as well as form a protective scar after myocardial infarction injury, although excessive extracellular matrix accumulation with long-standing heart disease is pathological. In the current study we investigate the role of the matricellular protein, transforming growth factor beta-induced (TGFBI), which is induced in various forms of heart disease. Additionally, we sought to understand whether TGFBI is functionally redundant to its closely related family member periostin, which is also induced in the diseased heart.

[Vulvovaginogingival syndrome. New characteristic grouping of plurimucous erosive lichen planus].

The triple association of a chronic painful erosive vulvitis, an erosive or desquamative vaginitis and an erosive vestibular gingivitis constitutes a hitherto unreported syndrome. The first 19 cases of this affection seen in the Hôpital Tarnier over the last three years are presented and analyzed, the etiology of these erosive mucosal lesions, limited to three body regions, being lichen planus in each case. Detection of mucosal erosion at one of these three sites now requires clinical investigation of the other two, and biopsy of least one of them from the edge of an eroded zone, as well as search for other-possible mucocutaneous areas of lichen planus.

[Two cases of superficial pemphigus induced by pyritinol (author's transl)].

Pyritinol is presently prescribed in rhumatoid polyarthritis because of its structural analogy to D-penicillamin. Only benign cutaneous side effects had been mentioned up to now. We report two cases of pemphigus occurring during pyritinol therapy given in one case for rhumatoid polyarthritis, in the other case for memory deficiency.