The chemicals between us-First results of the cluster analyses on anatomy embalming procedures in the German-speaking countries.

Hands-on courses utilizing preserved human tissues for educational training offer an important pathway to acquire basic anatomical knowledge. Owing to the reevaluation of formaldehyde limits by the European Commission, a joint approach was chosen by the German-speaking anatomies in Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) to find commonalities among embalming protocols and infrastructure. A survey comprising 537 items was circulated to all anatomies in German-speaking Europe.

Mechanisms of CD8+ T-cell failure in chronic hepatitis E virus infection.

Background & Aims: In immunosuppressed patients, persistent HEV infection is common and may lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. HEV clearance depends on an effective virus-specific CD8+ T-cell response; however, the knowledge gap around HEV-specific CD8+ T-cell epitopes has hindered analysis of the mechanisms of T-cell failure in persistent infection.

Methods: We comprehensively studied HEV-specific CD8+ T-cell responses in 46 patients with self-limiting (n = 34) or chronic HEV infection (n = 12), by epitope-specific expansion, functional testing, ex vivo peptide HLA class I tetramer multi-parametric staining, and viral sequence analysis.

Integrating biological knowledge and gene expression data using pathway-guided random forests: a benchmarking study.

Motivation: High-throughput technologies allow comprehensive characterization of individuals on many molecular levels. However, training computational models to predict disease status based on omics data is challenging. A promising solution is the integration of external knowledge about structural and functional relationships into the modeling process.

Comparison of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Software for the Evolutionary Analysis of Y-Chromosomal Microsatellite Data.

The evolutionary analysis of genetic data is an important subject of modern bioscience, with practical applications in diverse fields. Parameters of interest in this context include effective population sizes, mutation rates, population growth rates and the times to most recent common ancestors. Studying Y-chromosomal microsatellite data, in particular, has proven useful to unravel the recent patrilineal history of populations.

VarWatch-A stand-alone software tool for variant matching.

Massively parallel DNA sequencing of clinical samples holds great promise for the gene-based diagnosis of human inherited diseases because it allows rapid detection of putatively causative mutations at genome-wide level. Without additional evidence complementing their initial bioinformatics evaluation, however, the clinical relevance of such candidate genetic variants often remains unclear. In consequence, dedicated 'matching' services have been established in recent years that aim at the discovery of other, comparable case reports to facilitate individual diagnoses.

Surrogate minimal depth as an importance measure for variables in random forests.

Motivation: It has been shown that the machine learning approach random forest can be successfully applied to omics data, such as gene expression data, for classification or regression and to select variables that are important for prediction. However, the complex relationships between predictor variables, in particular between causal predictor variables, make the interpretation of currently applied variable selection techniques difficult.

Results: Here we propose a new variable selection approach called surrogate minimal depth (SMD) that incorporates surrogate variables into the concept of minimal depth (MD) variable importance.

Recommendations of the working group of the Anatomische Gesellschaft on reduction of formaldehyde exposure in anatomical curricula and institutes.

The practice of human and veterinary medicine is based on the science of anatomy and dissection courses are still irreplaceable in the teaching of anatomy. Embalming is required to preserve body donors, for which process formaldehyde (FA) is the most frequently used and well characterized biocidal substance. Since January 2016, a new occupational exposure limit (OEL) for FA of 0.

HEV-positive blood donations represent a relevant infection risk for immunosuppressed recipients.

Background & Aims: Routine HEV testing of blood products has recently been implemented in Great Britain and the Netherlands. The relevance of transfusion-transmitted HEV infections is still controversially discussed in Europe.

Methods: All blood donations at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf were prospectively tested for HEV RNA by pooled PCR from October 2016 to May 2017.

The effect of skin surface topography and skin colouration cues on perception of male facial age, health and attractiveness.

Objective: Previous studies investigating the effects of skin surface topography and colouration cues on the perception of female faces reported a differential weighting for the perception of skin topography and colour evenness, where topography was a stronger visual cue for the perception of age, whereas skin colour evenness was a stronger visual cue for the perception of health. We extend these findings in a study of the effect of skin surface topography and colour evenness cues on the perceptions of facial age, health and attractiveness in males.

Methods: Facial images of six men (aged 40 to 70 years), selected for co-expression of lines/wrinkles and discolouration, were manipulated digitally to create eight stimuli, namely, separate removal of these two features (a) on the forehead, (b) in the periorbital area, (c) on the cheeks and (d) across the entire face.

Establishment of serological herd profiles for zoonoses and production diseases in pigs by "meat juice multi-serology".

The most important pork-borne zoonotic diseases in humans such as Salmonelloses and Yersinioses cause only latent infections in pigs. Thus, the infection of pigs does not result in apparent or palpable alterations in the pig carcasses. This is the major reason, why the traditional meat inspection with adspection, palpation and incision is not able to control the food safety risks of today.

Lentiviral Nef suppresses iron uptake in a strain specific manner through inhibition of Transferrin endocytosis.

Background: Increased cellular iron levels are associated with high mortality in HIV-1 infection. Moreover iron is an important cofactor for viral replication, raising the question whether highly divergent lentiviruses actively modulate iron homeostasis. Here, we evaluated the effect on cellular iron uptake upon expression of the accessory protein Nef from different lentiviral strains.

Single Nef proteins from HIV type 1 subtypes C and F fail to upregulate invariant chain cell surface expression but are active for other functions.

HIV-1 Nef protein plays a major role in viral immunopathogenesis, modulating surface expression of several immune receptors, altering signal transduction pathways, and enhancing viral infectivity, among other activities. Nef also exhibits great intersubtype diversity, but most studies have been focused only on Nef proteins from subtype B. Thus, little is known about the functional capacities of nonsubtype B Nef proteins in host cells.

[Health-related quality of life of siblings of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus].

Background Information: A chronic illness in childhood or adolescents constitutes a drastic event for the whole family, especially for the healthy siblings. This could impair their quality of life.

Patients And Methods: We designed a case-control-study in three centres (Leipzig, Giessen and Augsburg) with questionaires sent to 72 diabetic children, 71 of their siblings and 63 children of neighbourhood (controls) aged between 8 and 16 years.