Publications by authors named "Kent Langston"

Exercise has long been acknowledged for its powerful disease-preventing, health-promoting effects. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for the beneficial effects of exercise are not fully understood. Inflammation is a component of the stress response to exercise.

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Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the causative agent of Lyme disease, establishes a long-term infection and leads to disease manifestations that are the result of host immune responses to the pathogen. Inflammatory manifestations resolve spontaneously despite continued bacterial presence, suggesting inflammatory cells become less responsive over time. This is mimicked by in vitro repeated stimulations, resulting in tolerance, a phenotypic subset of innate immune memory.

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Following acute injury, stromal cells promote tissue regeneration by a diversity of mechanisms. Time-resolved single-cell RNA sequencing of muscle mesenchymal stromal cells (MmSCs) responding to acute injury identified an 'early-responder' subtype that spiked on day 1 and expressed a notable array of transcripts encoding immunomodulators. IL-1β, TNF-α and oncostatin M each strongly and rapidly induced MmSCs transcribing this immunomodulatory program.

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Exercise enhances physical performance and reduces the risk of many disorders such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, and cancer. Exercise characteristically incites an inflammatory response, notably in skeletal muscles. Although some effector mechanisms have been identified, regulatory elements activated in response to exercise remain obscure.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Among patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), neuropsychiatric symptoms are common, affecting up to 80% of adults and 95% of children, with type 1 interferons, especially interferon alpha, playing a role in these symptoms.
  • - Researchers created a mouse model that mimics NPSLE conditions and discovered increased levels of type 1 interferon in the body, along with symptoms like anxiety and fatigue.
  • - The study found that type 1 interferon affects gene expression in the brain, leading to reduced cellular communication and potentially contributing to NPSLE symptoms, suggesting that targeting this signaling pathway could be a new treatment approach.
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bioRxiv has withdrawn this manuscript because it was posted without the consent of all authors. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.

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Regulatory T cells (T) in nonlymphoid organs provide critical brakes on inflammation and regulate tissue homeostasis. Although so-called "tissue T" are phenotypically and functionally diverse, serving to optimize their performance and survival, up-regulation of pathways related to circadian rhythms is a feature they share. Yet the diurnal regulation of T and its consequences are controversial and poorly understood.

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Foxp3+CD4+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) are famous for their role in maintaining immunological tolerance. With their distinct transcriptomes, growth-factor dependencies and T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoires, Tregs in nonlymphoid tissues, termed "tissue-Tregs," also perform a variety of functions to help assure tissue homeostasis. For example, they are important for tissue repair and regeneration after various types of injury, both acute and chronic.

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Idiopathic subglottic stenosis (iSGS) is a progressive fibrotic disease characterized by life-threatening airway narrowing. Although the molecular underpinnings are unknown, previous reports showing that subglottic serial intralesional steroid injections (SILSIs) improve clinical outcomes suggest a steroid-sensitive pathway in iSGS. Herein, a prospective study was conducted to determine the changes in profibrotic markers during SILSI to identify steroid-sensitive profibrotic drivers.

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Skeletal muscle is an important secretory organ in mammals, producing myriad chemical mediators ("myokines") with distinct biological action in different tissues, including anti-inflammatory activity. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have recently been identified as a mode of myokine transport from muscle, facilitating such anti-inflammatory activity. In this report, we have demonstrated that high-intensity ultrasound (US) strongly induces EV secretion from cultured myotubes without a reduction in cell viability.

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Macrophages are activated during microbial infection to coordinate inflammatory responses and host defense. Here we find that in macrophages activated by bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), mitochondrial glycerol 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPD2) regulates glucose oxidation to drive inflammatory responses. GPD2, a component of the glycerol phosphate shuttle, boosts glucose oxidation to fuel the production of acetyl coenzyme A, acetylation of histones and induction of genes encoding inflammatory mediators.

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Hypertriglyceridemia is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Dietary interventions based on protein restriction (PR) reduce circulating triglycerides (TGs), but underlying mechanisms and clinical relevance remain unclear. Here, we show that 1 week of a protein-free diet without enforced calorie restriction significantly lowered circulating TGs in both lean and diet-induced obese mice.

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Macrophages are found in most tissues of the body, where they have tissue- and context-dependent roles in maintaining homeostasis as well as coordinating adaptive responses to various stresses. Their capacity for specialized functions is controlled by polarizing signals, which activate macrophages by upregulating transcriptional programs that encode distinct effector functions. An important conceptual advance in the field of macrophage biology, emerging from recent studies, is that macrophage activation is critically supported by metabolic shifts.

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Although T cells play a critical role in protection from viruses, bacteria, and tumors, they also cause autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. Unwanted T cell responses during organ transplant, graft-versus-host disease, and allergies are also major clinical problems. Although drugs are available to suppress unwanted immune responses, they have limited efficacy with serious side effects.

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Unlabelled: Unlike laboratory animals, humans are infected with multiple pathogens, including the highly prevalent herpesviruses. The purpose of these studies was to determine the effect of gammaherpesvirus latency on T cell number and differentiation during subsequent heterologous viral infections. Mice were first infected with murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV68), a model of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, and then after latency was established, they were challenged with the Armstrong strain of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV).

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Recognition of peptide Major Histocompatibility Complexes (MHC) by the T cell receptor causes rapid production of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROI) in naïve CD8(+) T cells. Because ROI such as H2O2 are membrane permeable, mechanisms must exist to prevent overoxidation of surface proteins. In this study we used fluorescently labeled conjugates of maleimide to measure the level of cell surface free thiols (CSFT) during the development, activation and differentiation of CD8(+) T cells.

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Generation of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROI) following antigen receptor ligation is critical to promote cellular responses. However, the effect of antioxidant treatment on humoral immunity during a viral infection was unknown. Mice were infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) and treated with Mn(III)tetrakis(4-benzoic acid)porphyrin chloride (MnTBAP), a superoxide dismutase mimetic, from days 0 to 8 postinfection.

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