Steroid profiling in human primary teeth via liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry for long-term retrospective steroid measurement.

Steroid hormones are important modulators of many physiological processes, and measurements of steroids in blood, saliva, and urine matrices are widely used to assess endocrine pathologies and stress. However, these matrices cannot be used to retrospectively assess early-life stress and developmental endocrine pathologies, because they do not integrate steroid levels over the long term. A novel biological matrix in which to measure steroids is primary teeth (or "baby teeth").

Cell-based influenza vaccines: An effective vaccine option for under 60-year-olds.

Aim: Seasonal influenza poses a significant burden of disease, affecting not only older adults but also individuals under the age of 60. It carries a high economic burden, mainly driven by influenza-associated productivity losses in the working population. Conventional egg-based influenza vaccines may have reduced effectiveness due to antigen adaptation in eggs.

[Cell-based influenza vaccines: an effective vaccine option for under 60-year-olds].

The population < 60 years of age is also affected by a significant disease burden from seasonal influenza. It carries a high economic burden, mainly driven by influenza-associated productivity losses in the working population. Conventional egg-based influenza vaccines may experience reduced effectiveness due to antigen adaptation in eggs.

Maternal sucrose consumption alters behaviour and steroids in adult rat offspring.

Maternal diets can have dramatic effects on the physiology, metabolism, and behaviour of offspring that persist into adulthood. However, the effects of maternal sucrose consumption on offspring remain unclear. Here, female rats were fed either a sucrose diet with a human-relevant level of sucrose (25% of kcal) or a macronutrient-matched, isocaloric control diet before, during, and after pregnancy.

Sucrose consumption alters steroid and dopamine signalling in the female rat brain.

Sucrose consumption is associated with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive deficits. Sucrose intake during pregnancy might have particularly prominent effects on metabolic, endocrine, and neural physiology. It remains unclear how consumption of sucrose affects parous females, especially in brain circuits that mediate food consumption and reward processing.

New Vaccine Technologies to Combat Outbreak Situations.

Ever since the development of the first vaccine more than 200 years ago, vaccinations have greatly decreased the burden of infectious diseases worldwide, famously leading to the eradication of small pox and allowing the restriction of diseases such as polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and measles. A multitude of research efforts focuses on the improvement of established and the discovery of new vaccines such as the HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine in 2006. However, radical changes in the density, age distribution and traveling habits of the population worldwide as well as the changing climate favor the emergence of old and new pathogens that bear the risk of becoming pandemic threats.

IL-6 is required for protective immune responses against early filarial infection.

IL-6 has a wide range of biological activities that includes anti- and pro-inflammatory aspects. In this study, we investigated the role of IL-6 in immune responses to the rodent filarial nematode Litomosoides sigmodontis, a model for human filarial infections. IL-6 mice had a significantly increased worm burden after natural infection compared with wild type controls at early time points p.

Doxycycline inhibits experimental cerebral malaria by reducing inflammatory immune reactions and tissue-degrading mediators.

Malaria ranks among the most important infectious diseases worldwide and affects mostly people living in tropical countries. Mechanisms involved in disease progression are still not fully understood and specific treatments that might interfere with cerebral malaria (CM) are limited. Here we show that administration of doxycycline (DOX) prevented experimental CM (ECM) in Plasmodium berghei ANKA (PbA)-infected C57BL/6 wildtype (WT) mice in an IL-10-independent manner.

Unmodified mRNA in LNPs constitutes a competitive technology for prophylactic vaccines.

mRNA represents a promising new vaccine technology platform with high flexibility in regard to development and production. Here, we demonstrate that vaccines based on sequence optimized, chemically unmodified mRNA formulated in optimized lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are highly immunogenic and well tolerated in non-human primates (NHPs). Single intramuscular vaccination of NHPs with LNP-formulated mRNAs encoding rabies or influenza antigens induced protective antibody titers, which could be boosted and remained stable during an observation period of up to 1 year.

A maternal high-fat, high-sucrose diet has sex-specific effects on fetal glucocorticoids with little consequence for offspring metabolism and voluntary locomotor activity in mice.

Maternal overnutrition and obesity during pregnancy can have long-term effects on offspring physiology and behaviour. These developmental programming effects may be mediated by fetal exposure to glucocorticoids, which is regulated in part by placental 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11β-HSD) type 1 and 2. We tested whether a maternal high-fat, high-sucrose diet would alter expression of placental 11β-HSD1 and 2, thereby increasing fetal exposure to maternal glucocorticoids, with downstream effects on offspring physiology and behaviour.

Cannabinoid Receptor 2 Modulates Susceptibility to Experimental Cerebral Malaria through a CCL17-dependent Mechanism.

Cerebral malaria is a severe and often fatal complication of Plasmodium falciparum infection. It is characterized by parasite sequestration, a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, and a strong inflammation in the brain. We investigated the role of the cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2), an important modulator of neuroinflammatory responses, in experimental cerebral malaria (ECM).

Utilizing a TLR5-Adjuvanted Cytomegalovirus as a Lentiviral Vaccine in the Nonhuman Primate Model for AIDS.

Despite tremendous progress in our understanding of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) natural history and advances in HIV treatment, there is neither an approved vaccine nor a cure for infection. Here, we describe the development and characterization of a novel replicating vaccine vector utilizing Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and a TLR5 adjuvant. After partial truncation of the central, immunodominant hypervariable domain, flagellin (fliC) from Salmonella was cloned downstream of a codon optimized gag gene from simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and transiently expressed in telomerized rhesus fibroblast (TeloRF) cells in culture.

Locally elevated cortisol in lymphoid organs of the developing zebra finch but not Japanese quail or chicken.

Glucocorticoids are important for production of functional lymphocytes and immunity. In altricial neonates, adrenal glands are unresponsive and local glucocorticoid synthesis in lymphoid organs may be necessary to support lymphocyte development. Precocial neonates, in contrast, have fully responsive adrenal glucocorticoid production, and lymphoid glucocorticoid synthesis may not be necessary.

Early-life stress has sex-specific effects on immune function in adult song sparrows.

Multiple components of the immune system are modulated by environmental factors, including exposure to stressors. In particular, chronic stressors can impair development of the immune system, leading to alterations in immune function in adulthood. While these effects have been well established in mammals, less is known about how developmental stress modulates immunity in nonmammalian species.

Keep it clean: a visual approach to reinforce hand hygiene compliance in the emergency department.

Problem: Although hand hygiene strategies significantly reduce health care-associated infections, multiple studies have documented that hand hygiene is the most overlooked and poorly performed infection control intervention.

Methods: Emergency nurses and technicians (n = 95) in a 41-bed emergency department in eastern Virginia completed pretests and posttests, an education module, and two experiential learning activities reinforcing hand hygiene and infection control protocols.

Results: Posttest scores were significantly higher than pretest scores (t (108) = -6.

Developmental stress, condition, and birdsong: a case study in song sparrows.

Sexual-selection theory posits that ornaments and displays can reflect a signaler's condition, which in turn is affected both by recent and developmental conditions. Moreover, developmental conditions can induce correlations between sexually selected and other traits if both types of traits exhibit developmental phenotypic plasticity in response to stressors. Thus, sexually selected traits may reflect recent and/or developmental characteristics of signalers.

A mathematical model for predicting lane changes using the steering wheel angle.

Introduction: Positive safety effects of advanced driver assistance systems can only become effective if drivers accept and use these systems. Early detection of driver's intention would allow for selective system activation and therefore reduce false alarms.

Method: This driving simulator study aims at exploring early predictors of lane changes.

Developmental programming of the HPA and HPG axes by early-life stress in male and female song sparrows.

Variation in early environmental conditions can have long-term effects on physiology and behavior, a process referred to as developmental programming. In particular, exposure to early-life stressors can have long-term effects on regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axes. Although these effects have been well documented in mammals, less is known about how early-life stress affects regulation of these endocrine systems in non-mammalian species.

HPA axis regulation, survival, and reproduction in free-living sparrows: Functional relationships or developmental correlations?

A growing body of theoretical and empirical work has addressed the relationship between hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function and fitness. For example, the corticosterone (CORT)-fitness and CORT-condition hypotheses predict that baseline and/or stress-induced levels of glucocorticoids should relate to fitness, and recent empirical studies have reported relationships between HPA function and fitness-related sexually selected traits. Here we introduce a framework for evaluating whether such relationships reflect functional relationships or developmental correlations.

Developmental stress has sex-specific effects on nestling growth and adult metabolic rates but no effect on adult body size or body composition in song sparrows.

Variation in the prenatal and postnatal environments can have long-term effects on adult phenotype. In humans and other animals, exposure to stressors can lead to long-term changes in physiology. These changes may predispose individuals to disease, especially disorders involving energy metabolism.

Regulation of the HPA axis is related to song complexity and measures of phenotypic quality in song sparrows.

Regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a key component of the vertebrate stress response. Prior studies have found that variation in HPA responses were correlated to measures of fitness and physiological condition. In addition, sexually-selected traits have also been found to correlate to measures of condition.

DHEA and estradiol levels in brain, gonads, adrenal glands, and plasma of developing male and female European starlings.

Traditionally, sexual differentiation of the brain was thought to be driven by gonadal hormones, particularly testosterone (T). However, recent studies in songbirds suggest that other steroids may also be important. For example, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) can be synthesized by the gonads, adrenal glands, and/or brain and locally metabolized into T and 17β-estradiol (E(2)).

Induction of pro-inflammatory mediators in Plasmodium berghei infected BALB/c mice breaks blood-brain-barrier and leads to cerebral malaria in an IL-12 dependent manner.

A severe complication of Plasmodium infection is cerebral malaria, a condition mainly attributed to overwhelming inflammatory immune reactions of the host. Murine models differing in susceptibility to experimental cerebral malaria (ECM) allow detailed studies of the host response. We show that ECM- resistant BALB/c mice were driven into interferon gamma- and IL-12-dependent ECM and subsequent death if they received CpG-oligonucleotides after Plasmodium berghei ANKA (PbA) infection.

Multiple measures elucidate glucocorticoid responses to environmental variation in predation threat.

Predator-induced changes in the glucocorticoid responses of prey have been proposed to mediate indirect predator effects on prey demography. Ambiguities exist, however, as to whether differences in predation threat in the environment at large affect the mean glucocorticoid response in wild birds and mammals, and whether this is likely to affect reproduction. Most studies to date that have examined glucocorticoid responses to environmental variation in predation threat have evaluated just one of the several potential measures of the glucocorticoid response, and this may be the source of many ambiguities.

Steroid concentrations in plasma, whole blood and brain: effects of saline perfusion to remove blood contamination from brain.

The brain and other organs locally synthesize steroids. Local synthesis is suggested when steroid levels are higher in tissue than in the circulation. However, measurement of both circulating and tissue steroid levels are subject to methodological considerations.