Imaging upregulated brain arachidonic acid metabolism in HIV-1 transgenic rats.

This article has been retracted by the Editors in Chief at the request of the author Stanley I Rapoport following the finding of the National Institutes of Health that Dr Mireille Basselin engaged in research misconduct by fabricating data in Figure 4A–C and Figure 5B. None of the other authors are implicated in any way.

Extracellular aromatic biosurfactant produced by Tsukamurella pseudospumae and T. spumae during growth on n-hexadecane.

Biosurfactants are surface-active agents produced by microorganisms and show increasing significance in various industrial applications. A great variety of these secondary metabolites are described to occur within actinomycetes, amongst trehalose lipids and oligosaccharide lipids produced by the family Tsukamurellaceae. This study reports on the production of not yet described compounds with surface active behavior by non-pathogenic Tsukamurella pseudospumae and Tsukamurella spumae during growth on hydrophobic carbon sources.

Frequency, Private Specificity, and Cross-Reactivity of Preexisting Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)-Specific CD8+ T Cells in HCV-Seronegative Individuals: Implications for Vaccine Responses.

Unlabelled: T cell responses play a critical role in controlling or clearing viruses. Therefore, strategies to prevent or treat infections include boosting T cell responses. T cells specific for various pathogens have been reported in unexposed individuals and an influence of such cells on the response toward vaccines is conceivable.

Altered effector functions of NK cells in chronic hepatitis C are associated with IFNL3 polymorphism.

Interferon α-mediated effector functions of NK cells may contribute to the control of HCV replication and the pathogenesis of liver disease. The single-nucleotide polymorphism rs12979860 near IFNL3 (previously known as IL28B) is important in response to IFN-α treatment and in spontaneous resolution of acute hepatitis C. The role of the IFNL3 polymorphism in NK cell function is unclear.

Minocycline reduces spontaneous hemorrhage in mouse models of cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

Background And Purpose: Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a common cause of recurrent intracerebral hemorrhage in the elderly. Previous studies have shown that CAA induces inflammation and expression of matrix metalloproteinase-2 and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (gelatinases) in amyloid-laden vessels. Here, we inhibited both using minocycline in CAA mouse models to determine whether spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage could be reduced.

Effect of a stroke support service in Germany: a randomized trial.

Purpose: This trial investigated the effect of a stroke support service on physical functioning in post-stroke outpatients.

Methods: The randomized trial took place in two urban hospitals in Germany. The intervention covered a post-discharge stroke support service including following components: outreach work (via telephone contact and home-visit), informational events, training sessions, online portal, and written patient information.

The use of glial data in human health assessments of environmental contaminants.

Central nervous system (CNS) glia (i.e., astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes) are essential for maintaining neuronal homeostasis, and they orchestrate an organized cellular response to CNS injury.

Evaluation of the ToxRTool's ability to rate the reliability of toxicological data for human health hazard assessments.

Regulatory agencies often utilize results from peer reviewed publications for hazard assessments. A problem in doing so is the lack of well-accepted tools to objectively, efficiently and systematically assess the quality of published toxicological studies. Herein, we evaluated the publicly available software-based ToxRTool (Toxicological data Reliability assessment Tool) for use in human health hazard assessments.

Advances in inline quantification of co-eluting proteins in chromatography: Process-data-based model calibration and application towards real-life separation issues.

Pooling decisions in preparative liquid chromatography for protein purification are usually based on univariate UV absorption measurements that are not able to differentiate between product and co-eluting contaminants. This can result in inconsistent pool purities or yields, if there is a batch-to-batch variability of the feedstock. To overcome this analytical bottleneck, a tool for selective inline quantification of co-eluting model proteins using mid-UV absorption spectra and Partial Least Squares Regression (PLS) was presented in a previous study and applied for real-time pooling decisions.

Holmes and Horrax (1919) revisited: impaired binocular fusion as a cause of "flat vision" after right parietal brain damage - a case study.

The complete loss of binocular depth perception ("flat vision") was first thoroughly described by Holmes and Horrax (1919), and has been occasionally reported thereafter in patients with bilateral posterior-parietal lesions. Though partial spontaneous recovery occurred in some cases, the precise cause(s) of this condition remained obscure for almost a century. Here, we describe a unique patient (EH) with a large right-sided occipito-parietal hemorrhage showing a complete loss of visual depth perception for several months post-stroke.

[Tryptophan immunoadsorption for multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica: therapy option for acute relapses during pregnancy and breastfeeding].

Background: Approximately 25 % of women with multiple sclerosis (MS) suffer clinically relevant relapses during pregnancy. Almost all disease-modifying drugs are contraindicated in pregnancy. High-dose glucocorticoids have some serious risks, especially within the first trimester.

Dissociable spatial and non-spatial attentional deficits after circumscribed thalamic stroke.

Thalamic nuclei act as sensory, motor and cognitive relays between multiple subcortical areas and the cerebral cortex. They play a crucial role in cognitive functions such as executive functioning, memory and attention. In the acute period after thalamic stroke attentional deficits are common.

Regulatory T cells resist virus infection-induced apoptosis.

Unlabelled: Regulatory T (Treg) cells are important in the maintenance of self-tolerance, and the depletion of Treg cells correlates with autoimmune development. It has been shown that type I interferon (IFN) responses induced early in the infection of mice can drive memory (CD44hi) CD8 and CD4 T cells into apoptosis, and we questioned here whether the apoptosis of CD44-expressing Treg cells might be involved in the infection-associated autoimmune development. Instead, we found that Treg cells were much more resistant to apoptosis than CD44hi CD8 and CD4 T cells at days 2 to 3 after lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection, when type I IFN levels are high.

Comprehensive phenotyping of regulatory T cells after liver transplantation.

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play an important role in controlling alloreactivity after solid organ transplantation, but they may also impair antiviral immunity. We hypothesized that the Treg frequency and the Treg phenotype are altered in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected recipients of liver transplantation (LT) with possible prognostic implications. Tregs from 141 individuals, including healthy individuals, LT recipients with or without persistent HCV infections, and nontransplant patients with chronic HCV, were studied.

Timing of spatial priming within the fronto-parietal attention network: A TMS study.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) are known to be part of a cortical network involved in visual spatial attention. Top-down control can modulate processing at target and distractor positions over a sequence of trials, leading to positive priming at prior target positions and negative priming at prior distractor positions. In order to elucidate the exact time course of this top-down mechanism we here propose a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocol.

Compensatory eye and head movements of patients with homonymous hemianopia in the naturalistic setting of a driving simulation.

Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is a frequent deficit resulting from lesions to post-chiasmal brain structures with a significant negative impact on activities of daily living. To address the question how patients with HH may compensate their visual field defect in a naturalistic environment, we performed a driving simulation experiment and quantitatively analyzed both eye and head movements using a head-mounted pupil camera. 14 patients with HH and 14 matched healthy control subjects participated in the study.

Deletion of Pim kinases elevates the cellular levels of reactive oxygen species and sensitizes to K-Ras-induced cell killing.

The Pim protein kinases contribute to transformation by enhancing the activity of oncogenic Myc and Ras, which drives significant metabolic changes during tumorigenesis. In this report, we demonstrate that mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs) lacking all three isoforms of Pim protein kinases, triple knockout (TKO), cannot tolerate the expression of activated K-Ras (K-Ras(G12V)) and undergo cell death. Transduction of K-Ras(G12V) into these cells markedly increased the level of cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS).

The PIM family of oncoproteins: small kinases with huge implications in myeloid leukemogenesis and as therapeutic targets.

PIM kinases are a family of serine/threonine kinases involved in cell survival and proliferation. There is significant structural similarity between the three PIM kinases (PIM1, PIM2 and PIM3) and only few amino acid differences. Although, several studies have specifically monitored the role of PIM1 in tumorigenesis, much less is known about PIM2 and PIM3.

Reducing CD73 expression by IL1β-Programmed Th17 cells improves immunotherapeutic control of tumors.

T cells of the T helper (Th)17 subset offer promise in adoptive T-cell therapy for cancer. However, current protocols for ex vivo programming of Th17 cells, which include TGFβ exposure, increase the expression of CD39 and CD73, two cell surface ATP ectonucleotidases that reduce T-cell effector functions and promote immunosuppression. Here, we report that ATP-mediated suppression of IFNγ production by Th17 cells can be overcome by genetic ablation of CD73 or by using IL1β instead of TGFβ to program Th17 cells ex vivo.

A heterogeneous hierarchy of co-regulatory receptors regulates exhaustion of HCV-specific CD8 T cells in patients with chronic hepatitis C.

Background & Aims: The functionality of virus-specific T cells is regulated by a sophisticated network of an expanding repertoire of co-regulatory receptors, which could be harnessed for immunotherapeutic applications. However, targeting particular pathways during persistent virus infections has resulted in variable outcomes. The extent to which T cell exhaustion can be reversed, by targeting multiple co-regulatory pathways, still remains not fully investigated.