What Could Lead to the Production of Anti-Rheumatoid Antibodies in Patients with Brucellosis Spondylodiscitis: Possible Causes.

Background: High titers of specific antibodies to cyclic citrulline peptide (ACCP) are often present in the serum of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and, together with rheumatoid factor (RF), are a diagnostic marker of RA. Brucellosis is a zoonotic infection in which osteoarticular involvement occurs in 10-85% of patients. RF in brucellosis patients is significantly higher than in healthy people.

[Mistakes in the diagnosis of neuromyelitis optic spectrum diseases lead to wrong therapy and deterioration of patients' condition].

Neuromyelitis optic spectrum diseases (NMOSD) are a group of rare neuroimmunological diseases involving mainly the optic nerves and spinal cord, to a lesser extent the brain, and causing severe exacerbations that lead to persistent disability of patients. For many years, opticoneuromyelitis was considered a prognostically unfavorable variant of the course of multiple sclerosis (MS), however, in 2004, specific autoantibodies to aquaporin-4 were found in such patients, which made it possible to isolate NMOSD into a separate group of demyelinating diseases other than MS. Due to similar clinical signs and the predominantly remitting course of diseases, it is often difficult to make a correct diagnosis and, accordingly, prescribe effective therapy, which often leads to incorrectly selected therapy with incorrect diagnosis.

[Microbiota markers level in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of patients with different types of multiple sclerosis and radiologically isolated syndrome].

Objective: To assess the level of microbiota markers in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with different types of multiple sclerosis (MS), people with radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS) and control subjects.

Material And Methods: We used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to evaluate the levels of microbiota markers in 69 patients with different types of MS (27 patients in the acute stage, 35 patients with MS in remission, 7 patients with primary-progressive MS), 10 people with RIS, and 47 control subjects (different diseases of the nervous system of a non-autoimmune or inflammatory nature).

Results: We showed a statistically significant increase in the content of various microbiota markers in the CSF of patients with MS compared with the control group.

Uncovering the Optimal Molecular Characteristics of Hydrophobe-Containing Polypeptoids to Induce Liposome or Cell Membrane Fragmentation.

Cellular functions of membrane proteins are strongly coupled to their structures and aggregation states in the cellular membrane. Molecular agents that can induce the fragmentation of lipid membranes are highly sought after as they are potentially useful for extracting membrane proteins in their native lipid environment. Toward this goal, we investigated the fragmentation of synthetic liposome using hydrophobe-containing polypeptoids (HCPs), a class of facially amphiphilic pseudo-peptidic polymers.

Evaluation of the structure of the human microbiome in multiple sclerosis by the concentrations of microbial markers in the blood.

The relationship between multiple sclerosis and the state of the human microbiome was studied, namely, the change in the representation of microbiota phylotypes, the proportion of coccal flora, the proportion of anaerobic, gram-negative, proteolytically active microflora, as well as the concentration of markers of bacterial plasmalogen and endotoxin in the blood. Microbiome studies were carried out by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry of microbial markers in the blood. A statistically significant increase in blood concentrations of the total level of microbial markers of bacterial plasmalogen and endotoxin was determined in multiple sclerosis, which may be associated with an increase in the permeability of the intestinal wall.