Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and vaccination elicit both T cell and B cell immune responses in immunocompetent individuals. However, the mechanisms underlying the antiviral effects mediated by CD4 T cells are not fully understood. In this study, we analyzed the culture supernatant (SN) from polyclonally stimulated human CD4 T cells as a model for soluble mediators derived from SARS-CoV-2-stimulated CD4 T cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNihon Ronen Igakkai Zasshi
September 2024
Aim: When elderly people return to their daily lives after inpatient treatment, they may be offered a chance to change the residence to which they are accustomed. The present study clarified the changes in the residence of elderly patients through an Integrated Community Care Ward (ICCW).
Subjects And Methods: Patients were admitted to and discharged from the ICCW (53 beds) of Hospital A, located in a city with a population of 30,000 and an aging rate of 37%, for 2 years from April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2020.
Aim: In Japan's public health system, dentists can assess and intervene in oral hypofunction cases. However, the associations between oral hypofunction and health outcomes and costs remain unclear. This study aimed to identify these associations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Stroke patients often face disabilities that significantly interfere with their daily lives. Poor nutritional status is a common issue amongst these patients, and malnutrition can severely impact their functional recovery post-stroke. Therefore, nutritional therapy is crucial in managing stroke outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe number of dengue cases has increased dramatically in recent years. In Latin America, the number of cases and deaths in 2023 was the highest ever recorded. We report on a patient who had been infected with dengue virus during his stay in Costa Rica in September 2023, and developed the disease after returning to Japan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue virus (DENV) is the causative agent of dengue. Although most infected individuals are asymptomatic or present with only mild symptoms, severe manifestations could potentially devastate human populations in tropical and subtropical regions. In hyperendemic regions such as South Asia and Southeast Asia (SEA), all four DENV serotypes (DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4) have been prevalent for several decades.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite high vaccination rates globally, countries are still grappling with new COVID infections, and patients diagnosed as mild dying at home during outpatient treatment. Hence, this study aim to identify, then validate, biomarkers that could predict if newly infected COVID-19 patients would subsequently require hospitalization or could recover safely with medication as outpatients. Serum cytokine/chemokine data from 129 COVID-19 patients within 7 days after the onset of symptoms in Bangladesh were used as training data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeartland virus (HRTV) causes generalized symptoms, severe shock, and multiple organ failure. We previously reported that interferon-α/β receptor knockout (IFNAR) mice infected intraperitoneally with 1 × 10 tissue culture-infective dose (TCID) of HRTV died, while those subcutaneously infected with the same dose of HRTV did not. The pathophysiology of IFNAR mice infected with HRTV and the mechanism underlying the difference in disease severity, which depends on HRTV infection route, were analyzed in this study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe efficacy and safety of the combination of biologic therapies remain unclear with an ineffective and insufficient single biologic for managing asthma. Herein, we report two cases using dual biologics for severe asthma and atopic dermatitis. A 52-year-old male patient who received dupilumab and mepolizumab, benralizumab, or tezepelumab, followed by bronchial thermoplasty, and a 41-year-old male patient who received dupilumab and omalizumab, both experienced improved asthma and atopic dermatitis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 that can have detrimental effects on multiple organs and accelerate patient mortality. This study, which encompassed 130 confirmed COVID-19 patients who were assessed at three different time points (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue virus (DENV), which has circulated in Vietnam for several decades, has multiple serotypes and genotypes. A 2019 dengue outbreak resulted in a larger number of cases than any other outbreak. We conducted a molecular characterization using samples collected in 2019-2020 from dengue patients in Hanoi and nearby cities located in northern Vietnam.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue virus (DENV) infections have unpredictable clinical outcomes, ranging from asymptomatic or minor febrile illness to severe and fatal disease. The severity of dengue infection is at least partly related to the replacement of circulating DENV serotypes and/or genotypes. To describe clinical profiles of patients and the viral sequence diversity corresponding to non-severe and severe cases, we collected patient samples from 2018 to 2022 at Evercare Hospital Dhaka, Bangladesh.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProviding a normal diet to a care recipient who is unable to form an adequate bolus may cause suffocation or aspiration pneumonia. We investigated whether differences in kinematic data of mandibular movements during mastication can be used as an indicator of the need for a dysphagia diet in the elderly in long-term care facilities. We included 63 participants who were provided with solid food in two long-term care facilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe tumor suppressor p53 (also known as TP53) plays a central role in cellular stress responses by regulating transcription of multiple target genes. The temporal dynamics of p53 are thought to be important for its function; these encode input information and are decoded to induce distinct cellular phenotypes. However, it remains unclear to what extent the temporal dynamics of p53 reflect the activity of p53-induced gene expression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study demonstrated the antibacterial and antiviral potential of condensed tannins and tannic acid when incorporated into fiber networks tested for functional material purposes. Condensed tannins were extracted from industrial bark of Norway spruce by using pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE), followed by purification of extracts by using XADHP7 treatment to obtain sugar-free extract. The chemical composition of the extracts was analyzed by using HPLC, GC‒MS and UHPLC after thiolytic degradation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 25-year-old patient with a primary immunodeficiency lacking immunoglobulin production experienced a relapse after a 239-day period of persistent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Viral genetic sequencing demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 had evolved during the infection period, with at least five mutations associated with host cellular immune recognition. Among them, the T32I mutation in ORF3a was found to evade recognition by CD4 T cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue virus (DENV) is an arbovirus whose transmission cycle involves disparate hosts: humans and mosquitoes. The error-prone nature of viral RNA replication drives the high mutation rates, and the consequently high genetic diversity affects viral fitness over this transmission cycle. A few studies have been performed to investigate the intrahost genetic diversity between hosts, although their mosquito infections were performed artificially in the laboratory setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroorganisms
April 2023
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is a phenomenon in which antibodies produced in the body after infection or vaccination may enhance subsequent viral infections in vitro and in vivo. Although rare, symptoms of viral diseases are also enhanced by ADE following infection or vaccination in vivo. This is thought to be due to the production of antibodies with low neutralizing activity that bind to the virus and facilitate viral entry, or antigen-antibody complexes that cause airway inflammation, or a predominance of T-helper 2 cells among the immune system cells which leads to excessive eosinophilic tissue infiltration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Systemic corticosteroid administration, also called short bursts (SB), is harmful for patients with asthma; however, the actual burden of one-day SB remains unsolved. This study aimed to elucidate the characteristics of patients requiring one-day SB against asthma in clinical practice.
Methods: Consecutive patients who regularly visited our hospital for asthma treatment between January 2019 and December 2020 were reviewed and followed for one year.
The COVID-19 pandemic was the worst public-health crisis in recent history. The impact of the pandemic in tropical regions was further complicated by other endemic tropical diseases, which can cause concurrent infections along with COVID-19. Here, we describe the clinical course of a patient with concurrent COVID-19 and scrub typhus infection.
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