[Ileocolitis in an immunocompromised patient. Crohn's disease or an infection?].

Background: Histoplasma capsulatum is an endemic fungus in especially tropical areas. While mostly asymptomatic, histoplasmosis can be life-threatening in immunocompromised patients.

Case Description: A 60-year-old woman of Suriname origin, with a history of renal transplantation and use of mycophenolate mofetil and prednisone, presented with abdominal pain and diarrhea.

Colorectal motor and sensory function after hysterectomy.

Purpose: Women may develop constipation after hysterectomy. The pathophysiology and underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. They may originate from either neural damage of rectum and colon or changes in anatomical constellation of the remaining pelvic organs.

Comparative transcriptional analysis of Bacillus subtilis cells overproducing either secreted proteins, lipoproteins or membrane proteins.

Background: Bacillus subtilis is a favorable host for the production of industrially relevant proteins because of its capacity of secreting proteins into the medium to high levels, its GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status, its genetic accessibility and its capacity to grow in large fermentations. However, production of heterologous proteins still faces limitations.

Results: This study aimed at the identification of bottlenecks in secretory protein production by analyzing the response of B.

Two patients with extremely elevated tumor markers: where is the malignancy?

Serum tumor markers are useful to evaluate a cancer's response to treatment, for early detection of cancer relapse, and, in some cases, to diagnose malignancy. In this paper, we present two patients with significantly elevated serum tumor markers without evidence of malignant disease. An 18-year-old patient suffering from autoimmune hepatitis had markedly increased alpha-fetoprotein (aFP) levels (2,002 μg/L; normal <10 ug/L).

A novel screening system for secretion of heterologous proteins in Bacillus subtilis.

High-level production of secretory proteins in Bacillus subtilis leads to a stress response involving the two-component system CssRS and its target genes htrA and htrB. Here, we used this sensing system in a reporter strain in which gfp is under control of P(htrA) , the secretion stress responsive promoter of htrA. Overexpression of heterologous secretory proteins in this strain results in green fluorescent cells, which can be separated from non-secreting, low fluorescent cells using a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS).