Development and validation of a vitiligo-specific quality-of-life instrument (VitiQoL).

Background: Vitiligo significantly affects a person's health-related quality of life (HRQL). Although a small number of generic, and disease-specific, dermatologic HRQL measures exist, currently no vitiligo-specific instrument is available to capture disease-targeted concerns and issues.

Objective: We sought to develop and validate a vitiligo-specific self-report instrument for HRQL.

Pemphigoid gestationis.

Pemphigoid gestationis is a rare autoimmune blistering disease of pregnancy. It is characterized by pruritic, urticarial plaques with the development of tense vesicles and bullae within the lesions. Pemphigoid gestationis has been associated with premature delivery, small-for-gestational-age infants.

Generalized eruptive keratoacanthomas of Grzybowski.

A 48-year-old man presented with a two-year history of a generalized, pruritic eruption that was associated with numerous, dome-shaped papules and nodulocystic lesions. Biopsy specimens have shown keratoacanthomas and a lichenoid dermatitis. Evaluation for malignant conditions has been negative.

Hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.

We report three children with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED), which includes two sisters with unaffected parents (and therefore likely autosomal recessive inheritance of HED) and an unrelated boy. Each patient presented with hypohidrosis, sparse hair, oligodontia with conical teeth, periorbital hyperpigmentation, eczematous dermatitis, and facial features that include frontal bossing, a saddle nose, and prominent lips. HED is caused by defects in the ectodysplasin signal transduction pathway.

CHOP/GADD153 is a mediator of apoptotic death in substantia nigra dopamine neurons in an in vivo neurotoxin model of parkinsonism.

There is increasing evidence that neuron death in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, is due to the activation of programmed cell death. However, the upstream mediators of cell death remain largely unknown. One approach to the identification of upstream mediators is to perform gene expression analysis in disease models.

Translational repression mediates activation of nuclear factor kappa B by phosphorylated translation initiation factor 2.

Numerous stressful conditions activate kinases that phosphorylate the alpha subunit of translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2alpha), thus attenuating mRNA translation and activating a gene expression program known as the integrated stress response. It has been noted that conditions associated with eIF2alpha phosphorylation, notably accumulation of unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), or ER stress, are also associated with activation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappaB) and that eIF2alpha phosphorylation is required for NF-kappaB activation by ER stress. We have used a pharmacologically activable version of pancreatic ER kinase (PERK, an ER stress-responsive eIF2alpha kinase) to uncouple eIF2alpha phosphorylation from stress and found that phosphorylation of eIF2alpha is both necessary and sufficient to activate both NF-kappaB DNA binding and an NF-kappaB reporter gene.

Translation reinitiation at alternative open reading frames regulates gene expression in an integrated stress response.

Stress-induced eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2) alpha phosphorylation paradoxically increases translation of the metazoan activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4), activating the integrated stress response (ISR), a pro-survival gene expression program. Previous studies implicated the 5' end of the ATF4 mRNA, with its two conserved upstream ORFs (uORFs), in this translational regulation. Here, we report on mutation analysis of the ATF4 mRNA which revealed that scanning ribosomes initiate translation efficiently at both uORFs and ribosomes that had translated uORF1 efficiently reinitiate translation at downstream AUGs.

Cytoprotection by pre-emptive conditional phosphorylation of translation initiation factor 2.

Transient phosphorylation of the alpha-subunit of translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2alpha) represses translation and activates select gene expression under diverse stressful conditions. Defects in the eIF2alpha phosphorylation-dependent integrated stress response impair resistance to accumulation of malfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER stress), to oxidative stress and to nutrient deprivations. To study the hypothesized protective role of eIF2alpha phosphorylation in isolation of parallel stress signaling pathways, we fused the kinase domain of pancreatic endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK), an ER stress-inducible eIF2alpha kinase that is normally activated by dimerization, to a protein module that binds a small dimerizer molecule.

An integrated stress response regulates amino acid metabolism and resistance to oxidative stress.

Eukaryotic cells respond to unfolded proteins in their endoplasmic reticulum (ER stress), amino acid starvation, or oxidants by phosphorylating the alpha subunit of translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2alpha). This adaptation inhibits general protein synthesis while promoting translation and expression of the transcription factor ATF4. Atf4(-/-) cells are impaired in expressing genes involved in amino acid import, glutathione biosynthesis, and resistance to oxidative stress.