Immune imprinting and vaccination interval underly XBB.1.5 monovalent vaccine immunogenicity.

As COVID-19 transitions into endemicity and vaccines are annually updated to circulating SARS-CoV-2 lineages such as JN.1, exposure intervals and immune imprinting become critical considerations for vaccination strategy. Imprinting by the ancestral spike protein has been observed with the bivalent Wuhan-Hu-1/BA.

Genetic characterization of a large cohort of individuals with a clinical suspicion of hypophosphatasia in the United States.

Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is a rare metabolic disease resulting from variants in ALPL, inherited in an either autosomal recessive or autosomal dominant manner. Sponsored clinical ALPL testing was offered in the US for individuals with a clinical suspicion of HPP. Gene variants were assessed to determine the likelihood of identifying disease-causing variants, uncover genotype-phenotype relationships, and for further understanding of ALPL variants in the US HPP population.

Increasing the number of minor salivary glands from patients with Sjögren's disease improves the diagnostic and measurement precision of the histological focus score.

Objectives: Minor salivary gland (MSG) biopsy has an important role in Sjögren's disease diagnosis and research. MSGs show within-patient variation in number of lymphocytic foci per unit area, but the optimal number of MSGs required to balance reproducibility and clinical acceptability has not been determined.

Methods: Monte Carlo simulations were performed to investigate impact of MSG number on (i) diagnosis based on focus score (FS) ≥1; (ii) reproducibility, defined as the extent to which 2 FS measurements obtained from 2 within-patient biopsies are the same, assuming no systematic differences have occurred in between biopsies; and (iii) smallest sample size required to detect a clinically meaningful difference in FS.

Isolation and Annotation of Phage AWGoat.

AWGoat, a lytic bacteriophage that infects was isolated from a goat pen in Charlotte, NC. Its genome is 65,496 bp long, with a GC content of 67.1%.

Oncocytoma: a rare neoplasm of the caruncle.

Oncocytoma is a rare benign neoplasm of the glandular tissue, most commonly found in the caruncle of the eye. These lesions have an excellent prognosis and have not been reported to recur after resection from the caruncle. Given the wide range of differentials and potential for malignancy, excision and histopathological examination are recommended to establish the diagnosis and guide proper treatment.