Kappa Free Light Chains in Multiple Sclerosis as a Marker of Intrathecal Humoral Response: A Sex-Disaggregated Study.

Background: Kappa free light chains (KFLCs) are emerging as promising biomarkers for intrathecal B cell activity for diagnosing multiple sclerosis (MS) through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis. In this study, we evaluated the ability of KFLC formulas to identify the presence of MS and their agreement with the 'gold standard' of CSF IgG oligoclonal bands (OCBs).

Methods: A total of 233 patients were included in this study: 149, comprising 43 males and 106 females, had MS, and the remainder, 40 males and 44 females, had other neurological diseases (ONDs).

Usefulness of Point-of-Care Testing for Respiratory Viruses in a Pediatric Emergency Department Setting.

: Respiratory tract infections (RTIs) are a leading cause of pediatric emergency department (PED) visits, especially in children under five. These infections are primarily viral, complicating diagnosis and management. This study assesses the impact of point-of-care (POC) rapid diagnostic tests for respiratory viruses on clinical and economic outcomes in a PED setting.

Random-Sequence DNA Oligomers Make Liquid Crystals: A Case of Collective Ordering in a Superdiverse Environment.

The availability of synthetic, analytical, and predictive tools makes DNA an ideal platform, not yet considered, to investigate statistical and soft matter physics. Here we report and interpret the equilibrium collective ordering in solutions of random-sequence DNA (rsDNA) oligomers of lengths = 8 and = 12. Despite the extreme molecular diversity inherent in rsDNA solutions, which for = 12 are composed of 20 million distinct molecular species, these systems develop long-range columnar liquid crystal (LC) ordering when equilibrated at high osmotic pressure.

In silico study of DNA mononucleotide self-assembly.

Recent experiments have demonstrated the self-assembly and long-range ordering of concentrated aqueous solutions of DNA and RNA mononucleotides. These are found to form Watson-Crick pairs that stack into columns that become spatially organized into a columnar liquid-crystalline phase. In this work, we numerically investigate this phase behavior by adopting an extremely coarse-grained model in which nucleotides are represented as semi-disk-like polyhedra decorated with attractive (patchy) sites that mimic the stacking and pairing interactions.