Methadone-Assisted Opiate Withdrawal and Subsequent Heroin Abstinence: The Importance of Psychological Preparedness.

Background And Objectives: Treatment guidelines emphasize patients' readiness for transitioning from opiate substitution treatment (OST) to opiate withdrawal and abstinence. Psychological preparedness indicators for this transition were examined.

Methods: Patients (all male) were recruited from three treatment settings: prison, an inpatient detoxification unit, and an outpatient clinic.

Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Memory chunking improves retrieval of prior typing episodes.

Hierarchical control of skilled performance depends on chunking of several lower-level units into a single higher-level unit. The present study examined the relationship between chunking and recognition of trained materials in the context of typewriting. In 3 experiments, participants were trained with typing nonwords and were later tested on their recognition of the trained materials.

Comparative analysis of the feline immunoglobulin repertoire.

Next-Generation Sequencing combined with bioinformatics is a powerful tool for analyzing the large number of DNA sequences present in the expressed antibody repertoire and these data sets can be used to advance a number of research areas including antibody discovery and engineering. The accurate measurement of the immune repertoire sequence composition, diversity and abundance is important for understanding the repertoire response in infections, vaccinations and cancer immunology and could also be useful for elucidating novel molecular targets. In this study 4 individual domestic cats (Felis catus) were subjected to antibody repertoire sequencing with total number of sequences generated 1079863 for VH for IgG, 1050824 VH for IgM, 569518 for VK and 450195 for VL.

Characterisation of a novel Fc conjugate of macrophage colony-stimulating factor.

We have produced an Fc conjugate of colony-stimulating factor (CSF) 1 with an improved circulating half-life. CSF1-Fc retained its macrophage growth-promoting activity, and did not induce proinflammatory cytokines in vitro. Treatment with CSF1-Fc did not produce adverse effects in mice or pigs.

Fundamental characteristics of the expressed immunoglobulin VH and VL repertoire in different canine breeds in comparison with those of humans and mice.

Complementarity determining regions (CDR) are responsible for binding antigen and provide substantial diversity to the antibody repertoire, with VH CDR3 of the immunoglobulin variable heavy (VH) domain playing a dominant role. In this study, we examined 1200 unique canine VH and 500 unique variable light (VL) sequences of large and small canine breeds derived from peripheral B cells. Unlike the human and murine repertoire, the canine repertoire is heavily dominated by the Canis lupus familiaris IGHV1 subgroup, evolutionarily closest to the human IGHV3 subgroup.

Cloning and expression of porcine Colony Stimulating Factor-1 (CSF-1) and Colony Stimulating Factor-1 Receptor (CSF-1R) and analysis of the species specificity of stimulation by CSF-1 and Interleukin 34.

Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (CSF-1) controls the survival, differentiation and proliferation of cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system. A second ligand for the CSF-1R, Interleukin 34 (IL-34), has been described, but its physiological role is not yet known. The domestic pig provides an alternative to traditional rodent models for evaluating potential therapeutic applications of CSF-1R agonists and antagonists.

Serotype distribution and production of muramidase-released protein, extracellular factor and suilysin by field strains of Streptococcus suis isolated in the United States.

Streptococcus suis is an important swine pathogen and a zoonotic agent. Differences in virulence have been noted among the 33 described serotypes, serotype 2 being considered the most virulent. In this study, we aimed at assessing the serotype distribution and the production of virulence-associated markers by strains recovered from diseased pigs in the United States (U.

A novel signature-tagged mutagenesis system for Streptococcus suis serotype 2.

Streptococcus suis is an economically important, zoonotic pathogen causing death and disease in swine. The objectives of this study were to develop a signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) system for S. suis serotype 2 and to identify genes required for in vivo virulence.