Publications by authors named "Westermann J"

Background: Distinguishing donor- vs. recipient-derived myelodysplastic neoplasm (MDS) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is challenging and has direct therapeutical implications.

Methods: Here, we took a translational approach that we used in addition to conventional diagnostic techniques to resolve the origin of MDS in a 38-year-old patient with acquired aplastic anemia and evolving MDS after first allo-HSCT.

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Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML) often exhibits adverse (genetic) features. There is ongoing discussion on the impact of t-AML on long-term outcome in AML. Therefore, we retrospectively analyzed clinical and biological characteristics of 1133 AML patients (225 t-AML patients and 908 de novo AML patients) with a median follow-up of 81.

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What Is The Context Informing The Project?: Effective communication within a medical team is crucial not only because it results in higher job satisfaction and better joint decision-making among team members, but also because, ultimately, it makes for high-quality, patient-centered care. Since the transition to the clinical phase of study poses a challenge for many medical students, the University of Lübeck introduced "Ich im Team" , a German-language communication workshop for third-year medical students, in the 2020/21 winter semester.

Why Was The Project Started?: The workshop forms a basis for future collaboration and is meant to strengthen the interpersonal skills needed for working in teams, communicating with patients, and supporting a no-blame culture.

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The XENONnT dark matter experiment.

Eur Phys J C Part Fields

August 2024

The multi-staged XENON program at INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso aims to detect dark matter with two-phase liquid xenon time projection chambers of increasing size and sensitivity. The XENONnT experiment is the latest detector in the program, planned to be an upgrade of its predecessor XENON1T. It features an active target of 5.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study looks at how early palliative care can help improve the quality of life for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) who experience severe symptoms, a crucial aspect not previously examined in depth.
  • Patients with mRCC were admitted to a palliative care unit, and their symptoms were tracked before, during, and after treatment, revealing that many suffered from pain, dyspnea, fatigue, and the need for assistance.
  • Results showed that multidisciplinary palliative care significantly reduced symptom scores and pain levels, indicating the effectiveness of integrating palliative care early in treatment for mRCC patients.
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Background: The anatomy dissection course is a major part of the first two years of the traditional medical curriculum in Germany. The vast amount of content to be learned and the repeated examination is unanimously perceived by students and teachers as a major stress factor that contributes to the increase of psychosocial stress during the first two years of the course of study. Published interventions for specific stress reduction are scarce.

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Article Synopsis
  • Genome duplication can lead to polyploid plants, which have potential for innovation in evolution and crop improvement, but often struggle with fertility issues.
  • Newly formed polyploids exhibit slow pollen tube growth, abnormal structure, and physiological problems that cause premature bursting and gene expression changes.
  • These fertility issues can improve in evolved polyploids, with specific gene variants linked to better pollen tube performance in natural tetraploid plants.
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Background: Ferritin is an established biomarker in the diagnosis of secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), which is diagnosed by the HLH-2004 criteria. Among these criteria, detection of hemophagocytosis through invasive procedures may delay early life saving treatment. Our aim was to investigate the value of hemophagocytosis in diagnosing HLH in critically ill patients.

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Facial mimicry is the automatic imitation of the facial affect expressions of others. It serves as an important component of interpersonal communication and affective co-experience. Facial mimicry has so far been measured by Electromyography (EMG), which requires a complex measuring apparatus.

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The T cell receptor (TCR) determines specificity and affinity for both foreign and self-peptides presented by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Although the strength of TCR interactions with self-pMHC impacts T cell function, it has been challenging to identify TCR sequence features that predict T cell fate. To discern patterns distinguishing TCRs from naive CD4 T cells with low versus high self-reactivity, we used data from 42 mice to train a machine learning (ML) algorithm that identifies population-level differences between TCRβ sequence sets.

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Acute myeloid leukemia with complex karyotype (CK-AML) is associated with poor prognosis, which is only in part explained by underlying TP53 mutations. Especially in the presence of complex chromosomal rearrangements, such as chromothripsis, the outcome of CK-AML is dismal. However, this degree of complexity of genomic rearrangements contributes to the leukemogenic phenotype and treatment resistance of CK-AML remains largely unknown.

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Hands-on courses utilizing preserved human tissues for educational training offer an important pathway to acquire basic anatomical knowledge. Owing to the reevaluation of formaldehyde limits by the European Commission, a joint approach was chosen by the German-speaking anatomies in Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) to find commonalities among embalming protocols and infrastructure. A survey comprising 537 items was circulated to all anatomies in German-speaking Europe.

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Cure rates in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) improved using pediatric-based chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation (SCT). However, limited data on the health condition of cured adults are available whereas pediatric data cannot be transferred. The GMALL analyzed the health status in survivors of adult ALL retrospectively.

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Large cellular antigens comprise a variety of different epitopes leading to a T cell response of extreme diversity. Therefore, tracking such a response by next generation sequencing of the T cell receptor (TCR) in order to identify common TCR properties among the expanding T cells represents an enormous challenge. In the present study we adapted a set of established indices to elucidate alterations in the TCR repertoire regarding sequence similarities between TCRs including VJ segment usage and diversity of nucleotide coding of a single TCR.

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The selection of low-radioactive construction materials is of the utmost importance for rare-event searches and thus critical to the XENONnT experiment. Results of an extensive radioassay program are reported, in which material samples have been screened with gamma-ray spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and Rn emanation measurements. Furthermore, the cleanliness procedures applied to remove or mitigate surface contamination of detector materials are described.

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Autoreactive T cells in autoantibody-mediated autoimmune diseases can be divided into two major subsets: (i) follicular T helper cells (Tfh) that provide T cell help in germinal centers (GC) and (ii) effector T (Teff) cells that immigrate into peripheral tissue sites such as the skin and mediate local inflammation. To study the sequence of events leading to the loss of tolerance in autoantibody-mediated autoimmune diseases it is required to investigate both T cell subsets simultaneously. This approach is hampered mainly because the appearance of skin inflammation in mouse models is a random process, which makes it difficult to define the location of inflammation at the right time point.

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During adaptive immune responses, germinal centers (GC) appear as transient microstructures, in which antigen-specific B and T cells interact with each other. Because only the antigen-activated B and T cells, such as Plasmablasts or follicular T helper (Tfh) cells, are present in GC, the in depth-analysis of GC is of great interest. To identify the cells that reside within GC, the majority of studies use the expression of specific surface molecules for analysis by flow cytometry.

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Genetic vaccination using naked plasmid DNA is an immunization strategy both against infectious diseases and cancer.In order to improve efficacy of DNA vaccines, particularly in large animals and humans, different strategies have been pursued. These vaccination strategies are based on different application routes, schedules and coexpression of immunomodulatory molecules as adjuvants.

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We conducted a single-arm, phase 2 trial (German-Austrian Acute Myeloid Leukemia Study Group [AMLSG] 16-10) to evaluate midostaurin with intensive chemotherapy followed by allogeneic hematopoietic-cell transplantation (HCT) and a 1-year midosta urin maintenance therapy in adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and fms-related tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) internal tandem duplication (ITD). Patients 18 to 70 years of age with newly diagnosed FLT3-ITD-positive AML were eligible. Primary and key secondary endpoints were event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS).

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Article Synopsis
  • There are significant global disparities in access to genetic services, prompting the establishment of a joint pediatric-genetics clinic in the Dutch Caribbean in 2011, which aimed to address these challenges.
  • A study of 331 patients who underwent genetic testing from 2011 to 2019 revealed that 33% received a confirmed molecular diagnosis, with the highest diagnostic yield noted in patients experiencing seizures and developmental issues.
  • The findings indicated that genetic diagnoses led to significant changes in clinical management for 52% of patients, illustrating that even with limited resources, effective genetic services can improve patient care and outcomes.
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