Characterization of novel extracellular proteases produced by Acanthamoeba castellanii after contact with human corneal epithelial cells and their relevance to pathogenesis.

Background: Proteases produced by Acanthamoeba spp. play an important role in their virulence and may be the key to understanding Acanthamoeba pathogenesis; thus, increasing attention has been directed towards these proteins. The present study aimed to investigate the lytic factors produced by Acanthamoeba castellanii during the first hours of in vitro co-culture with human corneal epithelial cells (HCECs).

Cumin Seed Oil Induces Oxidative Stress-Based Antifungal Activities on .

In this study, the antifungal activity of cumin seed oil (CSO) was tested on . (i) Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) and related concentrations (IC, IC, and IC) were detected; (ii) toxicity was evaluated by a water-soluble tetrazolium salt-1 (WST-1) assay; (iii) genomic/epigenomic alterations were evaluated by the coupled restriction enzyme digestion-random amplification (CRED-RA) method; (iv) oxidative stress was investigated by expression, catalase activity, and DCF-DA staining; (v) deoxynivalenol biosynthesis was evaluated by expression; (vi) and potential effects of CSO on wheat were tested by a water loss rate (WLR) assay. MIC, IC, IC and IC values were detected at 0.

Differential nasal swab cytology represents a valuable tool for therapy monitoring but not prediction of therapy response in chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps treated with Dupilumab.

Introduction: Chronic Rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a common chronic disease with a high impact on patients' quality of life. If conservative and surgical guideline treatment cannot sufficiently control disease burden, biologicals can be considered as a comparably new treatment option that has revolutionized CRSwNP therapy since the first approval of Dupilumab in 2019. With the aim to select patients who benefit from this new treatment and to find a marker for therapy monitoring, we investigated the cellular composition of nasal mucous membranes and inflammatory cells of patients suffering from CRSwNP and undergoing Dupilumab therapy using non-invasive nasal swab cytology.