Cardiometabolic health in offspring of women with PCOS compared to healthy controls: a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis.

Background: Women diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) suffer from an unfavorable cardiometabolic risk profile, which is already established by child-bearing age.

Objective And Rationale: The aim of this systematic review along with an individual participant data meta-analysis is to evaluate whether cardiometabolic features in the offspring (females and males aged 1-18 years) of women with PCOS (OPCOS) are less favorable compared to the offspring of healthy controls.

Search Methods: PubMed, Embase and gray literature databases were searched by three authors independently (M.

Effect of long-term voluntary exercise wheel running on susceptibility to bacterial pulmonary infections in a mouse model.

Regular moderate exercise has been suggested to exert anti-inflammatory effects and improve immune effector functions, resulting in reduced disease incidence and viral infection susceptibility. Whether regular exercise also affects bacterial infection susceptibility is unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate whether regular voluntary exercise wheel running prior to a pulmonary infection with bacteria (P.

Cytokine assays: an assessment of the preparation and treatment of blood and tissue samples.

Cytokines are key components of the innate and adaptive immune system. As pivotal players in the progression or regression of a pathological process, these molecules provide a window through which diseases can be monitored and can thus act as biomarkers. In order to measure cytokine levels, a plethora of protocols can be applied.

TLR9 agonist CpG enhances protective nasal HSP60 peptide vaccine efficacy in experimental autoimmune arthritis.

Objectives: Peptide-based immune tolerance induction is considered an attractive treatment option for autoimmune diseases. The authors have developed a novel method that can enhance the induction of protective peptide-specific T-cell responses, using a rat arthritis model. The authors focused on the Toll-like receptor 9 ligand CpG, which was shown to stimulate regulatory T-cell proliferation when added to plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC) using in-vitro cultures.

Bystander suppression of experimental arthritis by nasal administration of a heat shock protein peptide.

Objectives: Mucosal immune therapy with disease-inducing antigens is an effective way to prevent experimental arthritis, but in humans these antigens are unknown. In juvenile idiopathic arthritis, however, T cell recognition of a so-called bystander antigen, heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), is associated with a good prognosis. Recently epitopes derived from HSP60, a microbial peptide (p1) and its self-homologue (p2) were reported to induce tolerogenic T cell responses in vitro in patients with arthritis.

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis is a heterogeneous group of diseases characterised by arthritis of unknown origin with onset before age of 16 years. Pivotal studies in the past 5 years have led to substantial progress in various areas, ranging from disease classification to new treatments. Gene expression profiling studies have identified different immune mechanisms in distinct subtypes of the disease, and can help to redefine disease classification criteria.

Prerequisites for cytokine measurements in clinical trials with multiplex immunoassays.

Background: Growing knowledge about cellular interactions in the immune system, including the central role of cytokine networks, has lead to new treatments using monoclonal antibodies that block specific components of the immune system. Systemic cytokine concentrations can serve as surrogate outcome parameters of these interventions to study inflammatory pathways operative in patients in vivo. This is now possible due to novel technologies such as multiplex immunoassays (MIA) that allows detection of multiple cytokines in a single sample.