Antinuclear Antibodies in Patients with Psoriatic Arthritis Treated or Not with Biologics

International audienceBackground:With the emergence of biotherapies, accurate diagnosis in early arthritis is needed. At this time, there is no biological marker of psoriatic arthritis.Objective:To test whether antinuclear antibodies (ANA) can be used as a diagnostic tool in psoriatic arthritis (PsA), we evaluated the prevalence of ANA in biologic-naïve PsA patients and in healthy blood donors.Methods:232 patients from the Rheumatology department, St Marguerite's Hospital, Marseilles, who fulfilled the CASPAR criteria for PsA, underwent clinical and laboratory investigations. Antinuclear antibodies (ANA), anti-extractable nuclear antigen antibodies (ENA), rheumatoid factor (RF), anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA) were assayed. Ninety-one healthy blood donors were also tested.Results:Detection of ANA by indirect immunofluorescence was significantly more frequent in sera from PsA patients than those from controls at serum dilution of 1:100 (57% compared with 40%, Odds Ratio (OR) 1.98 (1.2-3.4) p<0.02) and 1:160 (52% compared with 24%, OR 3,7 (1.9-7.2) p<0.001). No patients had lupus specific autoantibodies, 15 % had RF (34/232), and 1.7 % had ACPA (4/232).Conclusions:Detection of ANA was more frequent in sera from PsA patients than in those from healthy controls. This suggests that ANA could be a diagnosis orientation tool in PsA. Nevertheless, the specificity of these antibodies still remains to be investigated

The Genetically Remote Pathogenic Strain NVH391-98 of the Bacillus cereus Group Represents the Cluster of Thermophilic Strains

Bacteria of the Bacillus cereus group are known to cause food poisoning. A rare phylogenetically remote strain, NVH391-98, was recently characterized to encode a particularly efficient cytotoxin K presumably responsible for food poisoning. This pathogenic strain and its close relatives can be phenotypically distinguished from other strains of the B. cereus group by the inability to grow at temperatures below 17 degrees C and by the ability to grow at temperatures from 48 to 53 degrees C. A temperate phage, phBC391A2, residing in the genome of NVH391-98 allows us to distinguish the three known members of this thermophilic strain cluster

IoT and information processing in smart energy applications.

The articles in this special section address smart energy applications from the perspective of the Internet of Things (IoT). For smart grid applications, we need to predict the electrical load so that the underlying smart grid can effectively balance the power supply and demand. In general, predictions are made based on the data obtained using IoT and smart meter technologies. The (IoT) could accelerate establishment of such infrastructures. With IoT technologies, many more devices could be controlled and managed through the Internet; data pertaining to the grid, commercial buildings, and residential premises can readily be collected and utilized. To derive valuable information from the data, further information and data processing become essential

Extending the cereus group genomics to putative food-borne pathogens of different toxicity

The cereus group represents sporulating soil bacteriacontaining pathogenic strains which may cause diarrheic or emetic foodpoisoning outbreaks. Multiple locus sequence typing revealed a presencein natural samples of these bacteria of about thirty clonal complexes.Application of genomic methods to this group was however biased due tothe major interest for representatives closely related to B. anthracis.Albeit the most important food-borne pathogens were not yet defined,existing dataindicate that they are scattered all over the phylogenetictree. The preliminary analysis of the sequences of three genomesdiscussed in this paper narrows down the gaps in our knowledge of thecereus group. The strain NVH391-98 is a rare but particularly severefood-borne pathogen. Sequencing revealed that the strain must be arepresentative of a novel bacterial species, for which the name Bacilluscytotoxis is proposed. This strain has a reduced genome size compared toother cereus group strains. Genome analysis revealed absence of sigma Bfactor and the presence of genes encoding diarrheic Nhe toxin, notdetected earlier. The strain B. cereus F837/76 represents a clonalcomplex close to that of B. anthracis. Including F837/76, three such B.cereus strains had been sequenced. Alignment of genomes suggests that B.anthracis is their common ancestor. Since such strains often emerge fromclinical cases, they merit a special attention. The third strain, KBAB4,is a typical psychrotrophe characteristic to unbiased soil communities.Phylogenic studies show that in nature it is the most active group interms of gene exchange. Genomic sequence revealed high presence ofextra-chromosomal genetic material (about 530 kb) that may account forthis phenomenon. Genes coding Nhe-like toxin were found on a big plasmidin this strain. This may indicate a potential mechanism of toxicityspread from the psychrotrophic strain community. The results of thisgenomic work and ecological compartments of different strains incite toconsider a necessity of creating prophylactic vaccines against bacteriaclosely related to NVH391-98 and F837/76. Presumably developing of suchvaccines can be based on the properties of non-pathogenic strains such asKBAB4 or ATCC14579 reported here or earlier. By comparing the proteincoding genes of strains being sequenced in this project to others weestimate the shared proteome in the cereus group to be 3,000?b200 genesand the total proteome to be 20-25,000 genes

Genetic landscape of a large cohort of Primary Ovarian Insufficiency : New genes and pathways and implications for personalized medicine

Background Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI), a public health problem, affects 1-3.7% of women under 40 yield-ing infertility and a shorter lifespan. Most causes are unknown. Recently, genetic causes were identified, mostly in single families. We studied an unprecedented large cohort of POI to unravel its molecular pathophysiology.Methods 375 patients with 70 families were studied using targeted (88 genes) or whole exome sequencing with pathogenic/likely-pathogenic variant selection. Mitomycin-induced chromosome breakages were studied in patients' lymphocytes if necessary. Findings A high-yield of 29.3% supports a clinical genetic diagnosis of POI. In addition, we found strong evidence of pathogenicity for nine genes not previously related to a Mendelian phenotype or POI: ELAVL2, NLRP11, CENPE, SPATA33, CCDC150, CCDC185, including DNA repair genes: C17orf53(HROB), HELQ, SWI5 yielding high chromo-somal fragility. We confirmed the causal role of BRCA2, FANCM, BNC1, ERCC6, MSH4, BMPR1A, BMPR1B, BMPR2, ESR2, CAV1, SPIDR, RCBTB1 and ATG7 previously reported in isolated patients/families. In 8.5% of cases, POI is the only symptom of a multi-organ genetic disease. New pathways were identified: NF-kB, post-translational regulation, and mitophagy (mitochondrial autophagy), providing future therapeutic targets. Three new genes have been shown to affect the age of natural menopause supporting a genetic link.Interpretation We have developed high-performance genetic diagnostic of POI, dissecting the molecular pathogene-sis of POI and enabling personalized medicine to i) prevent/cure comorbidities for tumour/cancer susceptibility genes that could affect life-expectancy (37.4% of cases), or for genetically-revealed syndromic POI (8.5% of cases), ii) predict residual ovarian reserve (60.5% of cases). Genetic diagnosis could help to identify patients who may benefit from the promising in vitro activation-IVA technique in the near future, greatly improving its success in treating infertility.Funding Universite? Paris Saclay, Agence Nationale de Biome?decine.Copyright (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)Peer reviewe

The Genetically Remote Pathogenic Strain NVH391-98 of the Bacillus cereus Group Represents the Cluster of Thermophilic Strains

Bacteria of the Bacillus cereus group are known to cause food poisoning. A rare phylogenetically remote strain, NVH391-98, was recently characterized to encode a particularly efficient cytotoxin K presumably responsible for food poisoning. This pathogenic strain and its close relatives can be phenotypically distinguished from other strains of the B. cereus group by the inability to grow at temperatures below 17 degrees C and by the ability to grow at temperatures from 48 to 53 degrees C. A temperate phage, phBC391A2, residing in the genome of NVH391-98 allows us to distinguish the three known members of this thermophilic strain cluster

Etude de réseaux biologiques impliqués dans l'adaptation de Bacillus subtilis et de Faecalibacterium à leur environnement

Bacteria are frequently exposed to nutrient limiting conditions as well as many environmental stresses. The ability of the bacterial cell to survive such variations depends on its ability to sense these changes and respond to them through perfectly coordinated regulatory networks. These temporal phenomena with many actors and dynamic aspects constitute complex biological questions, which have always fascinated me. During my research projects, I have studied the role of transcriptional regulators involved in metal ion homeostasis and in the response to oxidative stress in the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis. More recently, I reoriented my projects on the study of the strict anaerobic commensal bacteria Faecalibactrium, which play a major role in digestive health within the human gut microbiota. I am particularly interested in the diversity of MAM (Microbial Anti-inflammatory Molecule) proteins and the oxidative stress response of different strains whose abundance is altered in an inflammatory intestinal context. I am also leading a project at the interface between bioinformatics / microbiology on the prediction and validation of small proteins synthesized by Faecalibactrium and which would play a role in the maintenance of the microbiota-host holobiont

Le vécu de la rééducation périnéale des femmes en post-partum (une étude qualitative par 14 entretiens individuels)

PARIS7-Xavier Bichat (751182101) / SudocSudocFranceF