Clinical and Immunopathological Features of Moyamoya Disease

Background: Moyamoya disease (MMD) is a cerebrovascular disease characterized by progressive stenosis or occlusion of the terminal portion of internal carotid arteries and the formation of a vascular network at the base of the brain. The pathogenesis of MMD is still unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings: We retrospectively analyzed clinical data for 65 consecutive patients with MMD in our institutions and evaluated the histopathological and immunohistochemical findings of intracranial vessels from 3 patients. The onset age distribution was found to have 1 peak at 40–49 year-old age group, no significant difference was observed in the female-to-male ratio (F/M = 1.2). Intracranial hemorrhage was the predominant disease type (75%). Positive family history was observed in 4.6 % of patients. Histopathological findings were a narrowed lumen due to intimal fibrous thickening without significant inflammatory cell infiltration, and the internal elastic lamina was markedly tortuous and stratified. All 3 autopsy cases showed vacuolar degeneration in the cerebrovascular smooth muscle cells. Immunohistochemical study showed the migration of smooth muscle cells in the thickened intima, and aberrant expression of IgG and S100A4 protein in vascular smooth muscle cells. The Complement C3 immunoreactivity was negative. Conclusion/Significance: This study indicated that aberrant expression of IgG and S100A4 protein in intracranial vascular wall of MMD patients, which suggested that immune-related factors may be involved in the functional and morphologica

Crowdsourcing in business and management disciplines: an integrative literature review

The objective of this study is to review crowdsourcing literature of the business and management disciplines and to know its relation with the open innovation concept. A systematic literature review is used in this study. Studies on crowdsourcing are published mostly in recent years, 2011-2013. Studies are highly dispersed, published in a very wide range of journals and are mostly based on a single case as data source. Content analysis of the findings of articles are performed to synthesize the findings in the extant literature. Most of the qualitative articles used single case method and most of the quantitative studies relied on online survey over a single crowdsourcing platform. Studies and scholars in the literature are from a limited number of countries. Although crowdsourcing as a concept overlaps with the open innovation concept, by no means, it can be considered a concept under the broad umbrella of open innovation concept. Based on identified gaps, future research avenues are presented