The allele 4 of neck region liver-lymph node-specific ICAM-3-grabbing integrin variant is associated with spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus and decrease of viral loads

L-SIGN is a C-type lectin expressed on liver sinusoidal endothelial cells involved in the capture of hepatitis C virus and trans-infection of adjacent hepatocyte cells. The neck region of L-SIGN is highly polymorphic, with three to nine tandem repeats of 23 residues. This polymorphism is associated with a number of infectious diseases, but has not been explored in HCV. We therefore investigated the impact of L-SIGN neck region length variation on the outcome of HCV infection. We studied 322 subjects, 150 patients with persistent HCV infection, 63 individuals with spontaneous clearance and 109 healthy controls. In healthy subjects, we found a total of nine genotypes, with the 7/7 genotype being the most frequent (33%) followed by the 7/6 (22.9%) and the 7/5 (18.3%). The frequencies of the alleles were as follows: 7-LSIGN (56.4%), 6-LSIGN (20.2%), 5-L-SIGN (18.3%) and 4-L-SIGN (5%). The frequency of the 7/4 genotype was higher in spontaneous resolvers (14.3%) as compared with the persistent group (4%) (OR = 0.25, 95% CI = 0.07–0.82, p 0.022). In addition, we found that 4-L-SIGN was associated with spontaneous resolution of HCV infection (OR = 0.30, 95%CI, 0.12–0.74, p 0.005). Interestingly, patients with 4-L-SIGN had lower viral loads when compared with carriers of the 5 (p 0.001), 6 (p 0.021) and 7-alleles (p 0.048). The results indicate that neck region polymorphism of L-SIGN can influence the outcome of HCV infection and the four-tandem repeat is associated with clearance of HCV infection

Modeling and Simulation of Thick Sprays through Coupling of a Finite Volume Euler Equation Solver and a Particle Method for a Disperse Phase

We present here the principles of the coupling between an efficient numerical method for hyperbolic systems, namely the FVCF scheme (that is, a finite volume scheme used in the context of non conservative equations arising in multiphase flows), on the one hand; and a particle method for the Vlasov-Boltzmann equation of PIC-DSMC type (that is, in which macroscopic quantities are computed in each cell by adding quantities attached to the particles, and where integrals are computed thanks to a random sampling), on the other hand. Numerical results illustrating this coupling are shown for a problem involving a spray (droplets inside an underlying gas) in a pipe which is modeled by a 1D fluid-kinetic system

Les abcès froids pariétaux thoraciques chez les sujets immunocompétents

Les abcès froids de la paroi thoracique représentent une forme rare et inhabituelle de tuberculose extrapulmonaire. Sa fréquence est estimée àmoins de 5% des tuberculoses ostéoarticulaires, évaluées elles-mêmes à 15% des tuberculoses extrapulmonaires. L'objectif de ce travail est derapporter la prise en charge diagnostique et thérapeutique de cette localisation dans notre structure. Etude rétrospective portant sur 18 cascolligés au service des maladies respiratoires du centre hospitalier universitaire Ibn Rochd de Casablanca, sur une période de 13 ans. La moyenne d'âge était de 34 ans (21-57). Un antécédent de tuberculose traitée était relevé dans un cas. Le tableau clinique était révélé par l'apparition insidieuse d'une masse pariétale de taille, de consistance et de siège variables. A l'imagerie thoracique, l'abcès pariétal était associé à une lyse osseuse dans sept cas, une atteinte parenchymateuse et pleurale dans quatre cas chacune et des adénopathies médiastinales dans deux cas. La confirmation diagnostique était bactériologique et/ou histologique dans tous les cas. La sérologie du virus de l'immunodéficience   humaineétait négative chez tous nos malades. L'évolution sous traitement antibacillaire couplé ou non à une résection chirurgicale était favorable chez tous nos malades. Malgré la fréquence de la tuberculose dans notre  contexte, la localisation pariétale thoracique reste rare, survenant chez une population non immunodéprimée et non toxicomane, contrairement à ce qui est souvent rapporté dans la littérature. Les abcès froids tuberculeuxreprésentent une forme rare de tuberculose extrapulmonaire dont  l'évolution reste favorable sous traitement précoce et bien conduit

Toxicological evaluation of Thymelaea hirsuta and protective effect against CCl4-induced hepatic injury in rats

The aerial part of Thymelaea hirsuta (TH) is used as decoction in the treatment of different pathologies in folk medicine in Morocco. The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the potential of toxicity of an aqueous extract of TH and its hepatoprotective activity against CCl4-induced hepatic injury in rats. In the acute study, there were no signs of toxicity observed after oral administration of single dose of the extract (5g/kg body weight). In the sub-chronic dose study, (given by gavages (4 ml/kg) to Wistar rats daily at: 0.0 g/kg, 0.5g/kg, 1 g/kg or 2 g/kg body weight for 4 weeks) no variation on biochemical parameters; serum glucose, creatinine and urea levels was observed compared to the control group. However, the serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALAT) and aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) were markedly decreased (P < 0.05 and P<0.001 respectively) as compared to the controls. There were no significant differences in red blood cells count (p<0.05), in Hemoglobin and Hematocrit serum levels but a significant increase in white blood cells count (p<0.001) and in platelets (p< 0.05) for all doses tested. Histopathological examination of the liver, spleen and kidneys tissues at the end of the study showed normal architecture. The elevated serum enzymatic activities of ALAT and ASAT, due to carbon tetrachloride treatment (1 ml/kg CCl4 every 72 h during 15 days) were restored towards normalization by the plant extracts. The biochemical observations were supplemented with histopathological examination of liver sections. The results indicate that this plant possesses no toxicity effects but hepatoprotective properties.Keywords: Thymelaea hirsuta, Wistar rats, Toxicity, Histopathology, hepatoprotective action, Folk medicin

ERBlox: Combining Matching Dependencies with Machine Learning for Entity Resolution

Entity resolution (ER), an important and common data cleaning problem, is about detecting data duplicate representations for the same external entities, and merging them into single representations. Relatively recently, declarative rules called matching dependencies (MDs) have been proposed for specifying similarity conditions under which attribute values in database records are merged. In this work we show the process and the benefits of integrating three components of ER: (a) Classifiers for duplicate/non-duplicate record pairs built using machine learning (ML) techniques, (b) MDs for supporting both the blocking phase of ML and the merge itself; and (c) The use of the declarative language LogiQL -an extended form of Datalog supported by the LogicBlox platform- for data processing, and the specification and enforcement of MDs.Comment: To appear in Proc. SUM, 201