Serum levels of interleukin-6 are not elevated in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) were determined in 97 patients with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease and 79 age- and sex-matched control subject. Median serum levels of IL-6 did not differ significantly between Alzheimer patients (8.6 U/ml) and controls (8.2 U/ml). Median levels of serum IL-6 were similar for sporadic and familial patients. The concentration of IL-6 was not associated with the severity of the dementia or the duration of the disease since first symptoms. According to these observations there is no evidence for a significant elevation in serum IL-6 in Alzheimer's disease

Open membranes, ribbons and deformed Schild strings

We analyze open membranes immersed in a magnetic three-form field-strength $C$. While cylindrical membranes in the absence of $C$ behave like tensionless strings, when the $C$ flux is present the strings polarize into thin membrane ribbons, locally orthogonal to the momentum density, thus providing the strings with an effective tension. The effective dynamics of the ribbons can be described by a simple deformation of the Schild action for null strings. Interactions become non-local due to the polarization, and lead to a deformation of the string field theory, whereby string vertices receive a phase factor proportional to the volume swept out by the ribbons. In a particular limit, this reduces to the non-commutative loop space found previously.Comment: revte

An M-theory solution generating technique and SL(2,R)

In this paper we generalize the O(p+1,p+1) solution generating technique (this is a method used to deform Dp-branes by turning on a NS-NS B-field) to M-theory, in order to be able to deform M5-brane supergravity solutions directly in eleven dimensions, by turning on a non zero three form A. We find that deforming the M5-brane, in some cases, corresponds to performing certain SL(2,R) transformations of the Kahler structure parameter for the three-torus, on which the M5-brane has been compactified. We show that this new M-theory solution generating technique can be reduced to the O(p+1,p+1) solution generating technique with p=4. Further, we find that it implies that the open membrane metric and generalized noncommutativity parameter are manifestly deformation independent for electric and light-like deformations. We also generalize the O(p+1,p+1) method to the type IIA/B NS5-brane in order to be able to deform NS5-branes with RR three and two forms, respectively. In the type IIA case we use the newly obtained solution generating technique and deformation independence to derive a covariant expression for an open D2-brane coupling, relevant for OD2-theory.Comment: 24 pages, Latex. v2:Sections 3.2 and 3.3 improved. v3:Some clarifications added. Version published in JHE

N-acetyltransferase 2 polymorphism in Parkinson's disease. The Rotterdam study

The N-acetyltransferase-2 gene (NAT-2) has been associated with Parkinson's disease. The genotype associated with slow acetylation has been reported to be increased in patients with Parkinson's disease. Three mutant alleles M1, M2, and M3 of NAT-2 were investigated in 80 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and 161 age matched randomly selected controls from a prospective population based cohort study. The allelic frequencies and genotypic distributions in patients were very similar to those found in controls. In controls the frequency of the wild type allele increased significantly with age suggesting that the mutant alleles are associated with an increased risk of mortality. These findings suggest that NAT-2 polymorphism is not a major genetic determinant of idiopathic Parkinson's disease, but may be a determinant of mortality in the general population

An insulin-like growth factor-I gene polymorphism modifies the risk of microalbuminuria in subjects with an abnormal glucose tolerance

Objective: Microalbuminuria (MA) is related to cardiovascular disease both in diabetic patients and non-diabetic subjects. Design: We investigated whether a polymorphism near the promoter region of the IGF-I gene was related to the development of MA. Methods: For this study, 1069 participants of the Rotterdam study were selected (440 participants with an abnormal glucose tolerance (AGT), 220 participants with type 2 diabetes and 254 subjects with pre-diabetes, and 595 subjects with a normal glucose tolerance (NGT). Re