Humoral and cell-mediated response in colostrum after exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [preprint]

Background: Colostrum provides an immune sharing between a mother and her infant. The transfer in colostrum of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and the elicited cytokines may provide crucial protection to the infant. There is limited literature on the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 present in colostrum. Objective: To evaluate the presence of antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 and the associated cytokines in colostrum from women who tested positive for the virus. Study Design: Between March and September 2020 we obtained bilateral colostrum samples collected on spot cards within 48 hours of delivery from 15 new mothers who had previously tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Five of these 15 COVID-19 positive women also provided bilateral liquid colostrum within 1-2 days of providing the spot card samples. Archived bilateral colostrum samples collected from 8 women during 2011-2013 were used as pre-COVID-19 controls. All samples were tested for reactivity to the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein using an ELISA that measures SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific IgA, IgG, and IgM, and for concentrations of 10 inflammatory cytokines (IFNγ, TNFα, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12, IL-13) using a multiplex electrochemiluminescent sandwich assay. Results: Bilateral colostrum samples from 73%, 73% and 33% of the 15 COVID-19 mothers exhibited IgA, IgG, and IgM reactivity to RBD respectively. Colostrum samples from two of the 8 pre-pandemic controls showed IgA and IgG reactivity to RBD. Additionally, COVID-19 mothers had significantly higher levels of 9 of the 10 inflammatory markers (all except IFNγ) as compared to the pre-COVID-19 controls. Comparable results were obtained with both the spot card-eluates and liquid samples. Conclusions: A strong humoral immune response is present in the colostrum of women who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 before delivering. High levels of 9 inflammatory markers were also present in the colostrum. The evolution and duration of the antibody response, as well as dynamics of the cytokine response, remain to be determined. Our results also indicate that future large-scale studies can be conducted with milk easily collected on paper spot cards

Learning to Revise References for Faithful Summarization

In many real-world scenarios with naturally occurring datasets, reference summaries are noisy and contain information that cannot be inferred from the source text. On large news corpora, removing low quality samples has been shown to reduce model hallucinations. Yet, this method is largely untested for smaller, noisier corpora. To improve reference quality while retaining all data, we propose a new approach: to revise--not remove--unsupported reference content. Without ground-truth supervision, we construct synthetic unsupported alternatives to supported sentences and use contrastive learning to discourage/encourage (un)faithful revisions. At inference, we vary style codes to over-generate revisions of unsupported reference sentences and select a final revision which balances faithfulness and abstraction. We extract a small corpus from a noisy source--the Electronic Health Record (EHR)--for the task of summarizing a hospital admission from multiple notes. Training models on original, filtered, and revised references, we find (1) learning from revised references reduces the hallucination rate substantially more than filtering (18.4\% vs 3.8\%), (2) learning from abstractive (vs extractive) revisions improves coherence, relevance, and faithfulness, (3) beyond redress of noisy data, the revision task has standalone value for the task: as a pre-training objective and as a post-hoc editor

Sugarcane mosaic virus infects Stenotaphrum secundatum in Australia

This study presents the first report of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV) infecting Stenotaphrum secundatum (buffalo grass) in Australia, from a turf farm in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. The plant displayed mosaic symptoms and contained flexuous, filamentous virions of 700–750 × 10–11 nm typical of members of the genus Potyvirus. Infection of the sample by SCMV was confirmed by double antibody sandwich ELISA and RT-PCR amplification of the coat protein coding region of the viral genome. In a phylogenetic analysis, the buffalo grass isolate was sister to a clade of maize-infecting isolates of SCMV from eastern Africa and was 75.8% and 79.4% identical to the exemplar isolate of SCMV at nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively

Minimum Rank of Graphs with Loops

A loop graph S is a finite undirected graph that allows loops but does not allow multiple edges. The set S(S) of real symmetric matrices associated with a loop graph of order n is the set of symmetric matrices A = [a(ij)] is an element of R-nxn such that a(ij) not equal 0 if and only if ij is an element of E(S). The minimum (maximum) rank of a loop graph is the minimum (maximum) of t he ranks of the matrices in S(S). Loop graphs having minimum rank at most two are characterized (by forbidden induced subgraphs and graph complements) and loop graphs having minimum rank equal to the order of the graph are characterized. A Schur complement reduction technique is used to determine the minimum ranks of cycles with various loop configurations; the minimum ranks of complete graphs and paths with various configurations of loops are also determined. Unlike simple graphs, loop graphs can have maximum rank less than the order of the graph. Some results are presented on maximum rank and which ranks between minimum and maximum can be realized. Interesting open questions remain

Bermuda grass latent virus in Australia: genome sequence, sequence variation, and new hosts

Bermuda grass latent virus (BGLV; genus Panicovirus) is identified for the first time in Australia and in only the second country after the USA. A full-length genome sequence was obtained, which has 97% nucleotide sequence identity to that of the species exemplar isolate. Surveys for BGLV, utilising a newly designed universal panicovirus RT-PCR assay for diagnosis, demonstrated widespread infection by this virus in a broad variety of Bermuda grass cultivars (Cynodon dactylon and C. dactylon × C. transvaalensis) grown in both New South Wales and Queensland. The virus was also detected in Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana) and Kikuyu grass (Cenchrus clandestinus), which are both important pasture grasses in subtropical Australia, and the latter is also grown as turf. Furthermore, the Rhodes grass plant, which had strong mosaic symptoms, was also infected with sugarcane mosaic virus, warranting further investigations as to whether synergistic interactions occur between these two viruses

Protecting the Civil Rights of Detained Immigrants in Minnesota

During the past five years, the kinds of immigration enforcement actions that lead to arrests and detentions have dramatically increased. Undocumented immigrants, as well as some lawful permanent residents, end up in civil immigration detention through various channels that include seeking asylum in the United States, arrests at worksite raids or in homes, random stops for civil violations (such as a burned-out tail light), and arrests or convictions for crimes. This policy brief summarizes research first published in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of the CURA Reporter that was based on interviews with attorneys regarding violations of the rights of detained immigrant clients. The policy brief summarizes attorneys' experiences communicating with their undocumented immigrant clients and treatment of their clients during incarceration, and offers recommendations to federal and local policy makers for how to address these issues.Supported in part through a New Initiative grant, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota

Deletion of Macrophage Vitamin D Receptor Promotes Insulin Resistance and Monocyte Cholesterol Transport to Accelerate Atherosclerosis in Mice

Intense effort has been devoted to understanding predisposition to chronic systemic inflammation because it contributes to cardiometabolic disease. We demonstrate that deletion of the macrophage vitamin D receptor (VDR) in mice (KODMAC) is sufficient to induce insulin resistance by promoting M2 macrophage accumulation in the liver as well as increasing cytokine secretion and hepatic glucose production. Moreover, VDR deletion increases atherosclerosis by enabling lipid-laden M2 monocytes to adhere, migrate, and carry cholesterol into the atherosclerotic plaque and by increasing macrophage cholesterol uptake and esterification. Increased foam cell formation results from lack of VDR-SERCA2b interaction, causing SERCA dysfunction, activation of ER stress-CaMKII-JNKp-PPARγ signaling, and induction of the scavenger receptors CD36 and SR-A1. Bone marrow transplant of VDR-expressing cells into KODMAC mice improved insulin sensitivity, suppressed atherosclerosis, and decreased foam cell formation. The immunomodulatory effects of vitamin D in macrophages are thus critical in diet-induced insulin resistance and atherosclerosis in mice

Nitric oxide-dependent bone marrow progenitor mobilization by carbon monoxide enhances endothelial repair after vascular injury

Carbon monoxide (CO) has emerged as a vascular homeostatic molecule that prevents balloon angioplasty-induced stenosis via antiproliferative effects on vascular smooth muscle cells. The effects of CO on reendothelialization have not been evaluated

Transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a Rural Community, Arkansas, 1945–2000

A cluster of tuberculosis cases in a rural community in Arkansas persisted from 1991 to 1999. The cluster had 13 members, 11 linked epidemiologically. Old records identified 24 additional patients for 40 linked case-patients during a 54-year period. Residents of this neighborhood represent a population at high risk who should be considered for tuberculin testing and treatment for latent tuberculosis infection

Radiation therapy generates platelet-activating factor agonists

Pro-oxidative stressors can suppress host immunity due to their ability to generate oxidized lipid agonists of the platelet-activating factor-receptor (PAF-R). As radiation therapy also induces reactive oxygen species, the present studies were designed to define whether ionizing radiation could generate PAF-R agonists and if these lipids could subvert host immunity. We demonstrate that radiation exposure of multiple tumor cell lines in-vitro, tumors in-vivo, and human subjects undergoing radiation therapy for skin tumors all generate PAF-R agonists. Structural characterization of radiation-induced PAF-R agonistic activity revealed PAF and multiple oxidized glycerophosphocholines that are produced non-enzymatically. In a murine melanoma tumor model, irradiation of one tumor augmented the growth of the other (non-treated) tumor in a PAF-R-dependent process blocked by a cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor. These results indicate a novel pathway by which PAF-R agonists produced as a byproduct of radiation therapy could result in tumor treatment failure, and offer important insights into potential therapeutic strategies that could improve the overall antitumor effectiveness of radiation therapy regimens