Granulomatous Reactivation during the Course of a Leprosy Infection: Reaction or Relapse

Leprosy is a serious infectious disease whose treatment still poses some challenges. Patients are usually treated with a combination of antimicrobial drugs called multidrug therapy. Although this treatment is effective against Mycobacterium leprae, the bacillus that causes leprosy, patients may develop severe inflammatory reactions during treatment. These reactions may be either attributed to an improvement in the immunological reactivity of the patient along with the treatment, or to relapse of the disease due to the proliferation of remaining bacilli. In certain patients these two conditions may be difficult to differentiate. The present study addresses the histopathology picture of and the M. leprae bacilli in sequential biopsies taken from lesions of patients who presented such reactions aiming to improve the differentiation of the two conditions. This is important because these reactions are one of the major causes of the disabilities of the patients with leprosy, and should be treated early and appropriately. Our results show that the histopathology picture alone is not sufficient, and that bacilli's counting is necessary

The small GTPase Rab29 is a common regulator of immune synapse assembly and ciliogenesis

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Jorge Galán, Gregory Pazour, Derek Toomre, Giuliano Callaini, Joel Rosenbaum, Alessandra Boletta and Francesco Blasi for generously providing reagents and for productive discussions, and Sonia Grassini for technical assistance. The work was carried out with the financial support of Telethon (GGP11021) and AIRC.Peer reviewedPostprin

Prediction of Low-Voltage Tetrafluoromethane Emissions Based on the Operating Conditions of an Aluminium Electrolysis Cell

Greenhouse gas (GHG) generation is inherent in the production of aluminium by a technology that uses carbon anodes. Most of those GHG are composed of CO2 produced by redox reaction that occurs in the cell. However, a significant fraction of the annual GHG production is composed of perfluorocarbons (PFC) resulting from anode effects (AE). Multiple investigations have shown that tetrafluoromethane (CF4) can be generated under low-voltage conditions in the electrolysis cells, without global anode effect. The aim of this paper is to find a quantitative relationship between monitored cell parameters and the emissions of CF4. To achieve this goal, a predictive algorithm has been developed using seven cell indicators. These indicators are based on the cell voltage, the noise level and other parameters calculated from individual anode current monitoring. The predictive algorithm is structured into three different steps. The first two steps give qualitative information while the third one quantitatively describes the expected CF4 concentration at the duct end of the electrolysis cells. Validations after each step are presented and discussed. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to understand the effect of each indicator on the onset of low-voltage PFC emissions. The standard deviation of individual anode currents was found to be the dominant variable. Cell voltage, noise level, and maximum individual anode current also showed a significant correlation with the presence of CF4 in the output gas of an electrolysis cell

Synchronous bursts on scale-free neuronal networks with attractive and repulsive coupling

This paper investigates the dependence of synchronization transitions of bursting oscillations on the information transmission delay over scale-free neuronal networks with attractive and repulsive coupling. It is shown that for both types of coupling, the delay always plays a subtle role in either promoting or impairing synchronization. In particular, depending on the inherent oscillation period of individual neurons, regions of irregular and regular propagating excitatory fronts appear intermittently as the delay increases. These delay-induced synchronization transitions are manifested as well-expressed minima in the measure for spatiotemporal synchrony. For attractive coupling, the minima appear at every integer multiple of the average oscillation period, while for the repulsive coupling, they appear at every odd multiple of the half of the average oscillation period. The obtained results are robust to the variations of the dynamics of individual neurons, the system size, and the neuronal firing type. Hence, they can be used to characterize attractively or repulsively coupled scale-free neuronal networks with delays.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS ONE [related work available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.4961 and http://www.matjazperc.com/

Recurrence of Diabetic Pedal Ulcerations Following Tendo-Achilles Lengthening

Foot and ankle surgeons are frequently challenged by the devastating systemic consequences of diabetes mellitus manifested through neuropathy, integumentary and joint breakdown, delayed healing, decreased ability to fight infection, and fragile tendon/ligaments. Diabetic neuropathic pedal ulcerations lead to amputations at an alarming rate and also carry a high mortality rate. This article will discuss causes of diabetic pedal ulcerations that persist or recur after tendo-Achilles lengthening and will highlight areas that need to be addressed by the practitioner such as infection, vascular and nutritional status, glucose control, off-loading, biomechanics, and patient compliance

Cooperative dynamics in the penetration of a group of intruders in a granular medium

An object moving in a fluid experiences a drag force that depends on its velocity, shape and the properties of the medium. From this simplest case to the motion of a flock of birds or a school of fish, the drag forces and the hydrodynamic interactions determine the full dynamics of the system. Similar drag forces appear when a single projectile impacts and moves through a granular medium, and this case is well studied in the literature. On the other hand, the case in which a group of intruders impact a granular material has never been considered. Here, we study the simultaneous penetration of several intruders in a very low-density granular medium. We find that the intruders move through it in a collective way, following a cooperative dynamics, whose complexity resembles flocking phenomena in living systems or the movement of reptiles in sand, wherein changes in drag are exploited to efficiently move or propel

Genome wide analysis of gene expression changes in skin from patients with type 2 diabetes

Non-healing chronic ulcers are a serious complication of diabetes and are a major healthcare problem. While a host of treatments have been explored to heal or prevent these ulcers from forming, these treatments have not been found to be consistently effective in clinical trials. An understanding of the changes in gene expression in the skin of diabetic patients may provide insight into the processes and mechanisms that precede the formation of non-healing ulcers. In this study, we investigated genome wide changes in gene expression in skin between patients with type 2 diabetes and non-diabetic patients using next generation sequencing. We compared the gene expression in skin samples taken from 27 patients (13 with type 2 diabetes and 14 non-diabetic). This information may be useful in identifying the causal factors and potential therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of diabetic related diseases

Nonadditivity of critical Casimir forces

In soft condensed matter physics, effective interactions often emerge due to the spatial confinement of fluctuating fields. For instance, microscopic particles dissolved in a binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces whenever their surfaces confine the thermal fluctuations of the order parameter of the solvent close to its critical demixing point. These forces are theoretically predicted to be nonadditive on the scale set by the bulk correlation length of the fluctuations. Here we provide direct experimental evidence of this fact by reporting the measurement of the associated many-body forces. We consider three colloidal particles in optical traps and observe that the critical Casimir force exerted on one of them by the other two differs from the sum of the forces they exert separately. This three-body effect depends sensitively on the distance from the critical point and on the chemical functionalisation of the colloid surfaces