Staphylococcal peptidoglycans induce arthritis

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most important pathogens in septic arthritis. To analyse the arthritogenic properties of staphylococcal peptidoglycan (PGN), highly purified PGN from S. aureus was intra-articularly injected into murine joints. The results demonstrate that PGN will trigger arthritis in a dose-dependent manner. A single injection of this compound leads to massive infiltration of predominantly macrophages and polymorphonuclear cells with occasional signs of cartilage and/or bone destruction, lasting for at least 14 days. Further studies showed that this condition is mediated by the combined impact of acquired and innate immune systems. Our results indicate that PGN exerts a central role in joint inflammation triggered by S. aureus

Fc Gamma Receptors as Regulators of Bone Destruction in Inflammatory Arthritis

Bone erosion is one of the primary features of inflammatory arthritis and is caused by excessive differentiation and activation of osteoclasts. Fc gamma receptors (FcγRs) have been implicated in osteoclastogenesis. Our recent studies demonstrate that joint-deposited lupus IgG inhibited RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis. FcγRI is required for RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis and lupus IgG-induced signaling transduction. We reviewed the results of studies that analyzed the association between FcγRs and bone erosion in inflammatory arthritis. The analysis revealed the dual roles of FcγRs in bone destruction in inflammatory arthritis. Thus, IgG/FcγR signaling molecules may serve as potential therapeutic targets against bone erosion

Unsupervised domain adaptation semantic segmentation of high-resolution remote sensing imagery with invariant domain-level prototype memory

Semantic segmentation is a key technique involved in automatic interpretation of high-resolution remote sensing (HRS) imagery and has drawn much attention in the remote sensing community. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have been successfully applied to the HRS imagery semantic segmentation task due to their hierarchical representation ability. However, the heavy dependency on a large number of training data with dense annotation and the sensitiveness to the variation of data distribution severely restrict the potential application of DCNNs for the semantic segmentation of HRS imagery. This study proposes a novel unsupervised domain adaptation semantic segmentation network (MemoryAdaptNet) for the semantic segmentation of HRS imagery. MemoryAdaptNet constructs an output space adversarial learning scheme to bridge the domain distribution discrepancy between source domain and target domain and to narrow the influence of domain shift. Specifically, we embed an invariant feature memory module to store invariant domain-level context information because the features obtained from adversarial learning only tend to represent the variant feature of current limited inputs. This module is integrated by a category attention-driven invariant domain-level context aggregation module to current pseudo invariant feature for further augmenting the pixel representations. An entropy-based pseudo label filtering strategy is used to update the memory module with high-confident pseudo invariant feature of current target images. Extensive experiments under three cross-domain tasks indicate that our proposed MemoryAdaptNet is remarkably superior to the state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures and 8 table

Efficient EGFR signaling and dorsal–ventral axis patterning requires syntaxin dependent Gurken trafficking

AbstractVesicle trafficking plays a crucial role in the establishment of cell polarity in various cellular contexts, including axis-pattern formation in the developing egg chamber of Drosophila. The EGFR ligand, Gurken (Grk), is first localized at the posterior of young oocytes for anterior–posterior axis formation and later in the dorsal anterior region for induction of the dorsal–ventral (DV) axis, but regulation of Grk localization by membrane trafficking in the oocyte remains poorly understood. Here, we report that Syntaxin 1A (Syx1A) is required for efficient trafficking of Grk protein for DV patterning. We show that Syx1A is associated with the Golgi membrane and is required for the transportation of Grk-containing vesicles along the microtubules to their dorsal anterior destination in the oocyte. Our studies reveal that the Syx1A dependent trafficking of Grk protein is required for efficient EGFR signaling during DV patterning

Apexification Management of Mandibular Second Premolar with a Blunderbuss Apex and Periapical Lesion of an Adult Patient

Apexification is widely applied in teenager patients but rarely used in the adult population. Instead, artificial apical barrier with mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) is clinically accepted, and spontaneous apical closure in nonvital immature teeth of adult patients has rarely been encountered while only apexification of the maxillary incisors in adult patients has been reported. The aim of this case report is to share a successful apexification application in the mandibular premolar with a blunderbuss apex and periapical lesion of an adult patient by using calcium hydroxide: radiographically, spontaneous hard tissue barrier has been established, and narrowing canal space and decreasing area of periapical shadow were documented without complications. Taken together, our study indicates that patient\u27s age and tooth position may not be the critical limitation for apexification. © 2019 Chenshuang Li et al

Combined anterior and posterior surgery for treatment of cervical fracture-dislocation in patients with ankylosing spondylitis

ObjectiveTo discuss the pathological characteristics of cervical spinal fracture complicating ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and the effect of combined anterior and posterior operation.MethodsEighteen AS patients with traumatic cervical fracture-dislocation were treated operatively from January 2000 to January 2006. The symptom duration of AS was 14.5 years on average. Three cases had undergone osteotomy in lumbar spine. There were 4 cases of Grade A, 3 cases of Grade B, 9 cases of Grade C and 2 cases of Grade D according to Frankel's score. There were 15 cases of Grade III dislocation and 3 cases of Grade II. All patients underwent surgical procedures by combined anterior and posterior approach.ResultsThere were 4 anterior-posterior procedures, 8 anterior-posterior-anterior procedures and 6 posterior-anterior procedures. Seven patients had one stage operation and 11 cases underwent two stage surgeries. There was certain extent of neurological improvement in 14 incomplete paraplegic patients, but no improvement in 4 complete paraplegic patients. The follow-up period was 21.2 months on average and the time for bone fusion was 3.6 months. There were 4 complications during operation and a long-term complication in follow-up.ConclusionsThe study suggests that anterior combined with posterior approach makes the spine stable and relieves the pressure immediately. It is a reasonable surgical strategy for treatment of cervical spinal fracture-dislocation with AS