An Antibody-Based Leukocyte-Capture Microarray for the Diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

The diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is challenging due to its heterogeneous clinical presentation and the lack of robust biomarkers to distinguish it from other autoimmune diseases. Further, currently used laboratory tests do not readily distinguish active and inactive disease. Several groups have attempted to apply emerging high throughput profiling technologies to diagnose and monitor SLE. Despite showing promise, many are expensive and technically challenging for routine clinical use. The goal of this work is to develop a better diagnostic and monitoring tool for SLE. We report a highly customisable antibody microarray that consists of a duplicate arrangement of 82 antibodies directed against surface antigens on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PMBCs). This high-throughput array was used to profile SLE patients (n = 60) with varying disease activity, compared to healthy controls (n = 24), patients with rheumatoid arthritis (n = 25), and other autoimmune diseases (n = 28). We used a computational algorithm to calculate a score from the entire microarray profile and correlated it with SLE disease activity. Our results demonstrate that leukocyte-capture microarray profiles can readily distinguish active SLE patients from healthy controls (AUROC = 0.84). When combined with the standard laboratory tests (serum anti-dsDNA, complements C3 and C4), the microarrays provide significantly increased discrimination. The antibody microarrays can be enhanced by the addition of other markers for potential application to the diagnosis and stratification of SLE, paving the way for the customised and accurate diagnosis and monitoring of SLE

Similaridade genética de acessos de pinha por meio de marcadores ISSR.

Este estudo teve por objetivo caracterizar e avaliar a diversidade genética entre 19 acessos de pinha, sendo 9 clones e 10 progênies, pertencentes ao BAG de Fruteiras Nativas da Embrapa Meio-Norte, Teresina, PI, por meio de marcadores moleculares ISSR (Inter Simple Sequence Repeat)

Prelamin A mediates myocardial inflammation in dilated and HIV-associated cardiomyopathies

Cardiomyopathies are complex heart muscle diseases that can be inherited or acquired. Dilated cardiomyopathy can result from mutations in LMNA, encoding the nuclear intermediate filament proteins lamin A/C. Some LMNA mutations lead to accumulation of the lamin A precursor, prelamin A, which is disease causing in a number of tissues, yet its impact upon the heart is unknown. Here, we discovered myocardial prelamin A accumulation occurred in a case of dilated cardiomyopathy, and we show that a potentially novel mouse model of cardiac-specific prelamin A accumulation exhibited a phenotype consistent with inflammatory cardiomyopathy, which we observed to be similar to HIV-associated cardiomyopathy, an acquired disease state. Numerous HIV protease therapies are known to inhibit ZMPSTE24, the enzyme responsible for prelamin A processing, and we confirmed that accumulation of prelamin A occurred in HIV+ patient cardiac biopsies. These findings (a) confirm a unifying pathological role for prelamin A common to genetic and acquired cardiomyopathies; (b) have implications for the management of HIV patients with cardiac disease, suggesting protease inhibitors should be replaced with alternative therapies (i.e., nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors); and (c) suggest that targeting inflammation may be a useful treatment strategy for certain forms of inherited cardiomyopathy

Prelamin A mediates inflammation in dilated and HIV associated cardiomyopathies

Cardiomyopathies are complex heart muscle diseases that can be inherited or acquired. Dilated cardiomyopathy can result from mutations in LMNA, encoding the nuclear intermediate filament proteins lamin A/C. Some LMNA mutations lead to accumulation of the lamin A precursor, prelamin A, which is disease causing in a number of tissues yet its impact upon the heart is unknown. Here we discovered myocardial prelamin A accumulation occurred in a case of dilated cardiomyopathy and show that a novel mouse model of cardiac specific prelamin A accumulation exhibited a phenotype consistent with ‘inflammatory cardiomyopathy’ which we observed to be similar to HIV associated cardiomyopathy, an acquired disease state. Numerous HIV protease therapies are known to inhibit ZMPSTE24, the enzyme responsible for prelamin A processing, and we confirmed that accumulation of prelamin A occurred in HIV+ patient cardiac biopsies. These findings: (1) confirm a unifying pathological role for prelamin A common to genetic and acquired cardiomyopathies; (2) have implications for the management of HIV patients with cardiac disease suggesting protease inhibitors should be replaced with alternative therapies i.e. non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors; and (3) suggest that targeting inflammation may be a useful treatment strategy for certain forms of inherited cardiomyopathy

Sex-specific cardiac remodeling in early and advanced stages of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most frequent genetic cardiac disease with a prevalence of 1:500 to 1:200. While most patients show obstructive HCM and a relatively stable clinical phenotype (stage II), a small group of patients progresses to end-stage HCM (stage IV) within a relatively brie

Differential variability analysis of gene expression and its application to human diseases

Motivation: Current microarray analyses focus on identifying sets of genes that are differentially expressed (DE) or differentially coexpressed (DC) in different biological states (e.g. diseased versus non-diseased). We observed that in many human diseases, some genes have a significantincrease or decrease in expression variability (variance). Asthese observed changes in expression variability may be caused by alteration of the underlying expression dynamics, such differential variability (DV) patterns are also biologically interesting