Increase in mast cells and hyaluronic acid correlates to radiation-induced damage and loss of serous acinar cells in salivary glands: the parotid and submandibular glands differ in radiation sensitivity.

The detailed mechanisms which can explain the inherent radiosensitivity of salivary glands remain to be elucidated. Although DNA is the most plausible critical target for the lethal effects of irradiation, interactions with other constituents, such as cell membrane and neuropeptides, have been suggested to cause important physiological changes. Moreover, mast cells seem to be closely linked to radiation-induced pneumonitis. Therefore, in the present study the effects of fractionated irradiation on salivary glands have been assessed with special regard to the appearance of mast cells and its correlation with damage to gland parenchyma. Sprague-Dawley strain rats were unilaterally irradiated to the head and neck with the salivary glands within the radiation field. The irradiation was delivered once daily for 5 days to a total dose of 20, 35 and 45 Gy. The contralateral parotid and submandibular glands served as intra-animal controls and parallel analysis of glands was performed 2, 4, 10 or 180 days following the last radiation treatment. Morphological analysis revealed no obvious changes up to 10 days after the irradiation. At 180 days a radiation dose-dependent loss of gland parenchyma was seen, especially with regard to serious acinar cells in parotid gland and acinar cells and serous CGT (convoluted granular tubule) cells in the submandibular gland. These changes displayed a close correlation with a concomitant dose-dependent enhanced density of mast cells and staining for hyaluronic acid. This cell population seems to conform with the features of the connective tissue mast cell type. The parotid seems to be more sensitive to irradiation than the submandibular gland. Thus, the present results further strengthen the role of and the potential interaction of mast cells with radiation-induced tissue injury and alterations in normal tissue integrity

Status and trends of European pollinators. Key findings of the STEP project

Peer reviewe

A realistic assessment of methods for extracting gene/protein interactions from free text

Background: The automated extraction of gene and/or protein interactions from the literature is one of the most important targets of biomedical text mining research. In this paper we present a realistic evaluation of gene/protein interaction mining relevant to potential non-specialist users. Hence we have specifically avoided methods that are complex to install or require reimplementation, and we coupled our chosen extraction methods with a state-of-the-art biomedical named entity tagger. Results: Our results show: that performance across different evaluation corpora is extremely variable; that the use of tagged (as opposed to gold standard) gene and protein names has a significant impact on performance, with a drop in F-score of over 20 percentage points being commonplace; and that a simple keyword-based benchmark algorithm when coupled with a named entity tagger outperforms two of the tools most widely used to extract gene/protein interactions. Conclusion: In terms of availability, ease of use and performance, the potential non-specialist user community interested in automatically extracting gene and/or protein interactions from free text is poorly served by current tools and systems. The public release of extraction tools that are easy to install and use, and that achieve state-of-art levels of performance should be treated as a high priority by the biomedical text mining community

Kvädöfjärden, Egentliga Östersjön, 1981–2021

Inom den nationella miljöövervakningen av kust och hav bedrivs årligen sedan slutet av 1980-talet ett program för integrerad kustfiskövervakning. Programmet startades i slutet av 1980-talet och omfattar i dagsläget sju nationella referensområden; två i Bottniska viken, ett i norra Egentliga Östersjön, två i södra Egentliga Östersjön och två i Västerhavet.Syftet med programmet är att kartlägga fiskbeståndens status samt fiskens hälsotillstånd och miljögiftsbelastning för att upptäcka förändringar som indikerar storskalig påverkan av miljöhot som eutrofiering, miljögifter, klimatförändringar och andra miljöfaktorer.Detta faktablad sammanfattar resultat och bedömningar från den integrerade kustfiskövervakningen i referensområdet Kvädöfjärden i södra Östergötland. För en fördjupad presentation av resultaten se; Faktablad för Integrerad kustfisk-övervakning (Fjällbacka, Torhamn, Kvädöfjärden och Holmöarna), 2020: