Functional diversity of chemokines and chemokine receptors in response to viral infection of the central nervous system.

Encounters with neurotropic viruses result in varied outcomes ranging from encephalitis, paralytic poliomyelitis or other serious consequences to relatively benign infection. One of the principal factors that control the outcome of infection is the localized tissue response and subsequent immune response directed against the invading toxic agent. It is the role of the immune system to contain and control the spread of virus infection in the central nervous system (CNS), and paradoxically, this response may also be pathologic. Chemokines are potent proinflammatory molecules whose expression within virally infected tissues is often associated with protection and/or pathology which correlates with migration and accumulation of immune cells. Indeed, studies with a neurotropic murine coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), have provided important insight into the functional roles of chemokines and chemokine receptors in participating in various aspects of host defense as well as disease development within the CNS. This chapter will highlight recent discoveries that have provided insight into the diverse biologic roles of chemokines and their receptors in coordinating immune responses following viral infection of the CNS

Collapsing shear-free perfect fluid spheres with heat flow

A global view is given upon the study of collapsing shear-free perfect fluid spheres with heat flow. We apply a compact formalism, which simplifies the isotropy condition and the condition for conformal flatness. This formalism also presents the simplest possible version of the main junction condition, demonstrated explicitly for conformally flat and geodesic solutions. It gives the right functions to disentangle this condition into well known differential equations like those of Abel, Riccati, Bernoulli and the linear one. It yields an alternative derivation of the general solution with functionally dependent metric components. We bring together the results for static and time- dependent models to describe six generating functions of the general solution to the isotropy equation. Their common features and relations between them are elucidated. A general formula for separable solutions is given, incorporating collapse to a black hole or to a naked singularity.Comment: 26 page

Prevalence of Frailty in European Emergency Departments (FEED): an international flash mob study

Introduction Current emergency care systems are not optimized to respond to multiple and complex problems associated with frailty. Services may require reconfiguration to effectively deliver comprehensive frailty care, yet its prevalence and variation are poorly understood. This study primarily determined the prevalence of frailty among older people attending emergency care. Methods This cross-sectional study used a flash mob approach to collect observational European emergency care data over a 24-h period (04 July 2023). Sites were identified through the European Task Force for Geriatric Emergency Medicine collaboration and social media. Data were collected for all individuals aged 65 + who attended emergency care, and for all adults aged 18 + at a subset of sites. Variables included demographics, Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), vital signs, and disposition. European and national frailty prevalence was determined with proportions with each CFS level and with dichotomized CFS 5 + (mild or more severe frailty). Results Sixty-two sites in fourteen European countries recruited five thousand seven hundred eighty-five individuals. 40% of 3479 older people had at least mild frailty, with countries ranging from 26 to 51%. They had median age 77 (IQR, 13) years and 53% were female. Across 22 sites observing all adult attenders, older people living with frailty comprised 14%. Conclusion 40% of older people using European emergency care had CFS 5 + . Frailty prevalence varied widely among European care systems. These differences likely reflected entrance selection and provide windows of opportunity for system configuration and workforce planning