Identification of novel antiacetylated vimentin antibodies in patients with early inflammatory arthritis

OBJECTIVE: To investigate serum antibody reactivity against a panel of post-translationally modified vimentin peptides (PTMPs) in patients with early inflammatory arthritis. METHODS: A panel of PTMPs was developed. Microtitre plates were coated with peptides derived from vimentin that were identical in length and composition except at one amino acid that was changed to introduce one of three post-translational modifications (PTMs)—either a citrullinated, carbamylated or acetylated residue. Sera of 268 treatment-naive patients with early inflammatory arthritis and symptoms ≤3 months' duration were tested. Patients were assigned to one of three outcome categories at 18-month follow-up (rheumatoid arthritis (RA), persistent non-RA arthritis and resolving arthritis). RESULTS: Antibodies against citrullinated, carbamylated and acetylated vimentin peptides were detected in the sera of patients with early inflammatory arthritis. The proportion of patients seropositive for all antibody types was significantly higher in the RA group than in the other groups. Anti cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP)-positive patients with RA had higher numbers of peptides recognised and higher levels of antibodies against those peptides, representing a distinct profile compared with the other groups. CONCLUSIONS: We show for the first time that antibodies against acetylated vimentin are present in the sera of patients with early RA and confirm and extend previous observations regarding anticitrullinated and anticarbamylated antibodies

Harmonization of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) testing by reporting test result-specific likelihood ratios: position paper

Acknowledgments: We thank Ingrid Zegers and Evanthia Monogioudi (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Geel, Belgium) for providing the reference materials and for helpful discussions

Introduction: building the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT)

The papers presented in this issue are the result of a workshop held at the University of Nottingham in December 2012 as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council research network Towards a History of Modern Foreign Language Teaching and Learning (2012–14) intended to stimulate historical research into language teaching and learning. This, the first workshop in the programme, focused on exchanging information on the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) across the different language traditions, for it had become clear to us that scholars working within their own language disciplines were often relatively unaware of work outside these. We hope that this special issue — with overview articles on the history of English, French, German, and Spanish as second/foreign languages — will help overcome that lack of awareness and facilitate further research collaboration. Charting the history of language teaching and learning will, in turn, make us all better informed in facing challenges and changes to policy and practice now and in the future. It is instructive in the current climate, for example, to realize that grave doubts were held about whether second foreign languages could survive alongside French in British schools in the early twentieth century (McLelland, forthcoming), or to look back at earlier attempts to establish foreign languages in primary schools (Bayley, 1989; Burstall et al., 1974; Hoy, 1977). As we write, language learning in England is undergoing yet more radical change. Language teaching for all children from the age of seven is being made compulsory in primary schools from 2014, while at Key Stage 3 (up to age 16), where a foreign language has not been compulsory since 2002, the most recent programme of study for England has virtually abandoned the recent focus on intercultural competence and now requires learners to ‘read great literature in the original language’,1 a radical change in emphasis compared to the previous half-century, which seems to reflect a very different view of what language learning is for. We seem to be little closer in 2014 than we were at the dawn of the twentieth century to answering with any certainty the questions that lie at the very foundations of language teaching: who should learn a foreign language, why learners learn, what they need to learn, and what we want to teach them — answers that we need before we can consider how we want to teach. The research programme begun under our research network is intended to help us to take ‘the long view’ on such questions

Standardisation of PR3-ANCA and MPO-ANCA: evaluation of certified reference materials

status: publishe

Harmonization of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) testing by reporting test result-specific likelihood ratios: position paper

status: publishe