Effect of n-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation in pregnancy on infants' allergies in first year of life: randomised controlled trial

Objective: To determine whether dietary n-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA) supplementation of pregnant women with a fetus at high risk of allergic disease reduces immunoglobulin E associated eczema or food allergy at 1 year of age. Design: Follow-up of infants at high hereditary risk of allergic disease in the Docosahexaenoic Acid to Optimise Mother Infant Outcome (DOMInO) randomised controlled trial. Setting: Adelaide, South Australia. Participants: 706 infants at high hereditary risk of developing allergic disease whose mothers were participating in the DOMInO trial. Interventions: The intervention group (n=368) was randomly allocated to receive fish oil capsules (providing 900 mg of n-3 LCPUFA daily) from 21 weeks’ gestation until birth; the control group (n=338) received matched vegetable oil capsules without n-3 LCPUFA. Main outcome measure: Immunoglobulin E associated allergic disease (eczema or food allergy with sensitisation) at 1 year of age. Results: No differences were seen in the overall percentage of infants with immunoglobulin E associated allergic disease between the n-3 LCPUFA and control groups (32/368 (9%) v 43/338 (13%); unadjusted relative risk 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.43 to 1.05, P=0.08; adjusted relative risk 0.70, 0.45 to 1.09, P=0.12), although the percentage of infants diagnosed as having atopic eczema (that is, eczema with associated sensitisation) was lower in the n-3 LCPUFA group (26/368 (7%) v 39/338 (12%); unadjusted relative risk 0.61, 0.38 to 0.98, P=0.04; adjusted relative risk 0.64, 0.40 to 1.02, P=0.06). Fewer infants were sensitised to egg in the n-3 LCPUFA group (34/368 (9%) v 52/338 (15%); unadjusted relative risk 0.61, 0.40 to 0.91, P=0.02; adjusted relative risk 0.62, 0.41 to 0.93, P=0.02), but no difference between groups in immunoglobulin E associated food allergy was seen. Conclusion: n-3 LCPUFA supplementation in pregnancy did not reduce the overall incidence of immunoglobulin E associated allergies in the first year of life, although atopic eczema and egg sensitisation were lower. Longer term follow-up is needed to determine if supplementation has an effect on respiratory allergic diseases and aeroallergen sensitisation in childhood.D J Palmer, T Sullivan, M S Gold, S L Prescott, R Heddle, R A Gibson, M Makride

The effect of COVID19 public health restrictions on the health of people with musculoskeletal conditions and symptoms : the CONTAIN study

Funding This work was supported by Versus Arthritis [Grant Number: 20748] and the British Society for Rheumatology. The funding for the original studies included were from Versus Arthritis (MAmMOTH) and the British Society for Rheumatology (BSRBR-AS and BSR-PsA). Daniel Whibley is supported by a Versus Arthritis Foundation Fellowship [Grant Number 21742] Acknowledgements We are grateful to help from staff at the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society and specifically to patient partners Lynne Laidlaw (for help with designing questionnaire) and Susan Davis (for commenting on the manuscript). The authors do not report any conflicts of interest. GJM conceived the idea for the study and all authors were involved in the detailed planning. MH, KK, EM-B and MB were responsible for obtaining ethics and research governance approvals. MB undertook the analysis which was independently verified by GTJ. GJM, with input from MB, drafted the manuscript, and all authors contributed important intellectual content via written comments. We thank Linda Dean for comments on the manuscript. Data Availability Statement The data within the article which relate to the collection of BSR register data are owned by the BSR – access to these data are subject to application being made to the BSR: Registers (rheumatology.org.uk) . For other data in the article, application can be made for access to the data by contacting the corresponding author.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Phage Orf family recombinases:conservation of activities and involvement of the central channel in DNA binding

Genetic and biochemical evidence suggests that λ Orf is a recombination mediator, promoting nucleation of either bacterial RecA or phage Redβ recombinases onto single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) bound by SSB protein. We have identified a diverse family of Orf proteins that includes representatives implicated in DNA base flipping and those fused to an HNH endonuclease domain. To confirm a functional relationship with the Orf family, a distantly-related homolog, YbcN, from Escherichia coli cryptic prophage DLP12 was purified and characterized. As with its λ relative, YbcN showed a preference for binding ssDNA over duplex. Neither Orf nor YbcN displayed a significant preference for duplex DNA containing mismatches or 1-3 nucleotide bulges. YbcN also bound E. coli SSB, although unlike Orf, it failed to associate with an SSB mutant lacking the flexible C-terminal tail involved in coordinating heterologous protein-protein interactions. Residues conserved in the Orf family that flank the central cavity in the λ Orf crystal structure were targeted for mutagenesis to help determine the mode of DNA binding. Several of these mutant proteins showed significant defects in DNA binding consistent with the central aperture being important for substrate recognition. The widespread conservation of Orf-like proteins highlights the importance of targeting SSB coated ssDNA during lambdoid phage recombination

Photoproduction of phi(1020) mesons on the proton at large momentum transfer

The cross section for $\phi$ meson photoproduction on the proton has been measured for the first time up to a four-momentum transfer -t = 4 GeV^2, using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. At low four-momentum transfer, the differential cross section is well described by Pomeron exchange. At large four-momentum transfer, above -t = 1.8 GeV^2, the data support a model where the Pomeron is resolved into its simplest component, two gluons, which may couple to any quark in the proton and in the $\phi$.Comment: 5 pages; 7 figure

The e p -> e' p eta reaction at and above the S11(1535) baryon resonance

New cross sections for the reaction e p -> ep eta are reported for total center of mass energy W = 1.5--1.86 GeV and invariant momentum transfer Q^2 = 0.25--1.5 GeV^2. This large kinematic range allows extraction of important new information about response functions, photocouplings, and eta N coupling strengths of baryon resonances. Expanded W coverage shows sharp structure at W \~ 1.7 GeV; this is shown to come from interference between S and P waves and can be interpreted in terms of known resonances. Improved values are derived for the photon coupling amplitude for the S11(1535) resonance.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Measurement of Inclusive Spin Structure Functions of the Deuteron

We report the results of a new measurement of spin structure functions of the deuteron in the region of moderate momentum transfer ($Q^2$ = 0.27 -- 1.3 (GeV/c)$^2$) and final hadronic state mass in the nucleon resonance region ($W$ = 1.08 -- 2.0 GeV). We scattered a 2.5 GeV polarized continuous electron beam at Jefferson Lab off a dynamically polarized cryogenic solid state target ($^{15}$ND$_3$) and detected the scattered electrons with the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). From our data, we extract the longitudinal double spin asymmetry $A_{||}$ and the spin structure function $g_1^d$. Our data are generally in reasonable agreement with existing data from SLAC where they overlap, and they represent a substantial improvement in statistical precision. We compare our results with expectations for resonance asymmetries and extrapolated deep inelastic scaling results. Finally, we evaluate the first moment of the structure function $g_1^d$ and study its approach to both the deep inelastic limit at large $Q^2$ and to the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule at the real photon limit ($Q^2 \to 0$). We find that the first moment varies rapidly in the $Q^2$ range of our experiment and crosses zero at $Q^2$ between 0.5 and 0.8 (GeV/c)$^2$, indicating the importance of the $\Delta$ resonance at these momentum transfers.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, ReVTeX 4, final version as accepted by Phys. Rev.

Comment on the narrow structure reported by Amaryan et al

The CLAS Collaboration provides a comment on the physics interpretation of the results presented in a paper published by M. Amaryan et al. regarding the possible observation of a narrow structure in the mass spectrum of a photoproduction experiment.Comment: to be published in Physical Review

Q2Q^2 Dependence of Quadrupole Strength in the γ∗p→Δ+(1232)→pπ0\gamma^*p\to\Delta^+(1232)\to p \pi^0 Transition

Models of baryon structure predict a small quadrupole deformation of the nucleon due to residual tensor forces between quarks or distortions from the pion cloud. Sensitivity to quark versus pion degrees of freedom occurs through the $Q^2$ dependence of the magnetic ($M_{1+}$), electric ($E_{1+}$), and scalar ($S_{1+}$) multipoles in the $\gamma^* p \to \Delta^+ \to p \pi^0$ transition. We report new experimental values for the ratios $E_{1+}/M_{1+}$ and $S_{1+}/M_{1+}$ over the range $Q^2$= 0.4-1.8 GeV$^2$, extracted from precision $p(e,e 'p)\pi^{\circ}$ data using a truncated multipole expansion. Results are best described by recent unitary models in which the pion cloud plays a dominant role.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. To be published in Phys. Rev. Lett. (References, figures and table updated, minor changes.

Deeply virtual and exclusive electroproduction of omega mesons

The exclusive omega electroproduction off the proton was studied in a large kinematical domain above the nucleon resonance region and for the highest possible photon virtuality (Q2) with the 5.75 GeV beam at CEBAF and the CLAS spectrometer. Cross sections were measured up to large values of the four-momentum transfer (-t < 2.7 GeV2) to the proton. The contributions of the interference terms sigma_TT and sigma_TL to the cross sections, as well as an analysis of the omega spin density matrix, indicate that helicity is not conserved in this process. The t-channel pi0 exchange, or more generally the exchange of the associated Regge trajectory, seems to dominate the reaction gamma* p -> omega p, even for Q2 as large as 5 GeV2. Contributions of handbag diagrams, related to Generalized Parton Distributions in the nucleon, are therefore difficult to extract for this process. Remarkably, the high-t behaviour of the cross sections is nearly Q2-independent, which may be interpreted as a coupling of the photon to a point-like object in this kinematical limit.Comment: 15 pages,19 figure