Selective recruitment of CXCR3+ and CCR5+ CCR4+ T cells into synovial tissue in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

The inflamed synovial tissue (ST) of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by the selective accumulation of interferon gamma-producing Th1-type CD4+ T cells. In this study, we investigated whether the predominance of Th1-type CD4+ cells in the ST lesion is mediated by their selective recruitment through Th1 cell-associated chemokine receptors CXCR3 and CCR5. The lymphocyte aggregates in the ST of RA contained a large number of CD4+ T cells, which mostly expressed both CXCR3 and CCR5, but not CCR4. In contrast, the frequencies of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells expressing CXCR3 and CCR5 in the blood were significantly decreased in RA patients, compared with healthy controls (HC), although there was no difference in the frequencies of CCR4-expressing CD4+ and CD8+ T cells between RA and HC. CXCR3, CCR5, and CCR4 expression in blood CD4 + T cells and CXCR3 expression in CD8+ T cells were increased after interleukin-15 (IL-15) stimulation. Therefore, the distribution of Th1-type CD4+ T cells into the ST from the blood in RA may be associated with the local expression of chemokines, both CXCR3 and CCR5 ligands, and IL-15 may play a role in enhancing these chemokine receptors on CD4+ T cell infiltrates.</p

Salient Object Detection With Importance Degree

In this article, we introduce salient object detection with importance degree (SOD-ID), which is a generalized technique for salient object detection (SOD), and propose an SOD-ID method. We define SOD-ID as a technique that detects salient objects and estimates their importance degree values. Hence, it is more effective for some image applications than SOD, which is shown via examples. The definition, evaluation procedure, and data collection for SOD-ID are introduced and discussed, and we propose its evaluation metric and data preparation, whose validity is discussed with the simulation results. Moreover, we propose an SOD-ID method, which consists of three technical blocks: instance segmentation, saliency detection, and importance degree estimation. The saliency detection block is proposed based on a convolutional neural network using the results of the instance segmentation block. The importance degree estimation block is achieved using the results of the other blocks. The proposed method accurately suppresses inaccurate saliencies and estimates the importance degree for multi-object images. In the simulations, the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art methods with respect to the F-measure for SOD; and Spearman\u27s and Kendall rank correlation coefficients, and the proposed metric for SOD-ID

AN INTEGER TONE MAPPING OPERATION FOR HDR IMAGES IN OPENEXR WITH DENORMALIZED NUMBERS

ABSTRACT We propose an integer tone mapping operator (TMO) for high dynamic range (HDR) images expressed in a floating-point data format. Two purposes are achieved by the proposed TMO. The first purpose is to implement a TMO with less memory space. The second purpose is to give an important step to realize a fixed-point TMO. The proposed TMO is available for HDR images in the OpenEXR format. The OpenEXR format has two numerical representations (the normalized number and the denormalized number) which are not in other HDR formats such as RGBE. These two numerical representations cause a problem in applying an integer TMO. The proposed method enables us to avoid the problem by using the intermediate format. Moreover, the exponent part and the mantissa part are processed separately as two integer numbers. As a result, an integer TMO with less numerical range is achieved by our method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can generate high-quality low dynamic range (LDR) images with less memory space. Index Terms-high dynamic range, tone mapping, OpenEXR, denormalized number, integer operatio

Resistance to IL-10 inhibition of interferon gamma production and expression of suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 in CD4(+ )T cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis

IL-10 has been shown to block the antigen-specific T-cell cytokine response by inhibiting the CD28 signaling pathway. We found that peripheral blood CD4(+ )T cells from patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were able to produce greater amounts of interferon gamma after CD3 and CD28 costimulation in the presence of 1 ng/ml IL-10 than were normal control CD4(+ )T cells, although their surface expression of the type 1 IL-10 receptor was increased. The phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 was sustained in both blood and synovial tissue CD4(+ )T cells of RA, but it was not augmented by the presence of 1 ng/ml IL-10. Sera from RA patients induced signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 phosphorylation in normal CD4(+ )T cells, which was mostly abolished by neutralizing anti-IL-6 antibody. Preincubation of normal CD4(+ )T cells with IL-6 reduced IL-10-mediated inhibition of interferon gamma production. Blood CD4(+ )T cells from RA patients contained higher levels of suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 but lower levels of suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 mRNA compared with control CD4(+ )T cells, as determined by real-time PCR. These results indicate that RA CD4(+ )T cells become resistant to the immunosuppressive effect of IL-10 before migration into synovial tissue, and this impaired IL-10 signaling may be associated with sustained signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 activation and suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 induction

Pathophysiological functions of CD30+ CD4+ T cells in rheumatoid arthritis.

High levels of soluble CD30 (sCD30) were detected in the serum and synovial fluid of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), indicating the involvement of CD30+ T cells in the pathogenesis. We investigated the induction of CD30 and its functions in CD4+T cells from patients with established RA (disease duration &#62;_2 years). CD4+ T cells from both the peripheral blood (PB) and synovial tissue (ST) of RA patients expressed surface CD30 when stimulated with anti-CD3 antibody (Ab) and anti-CD28 Ab, but their CD30 induction was slower and weaker compared with PB CD4+ T cells of healthy controls (HC). Immunohistochemical analysis showed that only a small proportion of lymphocytes expressed CD30 in the ST (-1%). RA PB CD4+ T cells, after recovery from 6-day stimulation with anti-CD3 Ab and anti-CD28 Ab, showed in intracellular cytokine staining that CD30+ T cells could produce more interleukin-4 (IL-4) but less interferon-gamma. In the culture of RA PB CD4+ T Cells with anti-CD3 Ab and anti-CD28 Ab, blocking anti-CD30 Ab similarly inhibited the cell proliferation and activation of nuclear factor-kappaB on day 4 in RA and HC, but inhibited the apoptotic cell death on day 6 only in RA. These results indicate that despite high-level expression of sCD30, the anti-inflammatory activity of IL-4-producing CD30+ CD4+ T cells may be limited in the ST due to a poor induction of surface CD30 and a susceptibility to CD30-mediated cell death.</p

Induction of tumour necrosis factor receptor-expressing macrophages by interleukin-10 and macrophage colony-stimulating factor in rheumatoid arthritis

Despite its potent ability to inhibit proinflammatory cytokine synthesis, interleukin (IL)-10 has a marginal clinical effect in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Recent evidence suggests that IL-10 induces monocyte/macrophage maturation in cooperation with macrophage-colony stimulating factor (M-CSF). In the present study, we found that the inducible subunit of the IL-10 receptor (IL-10R), type 1 IL-10R (IL-10R1), was expressed at higher levels on monocytes in RA than in healthy controls, in association with disease activity, while their expression of both type 1 and 2 tumour necrosis factor receptors (TNFR1/2) was not increased. The expression of IL-10R1 but not IL-10R2 was augmented on monocytes cultured in the presence of RA synovial tissue (ST) cell culture supernatants. Cell surface expression of TNFR1/2 expression on monocytes was induced by IL-10, and more efficiently in combination with M-CSF. Two-color immunofluorescence labeling of RA ST samples showed an intensive coexpression of IL-10R1, TNFR1/2, and M-CSF receptor in CD68(+ )lining macrophages. Adhered monocytes, after 3-day preincubation with IL-10 and M-CSF, could produce more IL-1β and IL-6 in response to TNF-α in the presence of dibutyryl cAMP, as compared with the cells preincubated with or without IL-10 or M-CSF alone. Microarray analysis of gene expression revealed that IL-10 activated various genes essential for macrophage functions, including other members of the TNFR superfamily, receptors for chemokines and growth factors, Toll-like receptors, and TNFR-associated signaling molecules. These results suggest that IL-10 may contribute to the inflammatory process by facilitating monocyte differentiation into TNF-α-responsive macrophages in the presence of M-CSF in RA

Word Length Condition for DC Lossless DWT

This report theoretically analyzes the condition on word length of coefficients and signals such that the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) becomes DC lossless. The DWT discussed here is irreversible for an arbitrary input signal. However, it becomes lossless for a constant valued (DC) input signal under the condition. In conventional approaches, error due to shortening of word length of signals (signal error) and that of coefficients (coefficient error) are treated as additive and multiplicative, respectively. In this report, we introduce a new model which shifts the coefficient error to the signal error in order to treat them as additive. Furthermore, utilizing the fact that the accumulated error inside the circuit is nullified by the rounding at its output, we derive the condition for the DC lossless DWT. Theoretical bound of the word length is derived and the minimum word length is found to be 14 [bit] for 8 [bit] input signals.APSIPA ASC 2009: Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association, 2009 Annual Summit and Conference. 4-7 October 2009. Sapporo, Japan. Poster session: Image, Video, and Multimedia Signal Processing 2 (6 October 2009)