Maternal and Neonatal Outcome of Pregnancies with Autoimmune Myasthenia Gravis

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune neuromuscular disease manifested by the weakness and fatigue in skeletal muscles of the face and extremities. Transient neonatal myasthenia gravis is an uncommon type of MG affecting the newborns with mothers who suffer from the disorder or specific circulating autoantibodies. In most cases, the intensity of transient neonatal MG is not associated with the mothers’ condition but rather with maternal antibody titers. The symptoms of transient neonatal MG are hypotonia, feeding difficulties, weak cry, facial diplegia, and breathing difficulties in the affected newborns. The disease is connected to the passive transplacental transfer of anti-acetylcholine receptor antibodies (anti-AChR) or antimuscle-specific tyrosine kinase antibodies (anti-MuSK) from the affected mother to the infant. The postsynaptic neuromuscular junction is damaged by the circulation of autoimmune antibodies, and the antibodies directed against fetal AChR are responsible for the form of fetal onset. Monitoring of these newborns is necessary in the first 7 days upon birth, since during this period of life, TNM symptoms can be detected, especially on the second day. In pregnancy period, myasthenia gravis symptoms may vary and they frequently worsen, sometimes leading to premature delivery

Significance of Lipid and Lipoprotein in Organism

Lipids are important energy and building compounds. Their decomposition provides a significant amount of energy required for various life processes. It can thus be deposited in triglycerides and adipocytes. Some of them, in conjunction with proteins, form the most important structural elements of cells and cellular organelles, while others are precursors for the synthesis of numerous active compounds such as some hormones or prostaglandins. Lipids are ingested but can also be synthesized in the body. In circulation, lipids are found packed in lipoprotein molecules because they are insoluble in water. Lipoproteins have a central lipid part (nucleus) containing triglycerides and cholesterol esters, and on the surface there is a sheath composed of certain proteins (apoproteins), phospholipids, and small amounts of free cholesterol. Thanks to this sheath, lipids can be transported via blood. It took a long time to determine the importance and role of lipids in the body, as well as their role in many metabolic disorders of various diseases. This field is still unexplored and is a challenge for many researchers to prevent and treat lipid metabolism disorders

Placenta Abruption and Delivery Method

Placental abruption is a significant contributor to maternal mortality worldwide. Early and skilled medical intervention is needed to ensure a good outcome, and this is not available in many parts of the world. Abruptio placentae are defined as the premature separation of the placenta from the uterus. Placental abruption must be considered whenever bleeding is encountered in the second half of pregnancy, since it is a significant cause of third-trimester bleeding associated with fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality. If the bleeding persists, fetal and maternal distress may develop. Fetal and maternal death may occur if appropriate interventions are not undertaken. The severity of fetal distress correlates with the degree of placental separation. In near-complete or complete abruption, fetal death is inevitable unless an immediate cesarean delivery is undertaken

Codes for DNA Storage Channels

We consider the problem of assembling a sequence based on a collection of its substrings observed through a noisy channel. The mathematical basis of the problem is the construction and design of sequences that may be discriminated based on a collection of their substrings observed through a noisy channel. We explain the connection between the sequence reconstruction problem and the problem of DNA synthesis and sequencing, and introduce the notion of a DNA storage channel. We analyze the number of sequence equivalence classes under the channel mapping and propose new asymmetric coding techniques to combat the effects of synthesis and sequencing noise. In our analysis, we make use of restricted de Bruijn graphs and Ehrhart theory for rational polytopes.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure

Set-Codes with Small Intersections and Small Discrepancies

We are concerned with the problem of designing large families of subsets over a common labeled ground set that have small pairwise intersections and the property that the maximum discrepancy of the label values within each of the sets is less than or equal to one. Our results, based on transversal designs, factorizations of packings and Latin rectangles, show that by jointly constructing the sets and labeling scheme, one can achieve optimal family sizes for many parameter choices. Probabilistic arguments akin to those used for pseudorandom generators lead to significantly suboptimal results when compared to the proposed combinatorial methods. The design problem considered is motivated by applications in molecular data storage and theoretical computer science

Inhibition of c-Kit signaling is associated with reduced heat and cold pain sensitivity in humans

The tyrosine kinase receptor c-Kit is critically involved in the modulation of nociceptive sensitivity in mice. Ablation of the c-Kit gene results in hyposensitivity to thermal pain, while c-Kit activation produces hypersensitivity to the noxious heat, without altering sensitivity to innocuous mechanical stimuli. In this study we investigated the role of c-Kit signalling in human pain perception. We hypothesized that subjects treated with Imatinib or Nilotinib, potent inhibitors of tyrosine kinases including c-Kit, but also Abl1, PDFGFR{alpha}, and PDFGFR{beta}, that are used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), would experience changes in thermal pain sensitivity. We examined 31 asymptomatic CML patients (14 male, 17 female) under Imatinib/Nilotinib treatment and compared them to 39 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (12 male, 27 female). We used cutaneous heat and cold stimulation to test normal and noxious thermal sensitivity, and a grating orientation task to assess tactile acuity. Thermal pain thresholds were significantly increased in the Imatinib/Nilotinib-treated group, while innocuous thermal and tactile thresholds were unchanged compared to the control group. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the biological effects of c-Kit inhibition are comparable in mice and humans in that c-Kit activity is required to regulate thermal pain sensitivity, but does not affect innocuous thermal and mechanical sensation. The effect on experimental heat pain observed in our study is comparable to that of several common analgesics, thus modulation of the c-Kit pathway can be used to specifically modulate noxious heat and cold sensitivity in humans