Autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for treatment of multiple sclerosis

Autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) is a multistep procedure that enables destruction of the immune system and its reconstitution from haematopoietic stem cells. Originally developed for the treatment of haematological malignancies, the procedure has been adapted for the treatment of severe immune-mediated disorders. Results from ~20 years of research make a compelling case for selective use of AHSCT in patients with highly active multiple sclerosis (MS), and for controlled trials. Immunological studies support the notion that AHSCT causes qualitative immune resetting, and have provided insight into the mechanisms that might underlie the powerful treatment effects that last well beyond recovery of immune cell numbers. Indeed, studies have demonstrated that AHSCT can entirely suppress MS disease activity for 4–5 years in 70–80% of patients, a rate that is higher than those achieved with any other therapies for MS. Treatment-related mortality, which was 3.6% in studies before 2005, has decreased to 0.3% in studies since 2005. Current evidence indicates that the patients who are most likely to benefit from and tolerate AHSCT are young, ambulatory and have inflammatory MS activity. Clinical trials are required to rigorously test the efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness of AHSCT against highly active MS drugs

The effects of contextual richness on the guessability and the retention of words in a foreign language

One of the ideas that are currently gaining ground with regard to vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language is the view that inferring the meaning of a word from its context makes an important contribution towards the retention of the word in question. A precondition for this is that the meaning be guessed correctly. In our study we investigated (1) which contextual factors influence the guessability of words, (2) how these factors influence receptive retention (after guessing and memorizing), and (3) what is the relationship between correctly or incorrectly guessing and retention (after a learning stage). The main conclusions of this study are: (1) a specificfilling-in of the factors subject, verb, and function contributes to the guessability of a word in a particular sentence context; (2) a specific filling-in of the above-mentioned factors in the process of guessing and learning has no effect on the retention (subject and verb) or a negative effect (function); (3) correctly guessing a word does not lead to an improved retention (after a learning stage) as compared with guessing a word incorrectly; for some words retention is even worse. To summarize: the factors that are conducive to guessing are not conducive to retention, at least not when after guessing a learning stage occurs with the aid of the same context as in the process of guessing