A 9-year Trend in the Prevalence of Allergic Disease Based on National Health Insurance Data

Objectives: To investigate trends in the prevalence of allergic disease over a 9-year period. Methods: Using National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) data, the annual number of patients with allergic disease was obtained for each regional subdivisions (small cities, counties, and districts) from 2003 to 2011. Annual populations for each sub-region were obtained and used to calculate the standardized prevalence. To compare prevalence within the study period, data was standardized spatially and temporally. For standardization, demographic data was used to obtain the registered population and demographic structure for 2010, which was used to perform direct standardization of previous years. In addition, a geographic information system (GIS) was used to visualize prevalence for individual sub-regions, and allergic diseases were categorized into five groups according to prevalence. Results: The nationwide outpatient prevalence of allergic rhinitis increased approximately 2.3-fold, from 1.27% in 2003 to 2.97% in 2013, while inpatient prevalence also increased approximately 2.4-fold,. The outpatient prevalence of asthma increased 1.2-fold, and inpatient prevalence increased 1.3-fold. The outpatient prevalence of atopic dermatitis decreased approximately 12%, and inpatient prevalence decreased 5%. Conclusions: There was a large difference between prevalence estimated from actual treatment data and prevalence based on patients’ self-reported data, particularly for allergic rhinitis. Prevalence must continually be calculated and trends should be analyzed for the efficient management of allergic diseases. To this end, prevalence studies using NHIS claims data may be useful

Two distinct actin waves correlated with turns-and-runs of crawling microglia

© 2019 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Freely crawling cells are often viewed as randomly moving Brownian particles but they generally exhibit some directional persistence. This property is often related to their zigzag motile behaviors that can be described as a noisy but temporally structured sequence of “runs” and “turns.” However, its underlying biophysical mechanism is largely unexplored. Here, we carefully investigate the collective actin wave dynamics associated with the zigzag-crawling movements of microglia (as primary brain immune cells) employing a number of different quantitative imaging modalities including synthetic aperture microscopy and optical diffraction tomography, as well as conventional fluorescence imaging and scanning electron microscopy. Interestingly, we find that microglia exhibit two distinct types of actin waves working at two quite different time scales and locations, and they seem to serve different purposes. One type of actin waves is fast “peripheral ruffles” arising spontaneously with an oscillating period of about 6 seconds at some portion of the leading edge of crawling microglia, where the vigorously biased peripheral ruffles seem to set the direction of a new turn (in 2-D free space). When the cell turning events are inhibited with a physical confinement (in 1-D track), the peripheral ruffles still exist at the leading edge with no bias but showing phase coherence in the cell crawling direction. The other type is “dorsal actin waves” which also exhibits an oscillatory behavior but with a much longer period of around 2 minutes compared to the fast “peripheral ruffles”. Dorsal actin waves (whether the cell turning events are inhibited or not) initiate in the lamellipodium just behind the leading edge, travelling down toward the core region of the cell and disappear. Such dorsal wave propagations seem to be correlated with migration of the cell. Thus, we may view the dorsal actin waves are connected with the “run” stage of cell body, whereas the fast ruffles at the leading front are involved in the “turn” stag

Reflection Phase Microscopy by Successive Accumulation of Interferograms

Imaging three-dimensional (3-D) structures of biological specimens without exogenous contrast agents is desired in biological and medical science in order not to disturb the physiological status of the living samples. Reflection phase microscopy based on interferometric detection has been useful for the label-free observation of such samples. However, the achievement of optical sectioning has been mainly based on the time gating set by the broad spectra of light sources. Here we propose wide-field reflection phase microscopy using a light source of narrow bandwidth, which is yet capable of achieving the optical sectioning sufficient for 3-D imaging of biological specimens. The depth selectivity is achieved by successive accumulation of interferograms (SAI) produced by synchronous angular scanning of a plane wave on both the sample and reference planes. This intensity-based cumulative process eventually results in a coherent addition of object fields that quickly attenuates the out-of-focus information along the axial direction. We theoretically investigated and numerically verified the generation of the depth selectivity by SAI. We also implemented a reflection phase microscope working with this principle and then demonstrated high-resolution 3-D imaging of living cells and small worms in a label-free manner. © 2019 American Chemical Societ

Correction: Two distinct actin waves correlated with turns-and-runs of crawling microglia.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220810.]

Correction: Correction: Two distinct actin waves correlated with turns-and-runs of crawling microglia.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222692.]

Jones Matrix Microscopy for Living Eukaryotic Cells

© Polarization of light carries important information regarding the materials included by biological samples. A Jones matrix is a general tool for quantifying the degree of polarization, however, its measurement has been limited mostly to connective tissues with strong polarization response due to the lack of measurement sensitivity. Here, we demonstrate polarization phase microscopy capable of measuring a Jones matrix of a living eukaryotic cell. Our strategy combines synthetic aperture imaging with polarization phase microscopy to improve the polarization sensitivity. The resultant suppression of intrinsic phase noise in the measurement allows a Jones matrix of a single eukaryotic cell to be clearly visualized. Using the synthesized Jones matrices, the characteristic cellular polarization properties of normal and cancer cells were quantified, and substantial differences between the two kinds were quantitatively identified.11Nsciescopu

Application of M1 macrophage as a live vector in delivering nanoparticles for in vivo photothermal treatment

Introduction: To enhance photothermal treatment (PTT) efficiency, a delivery method that uses cell vector for nanoparticles (NPs) delivery has drawn attention and studied widely in recent years. Objectives: In this study, we demonstrated the feasibility of M1 activated macrophage as a live vector for delivering NPs and investigated the effect of NPs loaded M1 stimulated by Lipopolysaccharide on PTT efficiency in vivo. Methods: M1 was used as a live vector for delivering NPs and further to investigate the effect of NPs loaded M1 on PTT efficiency. Non-activated macrophage (MФ) was stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) into M1 and assessed for tumor cell phagocytic capacity towards NPs Results: We found M1 exhibited a 20-fold higher uptake capacity of NPs per cell volume and 2.9-fold more active infiltration into the tumor site, compared with non-activated macrophage MФ. We injected M1 cells peritumorally and observed that these cells penetrated into the tumor mass within 12 h. Then, we conducted PTT using irradiation of a near-infrared laser for 1 min at 1 W/cm2. As a result, we confirmed that using M1 as an active live vector led to a more rapid reduction in tumor size within 1 day indicating that the efficacy of PTT with NPs-loaded M1 is higher than that with NPs-loaded MФ. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated the potential role of M1 as a live vector for enhancing the feasibility of PTT in cancer treatment

Visualization 2: In vivo photothermal treatment with real-time monitoring by optical fiber-needle array

Demonstration of PTT and the real-time monitoring with OFNA. Originally published in Biomedical Optics Express on 01 July 2017 (boe-8-7-3482