Clinical importance of F-waves as a prognostic factor in Guillain-Barré syndrome in children

PurposeA limited number of studies have examined the link between F-wave abnormalities and clinical presentation in pediatric Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Therefore, this study examined the importance of F-wave abnormalities as a prognostic factor in pediatric GBS patients.MethodsThe records and electrodiagnostic studies (EDS) of 70 GBS patients were retrospectively evaluated, and divided into 2 groups according to the results of EDS. Group A (n=33) presented with F-wave abnormalities, and group B (n=26) exhibited normal findings. We compared laboratory reports, clinical features, response to treatment, and prognosis between the 2 groups.ResultsMotor weakness was the most frequently observed symptom for either group. Clinically, the incidence of fever and upper respiratory symptoms differed between the 2 groups, while the prevalence of abnormal deep tendon reflex (DTR) was significantly higher in group A than B (P<0.05). Patients diagnosed with GBS had received intravenous immunoglobulin treatment: 94% in group A and 58% in group B. Furthermore, significantly greater numbers of patients in group A showed H-reflex abnormalities and poor prognosis compared with group B (P<0.05).ConclusionThis study demonstrated that F-waves are a clinically important prognostic factor in GBS. F-wave abnormalities were associated with abnormal DTR and poor prognosis in patients. Limited studies have examined the link between F-wave abnormalities and clinical results; therefore, further randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm the clinical characteristics and efficacy of treatments

Pathogenesis of Korean SapelovirusA in piglets and chicks.

Sapelovirus A (SV-A), formerly known as porcine sapelovirus as a member of a new genus Sapelovirus, is known to cause enteritis, pneumonia, polioencephalomyelitis and reproductive disorders in pigs. We have recently identified α2,3-linked sialic acid on GD1a ganglioside as a functional SV-A receptor rich in the cells of pigs and chickens. However, the role of GD1a in viral pathogenesis remains elusive. Here, we demonstrated that a Korean SV-A strain could induce diarrhoea and intestinal pathology in piglets but not in chicks. Moreover, this Korean SV-A strain had mild extra-intestinal tropisms appearing as mild, non-suppurative myelitis, encephalitis and pneumonia in piglets, but not in chicks. By real-time reverse transcription (RT) PCR, higher viral RNA levels were detected in faecal samples than in sera or extra-intestinal organs from virus-inoculated piglets. Immunohistochemistry confirmed that high viral antigens were detected in the epithelial cells of intestines from virus-inoculated piglets but not from chicks. This Korean SV-A strain could bind the cultured cell lines originated from various species, but replication occurred only in cells of porcine origin. These data indicated that this Korean SV-A strain could replicate and induce pathology in piglets but not in chicks, suggesting that additional porcine-specific factors are required for virus entry and replication. In addition, this Korean SV-A strain is enteropathogenic, but could spread to the bloodstream from the gut and disseminate to extra-intestinal organs and tissues. These results will contribute to our understanding of SV-A pathogenesis so that efficient anti-sapelovirus drugs and vaccines could be developed in the future.This study was supported by a grant (2014R1A2A2A01004292) of the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Bio-industry Technology Development Program (315021-04) through the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (iPET) funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Korea Basic Science Institute grant (C33730), Republic of Korea. IG is a Wellcome Senior Fellow supported by the Wellcome Trust (097997/Z/11/Z). Chonnam National University provided funding to Mun-Il Kang (2012). The Mab against SV-A capsid protein was received as a generous gift from Dr. M. Dauber (Friedrich-Loeffler Institute, Germany).This is the accepted version of the article. The final version is available from the Microbiology Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/jgv.0.00057

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for Dark Matter and Supersymmetry with a Compressed Mass Spectrum in the Vector Boson Fusion Topology in Proton-Proton Collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Measurement of the top quark mass using charged particles in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D‾\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

Search for Narrow Resonances in Dijet Final States at root s=8 TeV with the Novel CMS Technique of Data Scouting

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Measurements of the W boson rapidity, helicity, double-differential cross sections, and charge asymmetry in pp collisions at s =13 TeV

© 2020 CERN. The differential cross section and charge asymmetry for inclusive W boson production at s=13 TeV is measured for the two transverse polarization states as a function of the W boson absolute rapidity. The measurement uses events in which a W boson decays to a neutrino and either a muon or an electron. The data sample of proton-proton collisions recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2016 corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb-1. The differential cross section and its value normalized to the total inclusive W boson production cross section are measured over the rapidity range |yW|<2.5. In addition to the total fiducial cross section, the W boson double-differential cross section, d2σ/dpTd|η|, and the charge asymmetry are measured as functions of the charged lepton transverse momentum and pseudorapidity. The precision of these measurements is used to constrain the parton distribution functions of the proton using the next-to-leading order NNPDF3.0 set.SCOAP

Search for disappearing tracks in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for long-lived charged particles that decay within the volume of the silicon tracker of the CMS experiment. Such particles can produce events with an isolated track that is missing hits in the outermost layers of the silicon tracker, and is also associated with little energy deposited in the calorimeters and no hits in the muon detectors. The search for events with this "disappearing track" signature is performed in a sample of proton-proton collisions recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC with a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb(-1) recorded in 2017 and 2018. The observation of 48 events is consistent with the estimated background of 47.8(-2.3)(+2.7) (stat) +/- 8.1 (syst) events. Upper limits are set on chargino production in the context of an anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking model for purely wino and higgsino neutralino scenarios. At 95% confidence level, the first constraint is placed on chargino masses in the higgsino case, excluding below 750 (175)GeV for a lifetime of 3 (0.05)ns. In the wino case, the results of this search are combined with a previous CMS search to produce a result representing the complete LHC data set recorded in 2015-2018, the most stringent constraints to date. At 95% confidence level, chargino masses in the wino case are excluded below 884 (474)GeV for a lifetime of 3 (0.2)ns. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe