A transient benign lymph node-based proliferation of T-cells simulating non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a patient with psoriasis treated with tumor necrosis factor alpha and CD11a antagonists

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Therapeutic biologic agents are uncommonly associated with lymphoma.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report a patient with psoriasis treated with the biologic agents efalizumab (Raptiva^®) and etanercept (Enbrel^®), who developed painless lymphadenopathy with peripheral lymphocytosis during treatment, simulating a non-Hodgkin lymphoma clinically and pathologically. Lymphocytosis and lymphadenopathy spontaneously remitted following cessation of etanercept therapy and have not recurred.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Distinction between clinically benign lymphoid proliferations related to antipsoriasis therapy and malignant lymphoma avoids the unnecessary use of anti-lymphoma chemotherapy.</p

Apremilast, an oral phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor, in patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis: Results of a phase III, randomized, controlled trial (Efficacy and Safety Trial Evaluating the Effects of Apremilast in Psoriasis [ESTEEM] 1)

BackgroundApremilast works intracellularly to regulate inflammatory mediators.ObjectiveESTEEM 1 evaluated efficacy/safety of apremilast at 30 mg twice a day for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.MethodsThis phase III, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled study randomized adults (2:1) to apremilast or placebo. At week 16, the placebo group switched to apremilast through week 32, followed by a randomized treatment withdrawal phase to week 52. Binary end points were analyzed using χ2 test; continuous end points used analysis of covariance.ResultsIn all, 844 patients were randomized (n = 282, placebo; n = 562, apremilast). At week 16, significantly more patients taking apremilast achieved 75% or greater reduction from baseline Psoriasis Area and Severity Index score (PASI-75) (33.1%) versus placebo (5.3%, P < .0001; primary end point). Most (61.0%) patients rerandomized to apremilast at week 32 achieved PASI-75 at week 52 versus 11.7% rerandomized to placebo. Of patients rerandomized to apremilast at week 32, mean percentage change from baseline PASI score was −88% to −81% (weeks 32-52). During the placebo-controlled period, 55.7% and 69.3% of patients randomized to placebo and apremilast, respectively, had 1 or more adverse events. Most adverse events were mild/moderate in severity. No new significant adverse events emerged with continued apremilast exposure versus the placebo-controlled period.LimitationsData were limited to 52 weeks and may not generalize to nonplaque psoriasis.ConclusionsApremilast was effective in moderate to severe plaque psoriasis

Eruptive papules during efalizumab (anti-CD11a) therapy of psoriasis vulgaris: a case series

BACKGROUND: Newer biological therapies for moderate-to-severe psoriasis are being used more frequently, but unexpected effects may occur. CASE PRESENTATIONS: We present a group of 15 patients who developed inflammatory papules while on efalizumab therapy (Raptiva, Genentech Inc, anti-CD11a). Immunohistochemistry showed that there were increased CD11b(+), CD11c(+ )and iNOS(+ )cells (myeloid leukocytes) in the papules, with relatively few CD3(+ )T cells. While efalizumab caused a decreased expression of CD11a on T cells, other circulating leukocytes from patients receiving this therapy often showed increased CD11b and CD11c. In the setting of an additional stimulus such as skin trauma, this may predispose to increased trafficking into the skin using these alternative β2 integrins. In addition, there may be impaired immune synapse formation, limiting the development of these lesions to small papules. There is little evidence for these papular lesions being "allergic" in nature as there are few eosinophils on biopsy, and they respond to minimal or no therapy even if efalizumab is continued. CONCLUSION: We hypothesize that these papules may represent a unique type of "mechanistic" inflammatory reaction, seen only in the context of drug-induced CD11a blockade, and not during the natural disease process

Gravitational Waves From Known Pulsars: Results From The Initial Detector Era

We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. We do not see evidence for gravitational wave emission from any of the targeted sources but produce upper limits on the emission amplitude. We highlight the results from seven young pulsars with large spin-down luminosities. We reach within a factor of five of the canonical spin-down limit for all seven of these, whilst for the Crab and Vela pulsars we further surpass their spin-down limits. We present new or updated limits for 172 other pulsars (including both young and millisecond pulsars). Now that the detectors are undergoing major upgrades, and, for completeness, we bring together all of the most up-to-date results from all pulsars searched for during the operations of the first-generation LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 detectors. This gives a total of 195 pulsars including the most recent results described in this paper.United States National Science FoundationScience and Technology Facilities Council of the United KingdomMax-Planck-SocietyState of Niedersachsen/GermanyAustralian Research CouncilInternational Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of AustraliaCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research of IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of ItalySpanish Ministerio de Economia y CompetitividadConselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes BalearsNetherlands Organisation for Scientific ResearchPolish Ministry of Science and Higher EducationFOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish ScienceRoyal SocietyScottish Funding CouncilScottish Universities Physics AllianceNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationOTKA of HungaryLyon Institute of Origins (LIO)National Research Foundation of KoreaIndustry CanadaProvince of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and InnovationNational Science and Engineering Research Council CanadaCarnegie TrustLeverhulme TrustDavid and Lucile Packard FoundationResearch CorporationAlfred P. Sloan FoundationAstronom

The College News, 1923-01-24, Vol. 09, No. 13

Bryn Mawr College student newspaper. Merged with The Haverford News in 1968 to form the Bi-college News (with various titles from 1968 on). Published weekly (except holidays) during the academic year

Effects of Data Quality Vetoes on a Search for Compact Binary Coalescences in Advanced LIGO's First Observing Run

The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 years to less than 1 in 186000 years.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures, published versio

Supplement: "Localization and broadband follow-up of the gravitational-wave transient GW150914" (2016, ApJL, 826, L13)

This Supplement provides supporting material for Abbott et al. (2016a). We briefly summarize past electromagnetic (EM) follow-up efforts as well as the organization and policy of the current EM follow-up program. We compare the four probability sky maps produced for the gravitational-wave transient GW150914, and provide additional details of the EM follow-up observations that were performed in the different bands

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10–500 s in a frequency band of 40–1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10−5 and 9.4×10−4  Mpc−3 yr−1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves