Importance of heat-stable enterotoxin B in the induction of early immune responses in piglets after infection with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) strains that produce heat-stable (STa, STb) and/or heat-labile (LT) enterotoxins are an important cause of post-weaning diarrhea in piglets [1]. However, the relative importance of the different enterotoxins in the pathogenesis of ETEC infection has been poorly defined. In the present study we assessed the contributions of different ETEC enterotoxins to the induction of small intestinal secretion and early innate immune responses in weaned piglets

Evaluation of the multi-element capabilities of collision/reaction cell inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry in wine analysis

This work explores the multi-element capabilities of inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry with collision/reaction cell technology (CCT-ICP-MS) for the simultaneous determination of both spectrally interfered and non-interfered nuclides in wine samples using a single set of experimental conditions. The influence of the cell gas type (i.e. He, He+H2 and He+NH3), cell gas flow rate and sample pre-treatment (i.e. water dilution or acid digestion) on the background-equivalent concentration (BEC) of several nuclides covering the mass range from 7 to 238 u has been studied. Results obtained in this work show that, operating the collision/reaction cell with a compromise cell gas flow rate (i.e. 4 mL min−1) improves BEC values for interfered nuclides without a significant effect on the BECs for non-interfered nuclides, with the exception of the light elements Li and Be. Among the different cell gas mixtures tested, the use of He or He+H2 is preferred over He+NH3 because NH3 generates new spectral interferences. No significant influence of the sample pre-treatment methodology (i.e. dilution or digestion) on the multi-element capabilities of CCT-ICP-MS in the context of simultaneous analysis of interfered and non-interfered nuclides was observed. Nonetheless, sample dilution should be kept at minimum to ensure that light nuclides (e.g. Li and Be) could be quantified in wine. Finally, a direct 5-fold aqueous dilution is recommended for the simultaneous trace and ultra-trace determination of spectrally interfered and non-interfered elements in wine by means of CCT-ICP-MS. The use of the CCT is mandatory for interference-free ultra-trace determination of Ti and Cr. Only Be could not be determined when using the CCT due to a deteriorated limit of detection when compared to conventional ICP-MS.G. Grindlay thanks the Jose Castillejo fellowship program from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación and the Generalitat Valenciana for financial support

Protein binding regions of the mRNAs for the 55 kDa tumor necrosis factor receptor and the glucose transporter 1: sequence homology and competition for cellular proteins

AbstractGene expression is influenced by mechanisms regulating mRNA degradation. Knowledge on regulatory RNA elements involved and on proteins interacting with them is still limited. A 33 nucleotide (nt) region of the 55 kDa tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR-55) mRNA, previously reported by us to engage in such interaction with proteins from U-937 cells, exhibits homology to a 38 nt regulatory region of the glucose transporter GLUT-1 mRNA. Labeled RNA fragments comprising these two regions bind similar sets of proteins. Upon phorbol ester-induced differentiation into macrophage-like cells, protein binding to both fragments is changed similarly. Furthermore, both compete with each other for protein binding. This suggests that GLUT-1 and TNFR-55 RNA share a novel protein binding RNA motif involved in regulation of their half life

Role of heat-labile and heat-stable enterotoxins in the induction of early immune responses in piglets after infection with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

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Importance of heat-stable enterotoxin B in the induction of early immune responses in piglets after infection with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) strains that produce heat-stable (STa, STb) and/or heat-labile (LT) enterotoxins are an important cause of post-weaning diarrhea in piglets [1]. However, the relative importance of the different enterotoxins in the pathogenesis of ETEC infection has been poorly defined. In the present study we assessed the contributions of different ETEC enterotoxins to the induction of small intestinal secretion and early innate immune responses in weaned piglets

On the usage of theories in the field of Wirtschaftsinformatik : a quantitative literature analysis

The development of theories is a central goal of every scientific discipline. Hence, theory development is also of considerable importance to the field of Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI), which seeks to progress as a scientific discipline. WI is the discipline focussing on research and design of information systems conducted by the German-speaking community. WI has slightly different objectives, focusses on different methods and different desired results compared to the Anglo-American Information Systems (IS) research discipline. Although both disciplines deal with information systems as their main research object, Mertens et al. (2014) propose to consider both disciplines as halfsister disciplines (in German: Halbschwesterdisziplinen). Against the background of the growing importance of theory development in WI, a lot of WI research contributions use and reference existing theories and theoretical models for different purposes, e.g. to derive and test hypotheses or to justify design decisions in the context of information systems’ design and development. Often, these theories originate from related scientific disciplines like economics or psychology. However, as it is still not clear which theories are of particular importance to WI research, this report aims at presenting a detailed analysis of the current usage of theories in WI and addresses the following research questions: Which theories are used in WI research and where do they originate from? and How has the usage of theories developed over time? These questions were examined based on a systematic analysis of a broad amount of scientific literature. Thus, this report is supposed to make a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the theoretical foundations of WI. Our analysis shows that 1,160 WI articles from 2000 to 2011 do, in large part, reference the same theories as Anglo-American Information Systems (IS) research. These findings are discussed and implications are highlighted

Clinical outcomes of biliary drainage of malignant biliary obstruction due to colorectal cancer metastases : a systematic review

Background and aims: Malignant biliary obstruction is an ominous complication of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Biliary drainage is frequently performed to relieve symptoms of jaundice or enable palliative systemic therapy, but effective drainage can be difficult to accomplish. The aim of this study is to summarize literature on clinical outcomes of biliary drainage in mCRC patients with malignant biliary obstruction.& nbsp; Methods: We searched Medline and EMBASE for studies that included patients with malignant biliary obstruction secondary to mCRC, treated with endoscopic and/or percutaneous biliary drainage. We summarized available data on technical success, clinical success, adverse events, systemic therapy administration and survival after biliary drainage.& nbsp; Results: After screening 3584 references and assessing 509 full-text articles, seven cohort studies were included. In these studies, rates of technical success, clinical success and adverse events varied between 63%-94%, 42%81%, and 19%-39%, respectively. Subsequent chemotherapy was administered in 17%-56% of patients. Overall survival varied between 40 and 122 days across studies (278-365 days in patients who received subsequent chemotherapy, 42-61 days in patients who did not).& nbsp; Conclusions: Successful biliary drainage in mCRC patients can be challenging to achieve and is frequently associated with adverse events. Overall survival after biliary drainage is limited, but is significantly longer in patients treated with subsequent systemic therapy. Expected benefits of biliary drainage should be carefully weighed against its risks

An adaptive meta-search engine considering the user’s field of interest

AbstractExisting meta-search engines return web search results based on the page relevancy to the query, their popularity and content. It is necessary to provide a meta-search engine capable of ranking results considering the user’s field of interest. Social networks can be useful to find the users’ tendencies, favorites, skills, and interests. In this paper we propose MSE, a meta-search engine for document retrieval utilizing social information of the user. In this approach, each user is assumed to have a profile containing his fields of interest. MSE extracts main phrases from the title and short description of receiving results from underlying search engines. Then it clusters the main phrases by a Self-Organizing Map neural network. Generated clusters are then ranked on the basis of the user’s field of interest. We have compared the proposed MSE against two other meta-search engines. The experimental results show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method