The relation of cytokines of IL-17/IL-23 axis to Th1/Th2 cytokines and disease activity in systemic lupus erythematosus

INTRODUCTION: Interleukin (IL)-17 is recently linked to the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) but its relation to disease activity has not been well characterised. The objectives of this study were to examine the relation of serum cytokine levels from the IL-17/IL-23 axis (IL-17, IL-23) to Th1 (IL-12, IFN-γ), Th2 (IL-10, IL-6, IL-4) cytokines and disease activity in SLE patients. METHODS: Serum cytokines were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Disease activity was determined by SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI), anti-dsDNA antibody, C3 and C4 levels. RESULTS: Serum levels of IL-17, IL-10 and IFN-γ were higher in SLE patients (n=70) compared to age- and sexmatched controls (n=14) [P<0.001]. Higher serum IL-23 level was found in active lupus patients who had cutaneous manifestation (P=0.003) and serositis (P=0.03) compared to those who had not. Serum IL-17 was not different between patients who had active lupus nephritis (n=23), non-renal active lupus (n=13) and inactive disease (n=34) [P=0.23]. However, an inverse correlation between serum IL-17 with proteinuria was found among all SLE patients (r= –0.27, P=0.03). Serum IL-17 level was, otherwise, not related to SLEDAI, glomerular filtration rate, activity or chronicity score and ISN/RPS class among patients with active lupus nephritis and was not found to correlate with serum IFN-γ or IL-10. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated serum IL-23 was found in patients with inflammatory manifestations including cutaneous involvement and serositis. Serum IL-17 level was not shown to correlate with disease activity but demonstrated an inverse correlation with proteinuria suggesting urinary loss of IL-17 and its involvement in lupus renal pathology.published_or_final_versionThe 15th Medical Research Conference (15th MRC), Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 16 January 2010. In Hong Kong Medical Journal, 2010, v. 16 n. 1, suppl. 1, p. 45, abstract no. 7

Intentional Injuries: The experiance from Dodoma Regional Hospital, Central Tanzania

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Southern Chinese patients with systemic lupus erythematosus in Hong Kong have low vitamin D levels

BACKGROUND: Vitamin D insufficiency has been linked to pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. This study aimed to measure serum 25(OH)D level in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in Hong Kong and to evaluate association between serum 25(OH)D level and disease activity. METHODS: Serum 25(OH)D level was measured by radioimmunoassay in SLE patients and healthy controls. Lupus disease activity was determined by SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI), serum anti-dsDNA antibody, C3 and C4 levels. RESULTS: Fifty-two SLE patients with mean ± standard deviation disease duration of 15.5±8.6 years were recruited. Five patients had active lupus disease. Five (9.6%) patients had serum 25(OH)D levels <30 nmol/L. Serum 25(OH)D level was significantly lower in SLE patients compared to age- and sex-matched controls (n=52) [45.5±12.3 vs 51.1±12.6 nmol/L, P=0.02]. Serum 25(OH)D levels were not found to be related to SLEDAI, elevated anti-dsDNA antibody, low C3 or C4 levels or medications. One vitamin D insufficient patient had low serum albumin-corrected calcium. Serum 25(OH)D levels were found to correlate negatively with estimated glomerular filtration rate (r= –0.30, P=0.03) but was not different between patients who had normal and impaired renal function (P=0.38). CONCLUSION: SLE patients in Hong Kong were found to have low serum 25(OH)D level despite its subtropical location.published_or_final_versionThe 15th Medical Research Conference (15th MRC), Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 16 January 2010. In Hong Kong Medical Journal, 2010, v. 16 n. 1, suppl. 1, p. 47, abstract no. 7

Impact of dye interlayer on the performance of organic photovoltaic devices

The influences of buffer interlayer at the donor/acceptor interface on the open circuit voltage (VOC) of typical copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) / C60 organic photovoltaic devices are studied. Six fluorescent dyes with progressively increasing ionization potentials (I P) were used to investigate the factors influencing the VOC. The short-circuit current and fill factor of CuPc/ C60 device incorporating dye interlayer are lower than those of standard bilayer device. On the other hand, the VOC increases linearly with the I P of dye material and falls off when the I P is equal to or greater than 5.6 eV, in which the energy offset between the highest occupied molecular orbitals at the interlayer/ C60 heterojunction is smaller than the C60 exciton binding energy. The findings underscore the importance of energy offsets in photovoltaic responses. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

The clinical course of polymyalgia rheumatica in Chinese

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is diagnosed based on clinical features that may overlap with other rheumatic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Furthermore, a proportion of PMR patients may subsequently evolve into RA. The aim of this study was to examine the clinical characteristics of PMR patients in a Chinese cohort compared to a Caucasian series. Patients diagnosed to have PMR during 1997-2008 were reviewed for clinical features and compared to a reported Caucasian series. Rheumatoid factor (RF) and anticyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibodies were determined by immunonephelometry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively. Forty-four patients of southern Chinese origin were diagnosed to have PMR according to specialist opinion. Seventy-five percent of patients (n = 33) were >65 years of age at diagnosis (mean ± standard deviation, 75.8 ± 9.6 years). The commonest feature at disease onset was elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate >40 mm/h (100% vs. 95.7%; p = 0.17) and bilateral shoulder pain or stiffness (95.5% vs. 90.8%; p = 0.31), comparable in frequency to the Caucasian cohort. However, Chinese patients had significantly longer duration of symptoms before diagnosis (p < 0.001) but less bilateral upper arm tenderness (p < 0.001) and generalized stiffness (p = 0.01). Twelve (27.3%) patients evolved into RA after a median duration of 2 months from onset of PMR. RF and anti-CCP antibodies were positive in 66.7% and 60% of these patients compared to 9.4% and 6.2%, respectively, among those who did not evolve into RA during the period observed. Chinese patients with PMR have modestly different clinical profile compared to the Caucasian counterpart. RF and anti-CCP antibodies were more likely to be present in those who subsequently developed into RA. © 2009 Clinical Rheumatology.postprin

Cognitive function in systemic lupus erythematosus patients with a history of neuropsychiatric manifestations: a longitudinal study

Poster PresentationBACKGROUND: Cognitive impairment is commonly reported in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and its associations with neuropsychiatric involvement (NPSLE) and psychiatric factors have been inconsistently reported in the literature. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate full neurocognitive function in relation to psychiatric factors including anxiety and depression in NPSLE patients longitudinally compared to …published_or_final_versio

Clinical predictors of fetal and maternal outcome in Chinese patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

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Cervical dysplasia in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

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A computational framework to emulate the human perspective in flow cytometric data analysis

Background: In recent years, intense research efforts have focused on developing methods for automated flow cytometric data analysis. However, while designing such applications, little or no attention has been paid to the human perspective that is absolutely central to the manual gating process of identifying and characterizing cell populations. In particular, the assumption of many common techniques that cell populations could be modeled reliably with pre-specified distributions may not hold true in real-life samples, which can have populations of arbitrary shapes and considerable inter-sample variation. &lt;p/&gt;Results: To address this, we developed a new framework flowScape for emulating certain key aspects of the human perspective in analyzing flow data, which we implemented in multiple steps. First, flowScape begins with creating a mathematically rigorous map of the high-dimensional flow data landscape based on dense and sparse regions defined by relative concentrations of events around modes. In the second step, these modal clusters are connected with a global hierarchical structure. This representation allows flowScape to perform ridgeline analysis for both traversing the landscape and isolating cell populations at different levels of resolution. Finally, we extended manual gating with a new capacity for constructing templates that can identify target populations in terms of their relative parameters, as opposed to the more commonly used absolute or physical parameters. This allows flowScape to apply such templates in batch mode for detecting the corresponding populations in a flexible, sample-specific manner. We also demonstrated different applications of our framework to flow data analysis and show its superiority over other analytical methods. &lt;p/&gt;Conclusions: The human perspective, built on top of intuition and experience, is a very important component of flow cytometric data analysis. By emulating some of its approaches and extending these with automation and rigor, flowScape provides a flexible and robust framework for computational cytomics

Influenza A(H5N1) Virus Infection in a Child With Encephalitis Complicated by Obstructive Hydrocephalus

A 2-year-old boy with highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection with minimal respiratory symptoms developed encephalitis complicated by obstructive hydrocephalus. Viral RNA was detectable in cerebrospinal fluid. The virus belonged to H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1b and had acquired the mammalian adaptation mutation PB2 Q591K.published_or_final_versio