Lectin affinity electrophoresis of alpha-fetoprotein detected by immuno-enzymatic and chemiluminescent amplification followed by direct scanning

&#60;P&#62;Microdetermination of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) glycoforms by lectin affinity electrophoresis followed by chemiluminescence reaction using horseradish peroxidase (POD) or alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in antibody-affinity blotting was developed. The intensity of chemiluminescence obtained by ALP was greater than that by POD; however, the coefficient of variation with POD was less than that with ALP. The optimized sensitivity of the chemiluminescence method with POD was two times that of the most sensitive colorimetric method currently available in terms of the chemiluminescence intensity per unit AFP concentration. The lower detection limit by the chemiluminescence method with POD (0.5 ng/ml) was much lower than that by the colorimetric method (3 ng/ml). Both methods gave identical percentages of lentil lectin- and erythroagglutinating phytohemagglutinin-reactive minor bands using a serum with 52 ng/ml AFP. This result indicates that microdetermination of AFP glycoforms by chemiluminescence after lectin-affinity electrophoresis was more sensitive than currently available methods and that it is potentially useful for clinical application&#60;/P&#62;</p

Intra-arterial gas, a clue for diagnosis of peri-aortic inflammation due to infection

We have presented a case of Salmonella-induced infective aortic aneurysm in which the presence of peri-aortic gas was a clue for diagnosis. The disease is clinically infrequent but potentially has a high mortality rate. Clinicians should consider this fatal disease from any trivial findings

Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis Presenting with Myocarditis as an Initial Symptom: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

A 66-year-old woman with a history of bronchial asthma had shortness of breath and fatigue upon mild exercise. She was diagnosed as congestive heart failure. A blood test showed eosinophilia without the presence of anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA), and a myocardial biopsy specimen revealed eosinophilic infiltration in the myocardium. Eosinophilia was improved when she was administered short-term methylprednisolone. After that, she had numbness and pain in her lower limbs with re-elevation of eosinophils. She had dysesthesia and hypalgesia in the distal part of the limbs. Sural nerve biopsy revealed axonal degeneration and thickness of the arterial wall, indicating a diagnosis of eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). Two courses of steroid pulse therapy were performed, resulting in marked improvement of her sensory symptoms. ANCA-negative EGPA might be associated with myocarditis and peripheral neuropathy. A sufficient immunotherapy should have been considered to prevent rapid progression

Superconductivity from Flat Dispersion Designed in Doped Mott Insulators

Routes to enhance superconducting instability are explored for doped Mott insulators. With the help of insights for criticalities of metal-insulator transitions, geometrical design of lattice structure is proposed to control the instability. A guideline is to explicitly make flat band dispersions near the Fermi level without suppressing two-particle channels. In a one-dimensional model, numerical studies show that our prescription with finite-ranged hoppings realizes large enhancement of spin-gap and pairing dominant regions. We also propose several multi-band systems, where the pairing is driven by intersite Coulomb repulsion.Comment: 4 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let

Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Hole Binding and Pairing Correlations in the Three-Band Hubbard Model

We simulated the 3-band Hubbard model using the Constrained Path Monte Carlo (CPMC) method in search for a possible superconducting ground state. The CPMC is a ground state method which is free of the exponential scaling of computing time with system size. We calculated the binding energy of a pair of holes for systems up to $6 \times 4$ unit cells. We also studied the pairing correlation functions versus distance for both the d-wave and extended s-wave channels in systems up to $6 \times 6$. We found that holes bind for a wide range of parameters and that the binding increased as the system size is increased. However, the pairing correlation functions decay quickly with distance. For the extended s channel, we found that as the Coulomb interaction $U_d$ on the Cu sites is increased, the long-range part of the correlation functions is suppressed and fluctuates around zero. For the $d_{x^2 - y^2}$ channel, we found that the correlations decay rapidly with distance towards a small positive value. However, this value becomes smaller as the interaction $U_d$ or the system size is increased.Comment: 21 pages, 13 Postscript figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Pairing, Charge, and Spin Correlations in the Three-Band Hubbard Model

Using the Constrained Path Monte Carlo (CPMC) method, we simulated the two-dimensional, three-band Hubbard model to study pairing, charge, and spin correlations as a function of electron and hole doping and the Coulomb repulsion $V_{pd}$ between charges on neighboring Cu and O lattice sites. As a function of distance, both the $d_{x^2 - y^2}$-wave and extended s-wave pairing correlations decayed quickly. In the charge-transfer regime, increasing $V_{pd}$ decreased the long-range part of the correlation functions in both channels, while in the mixed-valent regime, it increased the long-range part of the s-wave behavior but decreased that of the d-wave behavior. Still the d-wave behavior dominated. At a given doping, increasing $V_{pd}$ increased the spin-spin correlations in the charge-transfer regime but decreased them in the mixed-valent regime. Also increasing $V_{pd}$ suppressed the charge-charge correlations between neighboring Cu and O sites. Electron and hole doping away from half-filling was accompanied by a rapid suppression of anti-ferromagnetic correlations.Comment: Revtex, 8 pages with 15 figure

Role of exosomes as a proinflammatory mediator in the development of EBV-associated lymphoma

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) causes various diseases in the elderly, including B-cell lymphoma such as Hodgkin's lymphoma and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Here, we show that EBV acts in trans on noninfected macrophages in the tumor through exosome secretion and augments the development of lymphomas. In a humanized mouse model, the different formation of lymphoproliferative disease (LPD) between 2 EBV strains (Akata and B95-8) was evident. Furthermore, injection of Akata-derived exosomes affected LPD severity, possibly through the regulation of macrophage phenotype in vivo. Exosomes collected from Akata-lymphoblastoid cell lines reportedly contain EBV-derived noncoding RNAs such as BamHI fragment A rightward transcript (BART) micro-RNAs (miRNAs) and EBVencoded RNA.We focused on the exosome-mediated delivery of BART miRNAs. In vitro, BART miRNAs could induce the immune regulatory phenotype in macrophages characterized by the gene expressions of interleukin 10, tumor necrosis factor-a, and arginase 1, suggesting the immune regulatory role of BART miRNAs.The expression level of an EBV-encoded miRNA was strongly linked to the clinical outcomes in elderly patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.These results implicate BART miRNAs as 1 of the factors regulating the severity of lymphoproliferative disease and as a diagnostic marker for EBV1 B-cell lymphoma. (Blood. 2018;131(23):2552-2567)

Low replicative fitness of neuraminidase inhibitor-resistant H7N9 avian influenza a virus with R292K substitution in neuraminidase in cynomolgus macaques compared with I222T substitution.

Human cases of H7N9 influenza A virus infection have been increasing since 2013. The first choice of treatment for influenza is neuraminidase (NA) inhibitors (NAIs), but there is a concern that NAI-resistant viruses are selected in the presence of NAIs. In our previous study, an H7N9 virus carrying AA substitution of threonine (T) for isoleucine (I) at residue 222 in NA (NA222T, N2 numbering) and an H7N9 virus carrying AA substitution of lysine (K) for arginine (R) at residue 292 in NA (NA292K, N2 numbering) were found in different macaques that had been infected with A/Anhui/1/2013 (H7N9) and treated with NAIs. In the present study, the variant with NA292K showed not only resistance to NAIs but also lower replication activity in MDCK cells than did the virus with wild-type NA, whereas the variant with NA222T, which was less resistant to NAIs, showed replication activity similar to that of the wild-type virus. Next, we examined the pathogenicity of these H7N9 NAI-resistant viruses in macaques. The variants caused clinical signs similar to those caused by the wild-type virus with similar replication potency. However, the virus with NA292K was replaced within 7 days by that with NA292R (same as the wild-type) in nasal samples from macaques infected with the virus with NA292K, i.e. the so-called revertant (wild-type virus) became dominant in the population in the absence of an NAI. These results suggest that the clinical signs observed in macaques infected with the NA292K virus are caused by the NA292K virus and the NA292R virus and that the virus with NA292K may not replicate continuously in the upper respiratory tract of patients without treatment as effectively as the wild-type virus

Upregulation of ANGPTL6 in mouse keratinocytes enhances susceptibility to psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease marked by aberrant tissue repair. Mutant mice modeling psoriasis skin characteristics have provided useful information relevant to molecular mechanisms and could serve to evaluate therapeutic strategies. Here, we found that epidermal ANGPTL6 expression was markedly induced during tissue repair in mice. Analysis of mice overexpressing ANGPTL6 in keratinocytes (K14-Angptl6 Tg mice) revealed that epidermal ANGPTL6 activity promotes aberrant epidermal barrier function due to hyperproliferation of prematurely differentiated keratinocytes. Moreover, skin tissues of K14-Angptl6 Tg mice showed aberrantly activated skin tissue inflammation seen in psoriasis. Levels of the proteins S100A9, recently proposed as therapeutic targets for psoriasis, also increased in skin tissue of K14-Angptl6 Tg mice, but psoriasis-like inflammatory phenotypes in those mice were not rescued by S100A9 deletion. This finding suggests that decreasing S100A9 levels may not ameliorate all cases of psoriasis and that diverse mechanisms underlie the condition. Finally, we observed enhanced levels of epidermal ANGPTL6 in tissue specimens from some psoriasis patients. We conclude that the K14-Angptl6 Tg mouse is useful to investigate psoriasis pathogenesis and for preclinical testing of new therapeutics. Our study also suggests that ANGPTL6 activation in keratinocytes enhances psoriasis susceptibility