Chlamydia trachomatis Genotypes and the Swedish New Variant among Urogenital Chlamydia trachomatis Strains in Finland

Our aims were to genotype Chlamydia trachomatis strains present in urogenital samples and to investigate the occurrence of the Swedish new variant of C. trachomatis in Finland. We genotyped 160 C. trachomatis positive samples with ompA real-time PCR and analyzed 495 samples for the new variant. The three most prevalent genotypes were E (40%), F (28%), and G (13%). Only two specimens containing bacteria with the variant plasmid were detected. It seems that in Finland the percentage of infections due to genotypes F and G has slightly increased during the last 20 years. Genotypes E and G appear to be more common, and genotypes J/Ja and I/Ia appear to be less common in Europe than in the USA. Although the genotype E was the most common genotype among C. trachomatis strains, the new variant was rarely found in Finland

Tiekartta Suomen proteiiniomavaraisuuden parantamiseksi

201

Dendritic Cells from Crohn's Disease Patients Show Aberrant STAT1 and STAT3 Signaling

Peer reviewe

Proteiiniomavaraisuuden nosto vaatii tahtoa, toimia ja yhteistyötä

201

Patient characteristics in DC enumeration, surface marker expression and STAT phosphorylation studies.

<p>Abbreviations: PD = perianal disease; AZA = azathioprine; IFX = infliximab; 5-ASA = 5-aminosalicylic acid; MTX = methotrexate; 6-MP = 6-mercaptopurine; ESR = erythrocyte sedimentation rate, mm/h; CPR = C-reactive protein, mg/L; CDAI = Crohn's disease activity index, generally interpreted as follows: <150 = inactive disease, ≥150 = active disease; SES-CD = Simple Endoscopic Score for Crohn's disease, generally interpreted as: ≤3 = inactive disease, 4–14 = mild to moderate disease, ≥15 = severe disease.</p

IL-6 modulates pDC maturation.

<p>Human pDCs from healthy volunteers were either treated with 50 ng/ml of IL-6 or cultured only in the presence of 10 ng/ml of IL-3 (to maintain pDC viability), with or without stimulation with CpG, for two days. IL-6 inhibits the phenotypic maturation induced by the culture with IL-3. In contrast, IL-6 further upregulates CD40 expression on pDCs when stimulated with CpG-rich hypomethylated oligodeoxynucleotides (mimicking fragments of microbial DNA). Freshly isolated pDCs at d0 consistently had high levels of HLA-DR expression and typically low levels of CD86 and CD40, whereas the staining intensities for CD80 and ICOS-L were at the isotype control level (data not shown). % expression values (in the bottom right part of the figure) were calculated for each experiment ((expression in the presence of IL-6/expression in the absence of IL-6) ×100) and presented as mean ± SD. Flow cytometry data from five independent experiments are presented. * <i>P</i><0.05; ** <i>P</i><0.01.</p