The first case of recurrent ultra late onset group B streptococcal sepsis in a 3-year-old child

AbstractGroup B streptococcus (GBS) is a commonly recognized cause of sepsis and meningitis in neonatal and young infants. Invasive GBS infection is classified into early onset GBS disease (EOD, day 0–6), late onset GBS disease (LOD, day 7–89) and ultra late onset GBS disease (ULOD, after 3 months of age). ULOD is uncommon and recurrence is especially rare. We present the first recurrent case of ULOD GBS sepsis in 3-year-old girl with a past medical history of hydrops fetalis and thoracic congenital lymphatic dysplasia. The first episode presented as sepsis at 2 years 8 months of age. The second episode occurred as sepsis with encephalopathy at 3 years 1 months of age. During each episode, the patient was treated using intravenous antimicrobials and her condition improved. Serotype examination was not performed in the first episode, but GBS type V was serotyped in the second episode. ULOD over 1year of age is quite rare and may recur

Genetic basis of lineage-specific evolution of fruit traits in hexaploid persimmon

Frequent polyploidization events in plants have led to the establishment of many lineage-specific traits representing each species. Little is known about the genetic bases for these specific traits in polyploids, presumably due to plant genomic complexity and their difficulties in applying genetic approaches. Hexaploid Oriental persimmon (Diospyros kaki) has evolved specific fruit characteristics, including wide variations in fruit shapes and astringency. In this study, using whole-genome diploidized/quantitative genotypes from ddRAD-Seq data of 173 persimmon cultivars, we examined their population structures and potential correlations between their structural transitions and variations in nine fruit traits. The population structures of persimmon cultivars were highly randomized and not substantially correlated with the representative fruit traits focused on in this study, except for fruit astringency. With genome-wide association analytic tools considering polyploid alleles, we identified the loci associated with the nine fruit traits; we mainly focused on fruit-shape variations, which have been numerically characterized by principal component analysis of elliptic Fourier descriptors. The genomic regions that putatively underwent selective sweep exhibited no overlap with the loci associated with these persimmon-specific fruit traits. These insights will contribute to understanding the genetic mechanisms by which fruit traits are independently established, possibly due to polyploidization events

ゴウリュウブ ケッセキ Confluence Stone ノ 1チケンレイ

Confluence stone is a rare disease that is difficult to diagnose before surgery and thattend to accompany intraoperative biliary tract injury and postoperative stenosis, unexpectively.We have report a case of confluence stone.The patient was 67-year-old woman. During treatment for cholecystolithiasis at anotherhospital, she had upper abdominal pain three times without fever up and jaundice. Shewas reffered to our hospital for a detailed examination. Ultrasonography, CT and endoscopicretrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) allowed a diagnosis of common bileduct stenosis caused by confluence stone. Laparotomy was then performed. No malignancywas shown despite of seveve cholecystitis. Thus cholecystectomy was carried out,then the biliary stenosis was repaired by patch graft method.It is known that confluence stone arise biliostasis with the progression of chroniccholecystitis. Therefore, in cases of severe chronic cholecystitis we should consider thepossibility of the confluence stone and take care of the biliary tract injury and postoperativestenosis

Acute inhibitory effect of excess iodide on ornithine decarboxylase in the thyroid of propylthiouracil-treated rats

Polyamines such as putrescine, spermidine and spermine have been thought to play an important role in thyroid growth induced by goitrogens. Reduced biosynthesis of these polyamines might play a role in the antigoitrogenic effects of excess iodide. This study was designed to examine the effect of potassium iodide (KI) on ornithine decarboxylase (ODC), a rate-limiting enzyme in the biosynthesis of polyamines. Thyroidal ODC activity, protein content and mRNA were increased in rats made hypothyroid by 10 days of propylthiouracil treatment. The increase in ODC activity was suppressed after subcutaneous injection of KI (13 mg/kg body weight); the apparent half-life of ODC activity after the treatment was estimated to be 19 min and the maximum suppression (90%) was seen 60 min after the treatment. On the other hand, administration of iodine-containing compounds including L-thyroxine, L-di-iodotyrosine, amiodarone, iopanoic acid and erythrosine showed no significant effect on ODC activity. The inhibitory effect of excess iodide was not reversed by pretreatment with dibutyryl cAMP and theophylline. The amount of immunoreactive ODC protein was reduced by iodide treatment (40%). However, the decrease was not as great as the decrease in ODC activity (90%). No significant change in thyroidal ODC mRNA content was seen 1 and 3 h following KI treatment. These results suggest that excess iodide reduces ODC activity in the rat thyroid gland by a post-transcriptional mechanism.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Efficient delivery of immunostimulatory DNA to mouse and human immune cells through the construction of polypod-like structured DNA.

Investigation of mouse macrophage-like RAW264.7 cells showed that the immunostimulatory activity of CpG DNA is increased by formation of polypod-like structured DNA (polypodna), an assembly consisting of three or more oligodeoxynucleotides. To apply CpG polypodna to immunotherapy, its activity was examined in murine dendritic DC2.4 cells, splenic macrophages, and bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs). In all cell types, increasing the pod number increased the cellular uptake of DNA and cytokine release. No significant release of cytokines was observed in macrophages lacking Toll-like receptor 9. Similar results were obtained after intradermal injection of polypodna. The polypodna preparations produced significantly higher amounts of interferon α in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) compared with single-stranded DNA. The conditioned medium of hexapodna-treated human PBMCs effectively inhibited the activity of a hepatitis C virus subgenomic replicon reporter system. These results indicate that polypodna preparations are useful as an immunostimulator

A kunitz-type protease inhibitor bikunin disrupts ligand-induced oligomerization of receptors for transforming growth factor (TGF)-β and subsequently suppresses TGF-β signalings

AbstractWe previously found that bikunin (bik), a Kunitz-type protease inhibitor, suppresses transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)–stimulated expression of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) in human ovarian cancer cells that lack endogenous bik. In the present study, we tried to elucidate the mechanism by which bik also inhibits plasminogen activator inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) and collagen synthesis using human ovarian cancer cells. Here, we show that (a) there was an enhanced production of both uPA and PAI-1 in HRA cells in response to TGF-β1; (b) the overexpression of bik in the cells or exogenous bik results in the inhibition of TGF-β1 signaling as measured by phosphorylation of the downstream signaling effector Smad2, nuclear translocation of Smad3, and production of PAI-1 and collagen; (c) bik neither decreased expression of TGF-β receptors (TβRI and TβRII) in either cell types nor altered the specific binding of 125I TGF-β1 to the cells, indicating that the effects of bik in these cells are not mediated by ligand sequestration; (d) TβRI and TβRII present on the same cells exclusively form aggregates in TGF-β1-stimulated cells; (e) co-treatment of TGF-β1–stimulated cells with bik suppresses TGF-β1–induced complex formation of TβRI and TβRII; and (f) a chondroitin-4-sulfate side chain-deleted bik (deglycosylated bik) does not inhibit TGF-β1 signaling or association of type I/type II receptor. We conclude that glycosylated bik attenuates TGF-β1–elicited signaling cascades in cells possibly by abrogating the coupling between TβRI and TβRII and that this probably provides the mechanism for the suppression of uPA and PAI-1 expression

Optimal Arrangement of Four Short DNA Strands for Delivery of Immunostimulatory Nucleic Acids to Immune Cells.

Nanosized DNA assemblies are useful for delivering immunostimulatory cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) DNA to immune cells, but little is known about the optimal structure for such delivery. In this study, we designed three different DNA nanostructures using four 55-mer oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs), that is, tetrapod-like structured DNA (tetrapodna), tetrahedral DNA (tetrahedron), and tetragonal DNA (tetragon), and compared their potencies. Electrophoresis showed that tetrapodna was obtained with high yield and purity, whereas tetrahedron formed multimers at high ODN concentrations. Atomic force microscopy revealed that all preparations were properly constructed under optimal conditions. The thermal stability of tetrapodna was higher than those of the others. Dynamic light scattering analysis showed that all of the assemblies were about 8 nm in diameter. Upon addition to mouse macrophage-like RAW264.7 cells, tetrahedron was most efficiently taken up by the cells. Then, a CpG DNA, a ligand for toll-like receptor 9, was linked to these DNA nanostructures and added to RAW264.7 cells. CpG tetrahedron induced the largest amount of tumor necrosis factor-α, followed by CpG tetrapodna. Similar results were obtained using human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Taken together, these results indicate that tetrapodna is the best assembly with the highest yield and high immunostimulatory activity, and tetrahedron can be another useful assembly for cellular delivery if its preparation yield is improved

Dietary calcium intake was related to the onset of pre‐eclampsia: The TMM BirThree Cohort Study

Abstract This study aimed to explore the relationship between dietary electrolyte intake and the prevalence of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) subtypes. Our analysis included 19 914 pregnant women from the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and Three‐Generation Cohort Study. A food frequency questionnaire was used to estimate dietary calcium, potassium, sodium, and magnesium intakes. HDP was determined based on the medical records during regular antenatal care. Logistic regression analysis assessed the relationship between dietary electrolytes intake quintiles, and HDP subtypes with adjustment for basic characteristics. Dietary electrolyte intakes were applied for the prediction model. Of the cohort, 547 participants delivered with pre‐eclampsia (PE), 278 with superimposed PE (SP), and 896 with gestational hypertension (GH). PE was associated with low crude calcium intake (odds ratio of the first quintile [623 mg/day] and 95% confidence interval, 1.31 [1.00–1.70]) and P for trend was .02. SP was not associated with any nutritional intake; however, the combined outcome of PE and SP was related to low crude calcium and potassium and energy‐adjusted calcium, potassium, and magnesium intakes (P for trend, .01, .048, .02, .04, and .02, respectively). The same tendency was observed for GH. A prediction model that included crude calcium and potassium intakes performed better than a model without them. In conclusion, low dietary calcium, potassium, and magnesium were associated with higher HDP subtypes prevalence. The prediction model implied that crude calcium and potassium intakes might play a critical role in PE and SP pathogenesis