SLAMF Receptor Expression Identifies an Immune Signature That Characterizes Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease of unknown etiology, linked to alterations in both the innate and the adaptive immune system. Due to the heterogeneity of the clinical presentation, the diagnosis of SLE remains complicated and is often made years after the first symptoms manifest, delaying treatment, and worsening the prognosis. Several studies have shown that signaling lymphocytic activation molecule family (SLAMF) receptors are aberrantly expressed and dysfunctional in SLE immune cells, contributing to the altered cellular function observed in these patients. The aim of this study was to determine whether altered co-/expression of SLAMF receptors on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) identifies SLE characteristic cell populations. To this end, single cell mass cytometry and bioinformatic analysis were exploited to compare SLE patients to healthy and autoimmune diseases controls. First, the expression of each SLAMF receptor on all PBMC populations was investigated. We observed that SLAMF1+ B cells (referred to as SLEB1) were increased in SLE compared to controls. Furthermore, the frequency of SLAMF4+ monocytes and SLAMF4+ NK were inversely correlated with disease activity, whereas the frequency SLAMF1+ CD4+ TDEM cells were directly correlated with disease activity. Consensus clustering analysis identified two cell clusters that presented significantly increased frequency in SLE compared to controls: switch memory B cells expressing SLAMF1, SLAMF3, SLAMF5, SLAMF6 (referred to as SLESMB) and circulating T follicular helper cells expressing the same SLAMF receptors (referred to as SLEcTFH). Finally, the robustness of the identified cell populations as biomarkers for SLE was evaluated through ROC curve analysis. The combined measurement of SLEcTFH and SLEB1 or SLESMB cells identified SLE patients in 90% of cases. In conclusion, this study identified an immune signature for SLE based on the expression of SLAMF receptors on PBMC, further highlighting the involvement of SLAMF receptors in the pathogenesis of SLE

Equal pay by gender and by nationality: a comparative analysis of Switzerland's unequal equal pay policy regimes across time

What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist ‘accompanying measures' to the Bilateral European Union-Switzerland Agreement on Free Movement of Persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins? The formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will. Equally, different ‘varieties of capitalism' cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country. Instead, our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes, namely the use of different policy frames—i.e. ‘anti-discrimination' in the EPG and ‘unfair competition' in the EPN case—and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by Switzerland's employer associations in the two case

Perioperative and long-term operative outcomes after surgery for trigeminal neuralgia: microvascular decompression vs percutaneous balloon ablation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>Numerous medical and surgical therapies have been utilized to treat the symptoms of trigeminal neuralgia (TN). This retrospective study compares patients undergoing either microvascular decompression or balloon ablation of the trigeminal ganglion and determines which produces the best long-term outcomes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A 10-year retrospective chart review was performed on patients who underwent microvascular decompression (MVD) or percutaneous balloon ablation (BA) surgery for TN. Demographic data, intraoperative variables, length of hospitalization and symptom improvement were assessed along with complications and recurrences of symptoms after surgery. Appropriate statistical comparisons were utilized to assess differences between the two surgical techniques.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>MVD patients were younger but were otherwise similar to BA patients. Intraoperatively, twice as many BA patients developed bradycardia compared to MVD patients. 75% of BA patients with bradycardia had an improvement of symptoms. Hospital stay was shorter in BA patients but overall improvement of symptoms was better with MVD. Postoperative complication rates were similar (21% vs 26%) between the BA and MVD groups.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>MVD produced better overall outcomes compared to BA and may be the procedure of choice for surgery to treat TN.</p

Romans-mass-driven flows on the D2-brane

The addition of supersymmetric Chern-Simons terms to ${\cal N}=8$ super-Yang-Mills theory in three-dimensions is expected to make the latter flow into infrared superconformal phases. We address this problem holographically by studying the effect of the Romans mass on the D2-brane near-horizon geometry. Working in a consistent, effective four-dimensional setting provided by $D=4$ ${\cal N}=8$ supergravity with a dyonic $\textrm{ISO(7)}$ gauging, we verify the existence of a rich web of supersymmetric domain walls triggered by the Romans mass that interpolate between the (four-dimensional description of the) D2-brane and various superconformal phases. We also construct domain walls for which both endpoints are superconformal. While most of our results are numerical, we provide analytic results for the $\textrm{SU}(3)\times \textrm{U}(1)$-invariant flow into an ${\cal N}=2$ conformal phase recently discovered.Comment: 20 pages plus appendices, 5 figures. v2: typos corrected, published tex

Mathieu Moonshine and Orbifold K3s

The current status of `Mathieu Moonshine', the idea that the Mathieu group M24 organises the elliptic genus of K3, is reviewed. While there is a consistent decomposition of all Fourier coefficients of the elliptic genus in terms of Mathieu M24 representations, a conceptual understanding of this phenomenon in terms of K3 sigma-models is still missing. In particular, it follows from the recent classification of the automorphism groups of arbitrary K3 sigma-models that (i) there is no single K3 sigma-model that has M24 as an automorphism group; and (ii) there exist `exceptional' K3 sigma-models whose automorphism group is not even a subgroup of M24. Here we show that all cyclic torus orbifolds are exceptional in this sense, and that almost all of the exceptional cases are realised as cyclic torus orbifolds. We also provide an explicit construction of a Z5 torus orbifold that realises one exceptional class of K3 sigma-models