317 research outputs found
Microbiological, Physicochemical, and Immunological Analysis of a Commercial Cashew Nut-Based Yogurt
Nut-based milks and yogurts are gaining popularity, but may not offer the same benefits as dairy yogurts to consumers. Cashew nuts often cause severe allergic reactions, and cashew nut allergens are stable to several types of processing. To compare its characteristics to dairy yogurt and characterize the effects of fermentation on the Ana o 1-3 cashew nut allergens, a commercial yogurt made from cashew nuts (Cashewgurt) was evaluated for microbiological, physiochemical, and immunological properties. Average counts for lactobacilli and Streptococcus thermophilus were greater than 10 million colony forming units per milliliter, indicating the capacity to provide a health benefit. Cashewgurt pH and viscosity values were comparable to cow milk yogurts, and it was off white in color. SDS-PAGE analysis indicated a clear reduction in Ana o 1 and 2, and immuno-assay with polyclonal anti-cashew IgG antibody and cashew-allergic IgE indicated an overall reduction in allergen content. In contrast, SDS-PAGE, mass spectrometry, immunoblot, and ELISA all revealed that Ana o 3 was relatively unaffected by the fermentation process. In conclusion, Ana o 1 and Ana o 2 are sensitive to degradation, while Ana o 3 survives lactic acid bacterial fermentation during yogurt production. The analysis presented here indicates that cashew nut yogurt is not suitable for those with cashew nut allergy
Heat-induced alterations in cashew allergen solubility and IgE binding
AbstractCashew nuts are an increasingly common cause of food allergy. We compare the soluble protein profile of cashew nuts following heating. SDS-PAGE indicate that heating can alter the solubility of cashew nut proteins. The 11S legumin, Ana o 2, dominates the soluble protein content in ready to eat and mildly heated cashew nuts. However, we found that in dark-roasted cashew nuts, the soluble protein profile shifts and the 2S albumin Ana o 3 composes up to 40% of the soluble protein. Analysis of trypsin-treated extracts by LC/MS/MS indicate changes in the relative number and intensity of peptides. The relative cumulative intensity of the 5 most commonly observed Ana o 1 and 2 peptides are altered by heating, while those of the 5 most commonly observed Ana o 3 peptides remaine relatively constant. ELISA experiments indicate that there is a decrease in rabbit IgG and human serum IgE binding to soluble cashew proteins following heating. Our findings indicate that heating can alter the solubility of cashew allergens, resulting in altered IgE binding. Our results support the use of both Ana o 2 and Ana o 3 as potential cashew allergen diagnostic targets
Long-term efficacy and safety of HizentraĀ® in patients with primary immunodeficiency in Japan, Europe, and the United States: a Review of 7 Phase 3 Trials
Many patients with primary immunodeficiency (PID) require immunoglobulin G (IgG) replacement therapy, delivered as intravenous IgG (IVIG) or subcutaneous IgG (SCIG). We aim to identify trends in efficacy and safety that would not be evident in individual studies of small patient numbers. Seven open-label, Phase 3, prospective, multicenter studies of the efficacy and safety of HizentraĀ® (a SCIG), conducted in Japan, Europe, and the US were summarized. Overall, 125 unique patients received 15,013 weekly infusions during a total observation period of 250.9 patient-years. Mean weekly doses of HizentraĀ® were 83.22ā221.3 mg/kg body weight; infusion rates per patient (total body rate) were 25.2ā49.3 mL/h across studies. The rates of infections and serious bacterial infections were 3.10 and 0.03 events per patient/year, respectively. Annualized rates of days hospitalized due to infection, out of work/school, and prophylactic antibiotic use were 0.95, 5.14, and 36.78 per patient, respectively. For the equivalent monthly dose, weekly HizentraĀ® SCIG administration resulted in expectedly-increased serum IgG trough levels in patients switching from IVIG, and maintained levels in patients switching from previous SCIG. Adverse events (AEs) totaled 5039 (events/infusion 0.094ā0.773), almost all of which were mild/moderate. Three thousand one hundred ninety-seven were considered treatment-related, the most common of which were injection site reactions (2919 events; 0.001ā0.592 AEs per infusion). Systemic AEs were very uncommon. The results from these seven studies indicate that HizentraĀ® therapy was both efficacious and well tolerated during long-term treatment. This is particularly important in patients with PID, who may require lifelong IgG replacement therapy
The Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade: A New Framework for Measuring Unmet Substance Use Treatment Services Needs Among Adolescent Offenders
OverviewāSubstance use and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among youth under juvenile justice (JJ) supervision, and related to delinquency, psychopathology, social problems, risky sex and sexually transmitted infections, and health problems. However, numerous gaps exist in the identification of behavioral health (BH) problems and in the subsequent referral, initiation and retention in treatment for youth in community justice settings. This reflects both organizational and systems factors, including coordination between justice and BH agencies.
Methods and ResultsāThis paper presents a new framework, the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade (āCascadeā), for measuring unmet substance use treatment needs to illustrate how the cascade approach can be useful in understanding service delivery issues and identifying strategies to improve treatment engagement and outcomes for youth under community JJ supervision. We discuss the organizational and systems barriers for linking delinquent youth to BH services, and explain how the Cascade can help understand and address these barriers. We provide a detailed description of the sequential steps and measures of the Cascade, and then offer an example of its application from the Juvenile Justice ā Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System project (JJ-TRIALS), a multi-site research cooperative funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
ConclusionāAs illustrated with substance abuse treatment, the Cascade has potential for informing and guiding efforts to improve behavioral health service linkages for adolescent offenders, developing and testing interventions and policies to improve interagency and cross-systems coordination, and informing the development of measures and interventions for improving the implementation of treatment in complex multisystem service settings
Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Childrenās Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis
Lead is a confirmed neurotoxin, but questions remain about lead-associated intellectual deficits at blood lead levels < 10 Ī¼g/dL and whether lower exposures are, for a given change in exposure, associated with greater deficits. The objective of this study was to examine the association of intelligence test scores and blood lead concentration, especially for children who had maximal measured blood lead levels < 10 Ī¼g/dL. We examined data collected from 1,333 children who participated in seven international population-based longitudinal cohort studies, followed from birth or infancy until 5ā10 years of age. The full-scale IQ score was the primary outcome measure. The geometric mean blood lead concentration of the children peaked at 17.8 Ī¼g/dL and declined to 9.4 Ī¼g/dL by 5ā7 years of age; 244 (18%) children had a maximal blood lead concentration < 10 Ī¼g/dL, and 103 (8%) had a maximal blood lead concentration < 7.5 Ī¼g/dL. After adjustment for covariates, we found an inverse relationship between blood lead concentration and IQ score. Using a log-linear model, we found a 6.9 IQ point decrement [95% confidence interval (CI), 4.2ā9.4] associated with an increase in concurrent blood lead levels from 2.4 to 30 Ī¼g/dL. The estimated IQ point decrements associated with an increase in blood lead from 2.4 to 10 Ī¼g/dL, 10 to 20 Ī¼g/dL, and 20 to 30 Ī¼g/dL were 3.9 (95% CI, 2.4ā5.3), 1.9 (95% CI, 1.2ā2.6), and 1.1 (95% CI, 0.7ā1.5), respectively. For a given increase in blood lead, the lead-associated intellectual decrement for children with a maximal blood lead level < 7.5 Ī¼g/dL was significantly greater than that observed for those with a maximal blood lead level ā„7.5 Ī¼g/dL (p = 0.015). We conclude that environmental lead exposure in children who have maximal blood lead levels < 7.5 Ī¼g/dL is associated with intellectual deficits
Long-term efficacy, safety, and tolerability of HizentraĀ® for treatment of primary immunodeficiency disease
HizentraĀ® (20% subcutaneous immunoglobulin [SCIG]) was administered to subjects with primary immunodeficiency disease in two extension studies in the EU and US to assess long-term efficacy and tolerability. Subjects (aged 4ā69 years) were treated for 148 weeks in the EU (N = 40; 5405 infusions) and 87 weeks in the US (N = 21; 1735 infusions). Weekly doses were 116.0 mg/kg (EU) and 193.2 mg/kg (US); IgG levels were 7.97 g/L (EU) and 11.98 g/L (US). Annualized rates of serious bacterial infections were 0.05 infections/subject/year (EU) and 0.06 infections/subject/year (US). Rates of any infection were 3.33 infections/subject/year (EU) and 2.38 infections/subject/year (US). The rate of bronchopulmonary infections was higher in the EU study. No treatment-related serious AEs occurred; no subject discontinued because of treatment-related AEs. Self-administered Hizentra afforded sustained effective protection from infections and favorable tolerability during an extended treatment period of up to 3 years
Bayesian Parameter Estimation for Latent Markov Random Fields and Social Networks
Undirected graphical models are widely used in statistics, physics and
machine vision. However Bayesian parameter estimation for undirected models is
extremely challenging, since evaluation of the posterior typically involves the
calculation of an intractable normalising constant. This problem has received
much attention, but very little of this has focussed on the important practical
case where the data consists of noisy or incomplete observations of the
underlying hidden structure. This paper specifically addresses this problem,
comparing two alternative methodologies. In the first of these approaches
particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (Andrieu et al., 2010) is used to efficiently
explore the parameter space, combined with the exchange algorithm (Murray et
al., 2006) for avoiding the calculation of the intractable normalising constant
(a proof showing that this combination targets the correct distribution in
found in a supplementary appendix online). This approach is compared with
approximate Bayesian computation (Pritchard et al., 1999). Applications to
estimating the parameters of Ising models and exponential random graphs from
noisy data are presented. Each algorithm used in the paper targets an
approximation to the true posterior due to the use of MCMC to simulate from the
latent graphical model, in lieu of being able to do this exactly in general.
The supplementary appendix also describes the nature of the resulting
approximation.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, accepted in Journal of Computational and
Graphical Statistics (http://www.amstat.org/publications/jcgs.cfm
- ā¦