A Novel Approach Using Social Media to Investigate Patient-Centric Data in Autoimmune Hepatitis

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a rare liver disease characterized by immune-mediated destruction of hepatocytes. Despite adequate treatment, most patients experience severe extrahepatic symptoms that may reduce quality of life to date. The extent and impact of these symptoms remain poorly characterized as focused investigation in this realm has been deficient. In rare diseases, such as AIH, online support groups may provide the only environment where a sufficiently sized sample of patients can be examined for such issues. We aimed to electronically survey the text content of an AIH-affiliated online support group with over 1,000 users making over 18,000 communications. HYPOTHESIS: We hypothesized that we could use AIH-online support group text to identify key topics of clinically-related discussion and classify demographics and correlate these features to clinical topics, medications, and symptoms

Methylenation of some lycoctonine-type C<SUB>19</SUB>-diterpenoid alkaloids: partial synthesis of Delbruline, and Elatine

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Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Trichoderma</i> species

543-547A total of 75 isolates belonging to five different species of Trichoderma viz., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">T. asperellum, T. harzianum, T. longibrachiatum, T. pseudokoningii and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> T. virens were screened for the production of silver nanoparticles. Although all the isolates produced nanoparticles, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">T. virens VN-11 could produce maximum nanoparticles as evident from the UV-Vis study. The highest Plasmon band was observed at 420 nm at every 24 h that attained maximum intensity at 120 h (0.543). The high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) further provided the morphology of the nanoparticles. These nanoparticles were found single or aggregated with round and uniform in shape and 8-60 nm in size. The nitrate reductase activity of VN-11 was found to be 150 nmol/h/mL which confirmed the production of silver nanoparticles through reduction of Ag+ to Ag0. </span

Characterization of an ATP-driven H+ pump in human placental brush-border membrane vesicles.

The presence of an ATP-driven H+ pump as measured by H+ uptake upon addition of ATP was not demonstrable in human placental brush-border membrane vesicles when used in their native form, owing to their right-side-out orientation. However, the presence of the H+ pump in these membranes became evident when the membrane vesicles were transiently exposed to 1% cholate, with subsequent removal of the detergent to re-form the vesicles. Apparently, cholate pretreatment reoriented the H+ pump from an inward-facing configuration to outward-facing. Consequently, H+ uptake in response to externally added ATP was easily demonstrable in these cholate-pretreated vesicles by using the delta pH indicator Acridine Orange. In addition, bafilomycin A1-sensitive ATPase activity was measurable in cholate-pretreated vesicles, but not in native intact vesicles, indicating reorientation of the H+ pump. The reoriented H+ pump was electrogenic because H+ uptake was stimulated by an inside-negative anion-diffusion potential or when the vesicles were voltage-clamped. ATP supported H+ uptake with an apparent Km of 260 microM. ITP and GTP supported the pump activity partially, whereas CTP and UTP did not. Mg2+ and Mn2+ were the most preferred bivalent cations. Co2+ and Zn2+ showed partial activity, whereas Ca2+ and Ba2+ showed little or no activity. The pump was inhibited by nanomolar concentrations of bafilomycin A1 and micromolar concentrations of N-ethylmaleimide, p-chloromercuribenzenesulphonate, NN-dicyclohexylcarbodi-imide and 7-chloro-4-nitrobenzo-2-oxa-1,3-diazole, but was relatively insensitive to oligomycin, vanadate and NaN3. The inhibition by N-ethylmaleimide was protectable by ATP. It is concluded that human placental brush-border membranes possess an ATP-driven H+ pump and that, on the basis of its characteristics, it belongs to the class of vacuolar (V-type) H+ pumps