Sensitive Detection and Early Prognostic Significance of p24 Antigen in Heat-Denatured Plasma of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1-Infected Infants

Immune complex formation causes underdetection of p24 antigen in human immunodeficiencyvirus(HIV)infection.Brieflyboilingdilutedplasma releasesallcomplexedantigen, which can then be measured by some commercial assays. In a retrospective pediatric cohort study, the specificity of this procedure in 390 uninfected samples was 96.9% after initial testing and 100% after neutralization. Sensitivity among 125 postnatal infected samples was, at a detection of 2 pg/ml., 96.0% (97% neutralizable) compared with 47.7% for regular antigen (76% neutralizable), 96% for polymerase chain reaction, and 77% for viral culture. The high sensitivity and specificity of heat-denatured antigen was confirmed by prospectively testing 113 additional samples.Quantitativeanalysisofsamplesfrominfectedinfants showedlowlevelsofp24 antigen in 29% of cord blood sera, a postnatal increase to levels that were during the first 6 months of life inversely associated with survival, and persistence of antigenemia thereafter independent of clinical status. Prevalence and antigen levels were significantly lower in mothers. The persistent antigenemia in children indicates that their immune systems cannot restrict HIV expression as efficiently as those of adult

Multilab Direct Replication of Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky (1966): Spontaneous Verbal Rehearsal in a Memory Task as a Function of Age

Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory

A comprehensive description of multiple observables in heavy-ion collisions at SPS

Combining and expanding on work from previous publications, a model for the evolution of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at the CERN SPS for 158 AGeV beam energy is presented. Based on the assumption of thermalization and a parametrization of the space-time expansion of the produced matter, this model is able to describe a large set of observables including hadronic momentum spectra, correlations and abundancies, the emission of real photons, dilepton radiation and the suppression pattern of charmonia. Each of these obervables provides unique capabilities to study the reaction dynamics and taken together they form a strong and consistent picture of the evolving system. Based on the emission of hard photons, we argue that a strongly interacting, hot and dense system with temperatures above 250 MeV has to be created early in the reaction. Such a system is bound to be different from hadronic matter and likely to be a quark-gluon plasma, and we find that this assumption is in line with the subsequent evolution of the system that is reflected in other observables.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, submitted to J. Phys.

Pretreatment levels of the fatty acid handling proteins H-FABP and CD36 predict response to olanzapine in recent-onset schizophrenia patients.

Traditional schizophrenia pharmacotherapy remains a subjective trial and error process involving administration, titration and switching of drugs multiple times until an adequate response is achieved. Despite this time-consuming and costly process, not all patients show an adequate response to treatment. As a consequence, relapse is a common occurrence and early intervention is hampered. Here, we have attempted to identify candidate blood biomarkers associated with drug response in 121 initially antipsychotic-free recent-onset schizophrenia patients treated with widely-used antipsychotics, namely olanzapine (n=40), quetiapine (n=23), risperidone (n=30) and a mixture of these drugs (n=28). Patients were recruited and investigated as two separate cohorts to allow biomarker validation. Data analysis showed the most significant relationship between pre-treatment levels of heart-type fatty acid binding protein (H-FABP) and response to olanzapine (p=0.008, F=8.6, β=70.4 in the discovery cohort and p=0.003, F=15.2, β=24.4 in the validation cohort, adjusted for relevant confounding variables). In a functional follow-up analysis of this finding, we tested an independent cohort of 10 patients treated with olanzapine and found that baseline levels of plasma H-FABP and expression of the binding partner for H-FABP, fatty acid translocase (CD36), on monocytes predicted the reduction of psychotic symptoms (p=0.040, F=6.0, β=116.3 and p=0.012, F=11.9, β=-0.0054, respectively). We also identified a set of serum molecules changed after treatment with antipsychotic medication, in particular olanzapine. These molecules are predominantly involved in cellular development and metabolism. Taken together, our findings suggest an association between biomarkers involved in fatty acid metabolism and response to olanzapine, while other proteins may serve as surrogate markers associated with drug efficacy and side effects.This work was supported by the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI); the European Union FP7 SchizDX research programme (grant reference 223427); the European Union FP7 funding scheme: Marie Curie Actions Industry Academia Partnerships and Pathways (nr. 286334, PSYCH-AID project); by the Virgo consortium, funded by the Dutch Government (project number FES0908); by the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (project number 050-060-452); by the Dutch Fund for Economic Structure Reinforcement, the NeuroBasic PharmaPhenomics project (no. 0908) and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC CASE studentship and Impact Acceleration Award).This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2015.10.01

Aspects of thermal and chemical equilibration of hadronic matter

We study thermal and chemical equilibration in 'infinite' hadron matter as well as in finite size relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions using a BUU cascade transport model that contains resonance and string degrees-of-freedom. The 'infinite' hadron matter is simulated within a cubic box with periodic boundary conditions. The various equilibration times depend on baryon density and energy density and are much shorter for particles consisting of light quarks then for particles including strangeness. For kaons and antikaons the chemical equilibration time is found to be larger than $\simeq$ 40 fm/c for all baryon and energy densities considered. The inclusion of continuum excitations, i.e. hadron 'strings', leads to a limiting temperature of $T_s\simeq$ 150 MeV. We, furthermore, study the expansion of a hadronic fireball after equilibration. The slope parameters of the particles after expansion increase with their mass; the pions leave the fireball much faster then nucleons and accelerate subsequently heavier hadrons by rescattering ('pion wind'). If the system before expansion is close to the limiting temperature $T_s$, the slope parameters for all particles after expansion practically do not depend on (initial) energy and baryon density. Finally, the equilibration in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collision is considered. Since the reaction time here is much shorter than the equilibration time for strangeness, a chemical equilibrium of strange particles in heavy-ion collisions is not supported by our transport calculations. However, the various particle spectra can approximately be described within the blast model.Comment: 39 pages, LaTeX, including 18 postscript figures, Nucl. Phys. A, in pres

Space-time analysis of reaction at RHIC

Space-time information about the Au-Au collisions produced at RHIC are key tools to understand the evolution of the system and especially assess the presence of collective behaviors. Using a parameterization of the system's final state relying on collective expansion, we show that pion source radii can be tied together with transverse mass spectra and elliptic flow within the same framework. The consistency between these different measures provide a solid ground to understand the characteristics of collective flow and especially the possible peculiar behavior of particles such as Xi, Omega or phi. The validity of the short time scales that are extracted from fits to the pion source size is also addressed. The wealth of new data that will soon be available from Au-Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV, will provide a stringet test of the space-time analysis framework developped in these proceedings.Comment: Invited talk given at the SQM2003 conference (March 2003), to be published in Journal of Physics G. 10 pages, 3 figure

A comparison of statistical hadronization models

We investigate the sensitivity of fits of hadron spectra produced in heavy ion collisions to the choice of statistical hadronization model. We start by giving an overview of statistical model ambiguities, and what they tell us about freeze-out dynamics. We then use Montecarlo generated data to determine sensitivity to model choice. We fit the statistical hadronization models under consideration to RHIC data, and find that a comparison $\chi^2$ fits can shed light on some presently contentious questions.Comment: Proceedings for SQM2003 [7th Int. Conf. on Strangeness in Quark Matter (Atlantic Beach, NC, USA, Mar 12-17, 2003)], to be published in Journal of Physics G (Typos corrected, reference added

Climate change promotes parasitism in a coral symbiosis.

Coastal oceans are increasingly eutrophic, warm and acidic through the addition of anthropogenic nitrogen and carbon, respectively. Among the most sensitive taxa to these changes are scleractinian corals, which engineer the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Corals' sensitivity is a consequence of their evolutionary investment in symbiosis with the dinoflagellate alga, Symbiodinium. Together, the coral holobiont has dominated oligotrophic tropical marine habitats. However, warming destabilizes this association and reduces coral fitness. It has been theorized that, when reefs become warm and eutrophic, mutualistic Symbiodinium sequester more resources for their own growth, thus parasitizing their hosts of nutrition. Here, we tested the hypothesis that sub-bleaching temperature and excess nitrogen promotes symbiont parasitism by measuring respiration (costs) and the assimilation and translocation of both carbon (energy) and nitrogen (growth; both benefits) within Orbicella faveolata hosting one of two Symbiodinium phylotypes using a dual stable isotope tracer incubation at ambient (26 °C) and sub-bleaching (31 °C) temperatures under elevated nitrate. Warming to 31 °C reduced holobiont net primary productivity (NPP) by 60% due to increased respiration which decreased host %carbon by 15% with no apparent cost to the symbiont. Concurrently, Symbiodinium carbon and nitrogen assimilation increased by 14 and 32%, respectively while increasing their mitotic index by 15%, whereas hosts did not gain a proportional increase in translocated photosynthates. We conclude that the disparity in benefits and costs to both partners is evidence of symbiont parasitism in the coral symbiosis and has major implications for the resilience of coral reefs under threat of global change

Utilization of the out of hours service in Poland: an observational study from Krakow

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 2000 a new GP contract was introduced in Poland. It allowed GPs to subcontract out of hours care to specialized deputizing services. One such service in Kraków provides care to 61 GP practices with a population of 420 000 inhabitants. The aim of this study is to analyze seasonal and geographical variation in out of hours care use and to find the most important factors influencing it.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Routinely collected data for 24 months (2003–2004) containing type, date and time of the contacts were used.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>During the study period 238 072 contacts were recorded: 149 911 ambulatory doctor visits, 23 434 home visits and 64 727 nurse procedures. The mean rate of out of hours contacts was: for ambulatory visits 178 per 1000 inhabitants/year (varied between practices from 9 to 696), for home visits 28 (from 1 to 36) and for nurse procedures 77 (from 3 to 327). The highest rate of ambulatory visits was 739 in the age group 0–4, the lowest – 104 in the age group 45–49. The highest rate of home visits was 221 in the age group over 85. The rate of ambulatory GP visits and nurse procedures was negatively correlated with the distance between the location of GP practice and the nearest out of hours clinic. The rate of home visits was positively correlated with the age of the patient.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Significant differences between practices suggest that non medical factors may play an important role in the patient's decision to see a GP when the surgery is closed. Their influence should be limited to make the system more efficient.</p

Punica granatum (Pomegranate) juice provides an HIV-1 entry inhibitor and candidate topical microbicide

BACKGROUND: For ≈ 24 years the AIDS pandemic has claimed ≈ 30 million lives, causing ≈ 14,000 new HIV-1 infections daily worldwide in 2003. About 80% of infections occur by heterosexual transmission. In the absence of vaccines, topical microbicides, expected to block virus transmission, offer hope for controlling the pandemic. Antiretroviral chemotherapeutics have decreased AIDS mortality in industrialized countries, but only minimally in developing countries. To prevent an analogous dichotomy, microbicides should be: acceptable; accessible; affordable; and accelerative in transition from development to marketing. Already marketed pharmaceutical excipients or foods, with established safety records and adequate anti-HIV-1 activity, may provide this option. METHODS: Fruit juices were screened for inhibitory activity against HIV-1 IIIB using CD4 and CXCR4 as cell receptors. The best juice was tested for inhibition of: (1) infection by HIV-1 BaL, utilizing CCR5 as the cellular coreceptor; and (2) binding of gp120 IIIB and gp120 BaL, respectively, to CXCR4 and CCR5. To remove most colored juice components, the adsorption of the effective ingredient(s) to dispersible excipients and other foods was investigated. A selected complex was assayed for inhibition of infection by primary HIV-1 isolates. RESULTS: HIV-1 entry inhibitors from pomegranate juice adsorb onto corn starch. The resulting complex blocks virus binding to CD4 and CXCR4/CCR5 and inhibits infection by primary virus clades A to G and group O. CONCLUSION: These results suggest the possibility of producing an anti-HIV-1 microbicide from inexpensive, widely available sources, whose safety has been established throughout centuries, provided that its quality is adequately standardized and monitored