Inhibition of caspase-1 prolongs survival of mice infected with rabies virus

Rabies virus infects almost all mammals resulting in lethal disease. To date there is no treatment available for symptomatic rabies and there is an urgent need to develop treatment strategies that would prolong survival, thereby providing a window of opportunity for the host to mount a protective immune response. We hypothesized that both virus and excessive immune response contribute to disease and that interfering with both is necessary to prevent lethal disease. Here, we have inhibited the pro-inflammatory response associated with pyroptosis and showed that inhibition of CASP-1 had a beneficial effect on survival time. Our results confirm that some inflammatory responses may be involved in the pathogenesis of severe disease and the results suggest that effective intervention includes inhibition of virus and host response

Combination drug treatment prolongs survival of experimentally infected mice with silver-haired bat rabies virus

Rabies is a lethal disease in humans and animals, killing approximately 60,000 people every year. Currently, there is no treatment available, except post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) that can be administered whenever exposure to a rabid animal took place. Here we describe the beneficial effects of a combination treatment initiated a

Evaluation of the recombinant cell-based bioassay as a screening method for PCDD/Fs monitoring in fish tissue

Among 210 congeners only 17 highly toxic, 2,3,7,8-chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and dibenzofurans (PCDFs) are of toxicological concern. They exhibit high binding affinity to an intracellular aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), causing harmful effects at exposure levels of thousands of times lower than most environmental toxicants. The Chemically Activated LUciferase gene expression bioassay (CALUX) utilizes recombinant cells that were transfected with a luciferase reporter gene, which responds to dioxin-like compounds with the induction of luciferase in a time-, dose-, AhR-dependent and chemical-specific manner. The bioassay evaluation concerning the European Community (EC) requirements for the PCDD/Fs determination for the official control of foodstuffs was performed on salmon tissue. In order to evaluate the bioassay performance characteristics, recovery range, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ) and precision were determined. The results revealed that combining a dichloromethane: hexane extraction, an acid silica plus activated carbon clean-up provides reliable, reproducible (CV = 9-20%) measurements with acceptable recovery (78%) and sensitivity at the required ppt range. Due to the low cost and high throughput characteristics of the CALUX assay, food monitoring for PCDD/Fs may benefit from use of this bioassay as a prescreening tool to select and prioritize samples for subsequent analysis by high resolution gas chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRGC/HRMS). Although the bioassay may not be able to specify identity of the reactive substances, it may serve as a very useful tool for the evaluation of contamination sources

FOCUS 1: a randomized, double-blinded, multicentre, Phase III trial of the efficacy and safety of ceftaroline fosamil versus ceftriaxone in community-acquired pneumonia

International audienc