IL-6 mediated JAK/STAT3 signaling pathway in cancer patients with cachexia

CONCLUSION: STAT3 may be considered as a therapeutic target for cachectic patients with gastric, lung and breast cancer. Furthermore, IL-6 mediates STAT3 activation in cachectic gastric and breast cancer patients (Tab. 5, Fig. 2, Ref. 62)

Influence of Cytokines on HIV-Specific Antibody-Dependent Cellular Cytotoxicity Activation Profile of Natural Killer Cells

There is growing interest in HIV-specific antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) as an effective immune response to prevent or control HIV infection. ADCC relies on innate immune effector cells, particularly NK cells, to mediate control of virus-infected cells. The activation of NK cells (i.e., expression of cytokines and/or degranulation) by ADCC antibodies in serum is likely subject to the influence of other factors that are also present. We observed that the HIV-specific ADCC antibodies, within serum samples from a panel of HIV-infected individuals induced divergent activation profiles of NK cells from the same donor. Some serum samples primarily induced NK cell cytokine expression (i.e., IFNγ), some primarily initiated NK cell expression of a degranulation marker (CD107a) and others initiated a similar magnitude of responses across both effector functions. We therefore evaluated a number of HIV-relevant soluble factors for their influence on the activation of NK cells by HIV-specific ADCC antibodies. Key findings were that the cytokines IL-15 and IL-10 consistently enhanced the ability of NK cells to respond to HIV-specific ADCC antibodies. Furthermore, IL-15 was demonstrated to potently activate “educated” KIR3DL1+ NK cells from individuals carrying its HLA-Bw4 ligand. The cytokine was also demonstrated to activate “uneducated” KIR3DL1+ NK cells from HLA-Bw6 homozygotes, but to a lesser extent. Our results show that cytokines influence the ability of NK cells to respond to ADCC antibodies in vitro. Manipulating the immunological environment to enhance the potency of NK cell-mediated HIV-specific ADCC effector functions could be a promising immunotherapy or vaccine strategy

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Determination of total selenium in Helianthus Annuus L. in Turkey during 2 years by Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (GFAAS)

The purpose of this study was to estimate total selenium concentration in Helianthus Annuus L. collected from different regions in Turkey by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS), prior to microwave digestion. The accuracy of the techniques was evaluated by using certified reference material NIM-GBW07404 (GSS-4) and WEPAL-IPE-168 for soil and sunflower plant . The precision of the techniques, expressed as relative standard deviation, was observed under 8 % for GFAAS measurements. The concentrations of total selenium in plant , seed and soil collected from different regions were found in the range of 0.10-1.76 mg/kg for Helianthus Annuus L. in Turkey during 2 years

Incidence of nocturnal enuresis and nocturia in children with tuberculosis

Nocturnal enuresis is a common problem and occurs in 15 to 20 percent of 5-year-old children. The etiology of nocturnal enuresis remains unknown and is probably multifactorial. In this study 52 children aged between 6-17 years with tuberculosis were questioned for nocturia and nocturnal enuresis, retrospectively. Nocturnal, enuresis was found in 12 (23%) and nocturia in 22 (42%) of the children, respectively. After specific treatment with antituberculosis drugs nocturnal enuresis and nocturia were improved in 5 and 21 children, respectively. However, it could not be explained why these disorders were much higher in children with tuberculosis than healthy children. The findings suggest that nocturnal enuresis and nocturia may be in a high frequency in children with tuberculosis; however, the authors think that prospective and more extensive studies should be performed to clarify these preliminary findings

Solving bin-packing problems under privacy preservation: possibilities and trade-offs

We investigate the trade-off between privacy and solution quality that occurs when a k-anonymized database is used as input to the bin-packing optimization problem. To investigate the impact of the chosen anonymization method on this trade-off, we consider two recoding methods for k-anonymity: full-domain generalization and partition-based single-dimensional recoding. To deal with the uncertainty created by anonymization in the bin-packing problem, we utilize stochastic programming and robust optimization methods. Our computational results show that the trade-off is strongly dependent on both the anonymization and optimization method. On the anonymization side, we see that using single dimensional recoding leads to significantly better solution quality than using full domain generalization. On the optimization side, we see that using stochastic programming, where we use the multiset of values in an equivalence class, considerably improves the solutions. While publishing these multisets makes the database more vulnerable to a table linkage attack, we argue that it is up to the data publisher to reason if such a loss of anonymization weighs up to the increase in optimization performance