Macrophage centripetal migration drives spontaneous healing process after spinal cord injury.

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) brings numerous inflammatory cells, including macrophages, from the circulating blood to lesions, but pathophysiological impact resulting from spatiotemporal dynamics of macrophages is unknown. Here, we show that macrophages centripetally migrate toward the lesion epicenter after infiltrating into the wide range of spinal cord, depending on the gradient of chemoattractant C5a. However, macrophages lacking interferon regulatory factor 8 (IRF8) cannot migrate toward the epicenter and remain widely scattered in the injured cord with profound axonal loss and little remyelination, resulting in a poor functional outcome after SCI. Time-lapse imaging and P2X/YRs blockade revealed that macrophage migration via IRF8 was caused by purinergic receptors involved in the C5a-directed migration. Conversely, pharmacological promotion of IRF8 activation facilitated macrophage centripetal movement, thereby improving the SCI recovery. Our findings reveal the importance of macrophage centripetal migration via IRF8, providing a novel therapeutic target for central nervous system injury

Wavelength modulated absorption spectra of Cu2O thin films sandwiched by MgO plates

We investigated temperature dependence of wavelength modulated (WM) absorption spectra for studying stress effects on a Cu2O thin film. In these spectra, 2P∼4P spectral structures can be clearly detected in both yellow and green excitons even at 180 K. From temperature dependences of these resonance energy, one can find that, because of a difference in the thermal variation of the lattice constant between Cu2O and MgO, the band gap energies of these excitons systems in the thin film vary in different behaviors from those in Cu2O bulk crystals. By comparing our experimental results and Trebin’s model, it is understood that this difference is caused by a symmetrical difference of the valence bands between the yellow (Γ+ 7 ) and green (Γ+ 8 ) exciton systems in Cu2O

Tentative diagnostic criteria and disease severity classification for Castleman disease: A report of the research group on Castleman disease in Japan

<p><b>Objectives:</b> To determine the tentative diagnostic criteria and disease severity classification for Castleman disease (CD) and describe the clinical and pathologic features among human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) negative idiopathic multicentric CD (iMCD) in the Japanese population.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> We established the working groups for the research of CD in Japan and had meetings to discuss and define the tentative diagnostic criteria and disease severity classification for CD. We subsequently analyzed 142 patients classified into iMCD by using the nationwide Japanese patient registry.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> We proposed the preliminary diagnostic criteria and disease severity classification for CD based on our discussion. In addition, we made a proposal for the disease activity score. We identified clinical and pathological features of patients with iMCD diagnosed by these diagnostic criteria. In the disease severity classification, 37, 33 and 30% patients were categorized into mild, moderate and severe diseases, respectively.</p> <p><b>Conclusion:</b> This is the first proposal for diagnosis and classification of CD by the Japanese group. Further studies are required to validate whether they can distinguish CD from other inflammatory diseases and to determine their sensitivity and specificity.</p