Unusual exanthema combined with cerebral vasculitis in pneumococcal meningitis: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Bacterial meningitis is a complex, rapidly progressive disease in which neurological injury is caused in part by the causative organism and in part by the host's own inflammatory responses.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We present the case of a two-year-old Greek girl with pneumococcal meningitis and an atypical curvilinear-like skin eruption, chronologically associated with cerebral vasculitis. A diffusion-weighted MRI scan showed lesions with restricted diffusion, reflecting local areas of immunologically mediated necrotizing vasculitis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Atypical presentations of bacterial meningitis may occur, and they can be accompanied by serious unexpected complications.</p

Late-onset postsurgical hypoparathyroidism following parathyroidectomy for recurrent primary hyperparathyroidism : a case report and literature review

Purpose: Previously in 1987, a 21-year-old-male was diagnosed with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) when a right inferior parathyroid adenoma was removed. PHPT recurred after three and six years and on both occasions was cured by resection of parathyroid adenomas. At 52-years-of-age, the patient developed a late-onset hypoparathyroidism (HP), even though postsurgical HP typically occurs as a transient or permanent form soon after neck surgery. The purpose of this work was to report the follow-up of the patient and to review prior cases of late-onset postsurgical HP. Methods: Prior cases of late-onset postsurgical HP were searched and reviewed focusing on clinical and biochemical features. Results: The patient’s asymptomatic hypocalcemia with total serum calcium at 8.2 mg/dL was initially documented in September 2018; PTH was inappropriately low at 15 ng/mL. In February 2020, a mild hypocalcemia was confirmed with low-normal PTH at 15 ng/mL. Autoimmune and familial causes of HP were ruled out including the presence of stimulating autoantibodies against calcium-sensing receptor. Instead, a progressive damage or atrophy of the parathyroid gland(s) ensuing years after surgery is believed to have led to the patient’s hypocalcemia. All 19 previously reported cases of late-onset postsurgical HP occurred after thyroid surgery, with no examples of the condition being found following parathyroidectomy. Conclusions: The case highlights the rare occurrence of late-onset postsurgical HP in a patient who had had multiple parathyroidectomies for PHPT. Thus, monitoring serum calcium, phosphate and PTH during follow-up of such patients is recommended

In Vivo Imaging of Transiently Transgenized Mice with a Bovine Interleukin 8 (CXCL8) Promoter/Luciferase Reporter Construct

One of the most remarkable properties of interleukin 8 (CXCL8/IL-8), a chemokine with known additional functions also in angiogenesis and tissue remodeling, is the variation of its expression levels. In healthy tissues, IL-8 is barely detectable, but it is rapidly induced by several folds in response to proinflammatory cytokines, bacterial or viral products, and cellular stress. Although mouse cells do not bear a clear homologous IL-8 gene, the murine transcriptional apparatus may well be capable of activating or repressing a heterologous IL-8 gene promoter driving a reporter gene. In order to induce a transient transgenic expression, mice were systemically injected with a bovine IL-8 promoter–luciferase construct. Subsequently mice were monitored for luciferase expression in the lung by in vivo bioluminescent image analysis over an extended period of time (up to 60 days). We demonstrate that the bovine IL-8 promoter–luciferase construct is transiently and robustly activated 3–5 hours after LPS and TNF-α instillation into the lung, peaking at 35 days after construct delivery. Bovine IL-8 promoter–luciferase activation correlates with white blood cell and neutrophil infiltration into the lung. This study demonstrates that a small experimental rodent model can be utilized for non-invasively monitoring, through a reporter gene system, the activation of an IL-8 promoter region derived from a larger size animal (bovine). This proof of principle study has the potential to be utilized also for studying primate IL-8 promoter regions

Leukemia Inhibitory Factor in Rat Fetal Lung Development: Expression and Functional Studies

Background: Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) are members of the family of the glycoprotein 130 (gp130)-type cytokines. These cytokines share gp130 as a common signal transducer, which explains why they show some functional redundancy. Recently, it was demonstrated that IL-6 promotes fetal lung branching. Additionally, LIF has been implicated in developmental processes of some branching organs. Thus, in this study LIF expression pattern and its effects on fetal rat lung morphogenesis were assessed. Methodology/Principal Findings: LIF and its subunit receptor LIFRa expression levels were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and western blot in fetal rat lungs of different gestational ages, ranging from 13.5 to 21.5 days post-conception. Throughout all gestational ages studied, LIF was constitutively expressed in pulmonary epithelium, whereas LIFRa was first mainly expressed in the mesenchyme, but after pseudoglandular stage it was also observed in epithelial cells. These results point to a LIF epithelium-mesenchyme cross-talk, which is known to be important for lung branching process. Regarding functional studies, fetal lung explants were cultured with increasing doses of LIF or LIF neutralizing antibodies during 4 days. MAPK, AKT, and STAT3 phosphorylation in the treated lung explants was analyzed. LIF supplementation significantly inhibited lung growth in spite of an increase in p44/42 phosphorylation. On the other hand, LIF inhibition significantly stimulated lung growth via p38 and Akt pathways

Hemagglutinin from the H5N1 Virus Activates Janus Kinase 3 to Dysregulate Innate Immunity

Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) cause severe disease in humans. There are no effective vaccines or antiviral therapies currently available to control fatal outbreaks due in part to the lack of understanding of virus-mediated immunopathology. In our study, we used hemagglutinin (HA) of H5N1 virus to investigate the related signaling pathways and their relationship to dysregulated innate immune reaction. We found the HA of H5N1 avian influenza triggered an abnormal innate immune signalling in the pulmonary epithelial cells, through an unusual process involving activation of Janus kinase 3 (JAK3) that is exclusively associated with γc chain and is essential for signaling via all γc cytokine receptors. By using a selective JAK3 inhibitor and JAK3 knockout mice, we have, for the first time, demonstrated the ability to target active JAK3 to counteract injury to the lungs and protect immunocytes from acute hypercytokinemia -induced destruction following the challenge of H5N1 HA in vitro and in vivo. On the basis of the present data, it appears that the efficacy of selective JAK3 inhibition is likely based on its ability to block multiple cytokines and protect against a superinflammatory response to pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) attack. Our findings highlight the potential value of selective JAK3 inhibitor in treating the fatal immunopathology caused by H5N1 challenge

Lycopene Inhibits NF-kB-Mediated IL-8 Expression and Changes Redox and PPARγ Signalling in Cigarette Smoke–Stimulated Macrophages

Increasing evidence suggests that lycopene, the major carotenoid present in tomato, may be preventive against smoke-induced cell damage. However, the mechanisms of such a prevention are still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of lycopene on the production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-8 induced by cigarette smoke and the possible mechanisms implicated. Therefore, human THP-1 macrophages were exposed to cigarette smoke extract (CSE), alone and following a 6-h pre-treatment with lycopene (0.5–2 µM). CSE enhanced IL-8 production in a time- and a dose-dependent manner. Lycopene pre-treatment resulted in a significant inhibition of CSE-induced IL-8 expression at both mRNA and protein levels. NF-kB controlled the transcription of IL-8 induced by CSE, since PDTC prevented such a production. Lycopene suppressed CSE-induced NF-kB DNA binding, NF-kB/p65 nuclear translocation and phosphorylation of IKKα and IkBα. Such an inhibition was accompanied by a decrease in CSE-induced ROS production and NOX-4 expression. Lycopene further inhibited CSE-induced phosphorylation of the redox-sensitive ERK1/2, JNK and p38 MAPKs. Moreover, the carotenoid increased PPARγ levels which, in turn, enhanced PTEN expression and decreased pAKT levels in CSE-exposed cells. Such effects were abolished by the PPARγ inhibitor GW9662. Taken together, our data indicate that lycopene prevented CSE-induced IL-8 production through a mechanism involving an inactivation of NF-kB. NF-kB inactivation was accompanied by an inhibition of redox signalling and an activation of PPARγ signalling. The ability of lycopene in inhibiting IL-8 production, NF-kB/p65 nuclear translocation, and redox signalling and in increasing PPARγ expression was also found in isolated rat alveolar macrophages exposed to CSE. These findings provide novel data on new molecular mechanisms by which lycopene regulates cigarette smoke-driven inflammation in human macrophages

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research