Increased concentration of two different advanced glycation end-products detected by enzyme immunoassays with new monoclonal antibodies in sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Levels of pentosidine (representative of advanced glycation end-products) in sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis are increased when compared with sera of other diagnoses or healthy controls. These levels have been reported to correlate with clinical indices of rheumatoid arthritis activity and with laboratory markers of inflammation. The purpose of this study was to find out if these findings pertain to other advanced glycation end-products.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We have developed two immunoassays based on new monoclonal antibodies to advanced glycation end-products. Antibody 103-E3 reacts with an unidentified antigen, formed in the reaction of proteins with ribose, while antibody 8-C1 responds to N^ε-(carboxyethyl)lysine. We have used these monoclonal antibodies to measure levels of advanced glycation end-products in sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, osteoarthritis, and healthy controls. We calculated the correlations between advanced glycation end-product levels in rheumatoid arthritis sera and the Disease Activity Score 28 (DAS28), age, disease duration, CRP, anti-CCP, rheumatoid factor and treatment with corticosteroids, respectively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Levels of both glycation products were significantly higher in sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis when compared with sera of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, osteoarthritis, or the healthy controls. Neither the level of N^ε-(carboxyethyl)lysine nor the level of the 103-E3 antigen in rheumatoid arthritis sera correlated with the DAS28-scored rheumatoid arthritis activity. The levels of both antigens in rheumatoid arthritis sera did not correlate with age, gender, corticosteroid treatment, or levels of CRP, anti-CCP antibodies, and rheumatoid factor in sera.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We report highly specific increases in the levels of two advanced glycation end-products in sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. This increase could be explained neither by rheumatoid arthritis activity nor by inflammation. We propose a working hypothesis that presumes the existence of a link between advanced glycation end-product formation and induction of autoimmunity.</p

Two Clause Learning Approaches for Disjunctive Scheduling

International audienceWe revisit the standard hybrid CP/SAT approach for solving disjunctive scheduling problems. Previous methods entail the creation of redundant clauses when lazily generating atoms standing for bounds modifications. We first describe an alternative method for handling lazily generated atoms without computational overhead. Next, we propose a novel conflict analysis scheme tailored for disjunctive scheduling. Our experiments on well known Job Shop Scheduling instances show compelling evidence of the efficiency of the learning mechanism that we propose. In particular this approach is very efficient for proving unfeasibility

Timetable edge finding filtering algorithm for discrete cumulative resources

Abstract. This paper presents new Edge Finding algorithm for discrete cumulative resources, i.e. resources which can process several activities simultaneously up to some maximal capacity C. The algorithm has better time complexity than the current version of this algorithm: O(kn log n) versusO(kn 2)wheren is number of activities on the resource and k is number of distinct capacity demands. Moreover the new algorithm is slightly stronger and it is able to handle optional activities. The algorithm is based on the Θ-tree – a binary tree data structure which already proved to be very useful in filtering algorithms for unary resource constraints.