Infectious Bronchitis Coronavirus: Genome Evolution in Vaccinated and Non-Vaccinated SPF Chickens

Infectious Bronchitis virus (IBV) continues to cause significant economic losses for the chicken industry despite the use of many live IBV vaccines around the world. Several authors have suggested that vaccine-induced partial protection may contribute to the emergence of new IBV strains. In order to study this hypothesis, three passages of a challenge IBV were made in SPF chickens sham inoculated or vaccinated at day of age using a live vaccine heterologous to the challenge virus. All birds that were challenged with vaccine heterologous virus were positive for viral RNA. NGS analysis of viral RNA in the unvaccinated group showed a rapid selection of seven genetic variants, finally modifying the consensus genome of the viral population. Among them, five were non-synonymous, modifying one position in NSP 8, one in NSP 13, and three in the Spike protein. In the vaccinated group, one genetic variant was selected over the three passages. This synonymous modification was absent from the unvaccinated group. Under these conditions, the genome population of an IBV challenge virus evolved rapidly in both heterologous vaccinated and non-vaccinated birds, while the genetic changes that were selected and the locations of these were very different between the two groups

CeRebrUm and CardIac Protection with ALlopurinol in Neonates with Critical Congenital Heart Disease Requiring Cardiac Surgery with Cardiopulmonary Bypass (CRUCIAL):study protocol of a phase III, randomized, quadruple-blinded, placebo-controlled, Dutch multicenter trial

BACKGROUND: Neonates with critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) are at risk of brain injury that may result in adverse neurodevelopment. To date, no therapy is available to improve long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes of CCHD neonates. Allopurinol, a xanthine oxidase inhibitor, prevents the formation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, thereby limiting cell damage during reperfusion and reoxygenation to the brain and heart. Animal and neonatal studies suggest that allopurinol reduces hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and is cardioprotective and safe. This trial aims to test the hypothesis that allopurinol administration in CCHD neonates will result in a 20% reduction in moderate to severe ischemic and hemorrhagic brain injury. METHODS: This is a phase III, randomized, quadruple-blinded, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial. Neonates with a prenatal or postnatal CCHD diagnosis requiring cardiac surgery with CPB in the first 4 weeks after birth are eligible to participate. Allopurinol or mannitol-placebo will be administered intravenously in 2 doses early postnatally in neonates diagnosed antenatally and 3 doses perioperatively of 20 mg/kg each in all neonates. The primary outcome is a composite endpoint of moderate/severe ischemic or hemorrhagic brain injury on early postoperative MRI, being too unstable for postoperative MRI, or mortality within 1 month following CPB. A total of 236 patients (n = 188 with prenatal diagnosis) is required to demonstrate a reduction of the primary outcome incidence by 20% in the prenatal group and by 9% in the postnatal group (power 80%; overall type 1 error controlled at 5%, two-sided), including 1 interim analysis at n = 118 (n = 94 with prenatal diagnosis) with the option to stop early for efficacy. Secondary outcomes include preoperative and postoperative brain injury severity, white matter injury volume (MRI), and cardiac function (echocardiography); postnatal and postoperative seizure activity (aEEG) and regional cerebral oxygen saturation (NIRS); neurodevelopment at 3 months (general movements); motor, cognitive, and language development and quality of life at 24 months; and safety and cost-effectiveness of allopurinol. DISCUSSION: This trial will investigate whether allopurinol administered directly after birth and around cardiac surgery reduces moderate/severe ischemic and hemorrhagic brain injury and improves cardiac function and neurodevelopmental outcome in CCHD neonates. TRIAL REGISTRATION: EudraCT 2017-004596-31. Registered on November 14, 2017. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04217421. Registered on January 3, 2020 SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13063-022-06098-y

Isothermal buoyancy instabilities due to an A+B=C reaction in a Hele-Shaw cell

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Intercomparison of visual gloss psychometric scales

The total visual appearance of a surface is of concern in a wide panel of industrial sectors. In many manufacturing processes, more than instruments, the visual system has the last word when the quality of the finished product is at stake. Psychophysical studies aim to produce scales describing our perception of stimuli. In the field of gloss appraisal, psychophysics has been of importance since Hunter’s early work, and a variety of scales describing one or more visual aspects of surface gloss have been derived. However, to our knowledge, no metrological assessment of scales constructed from one and the same set of samples through different protocols has ever been carried out. In this study, psychometric functions of a commercially available gloss scale are derived from experiments conducted under different assessment conditions, by two sets of naïve observers, and using two distinct protocols. The metrological validity of the results is discussed. The potential output of this work may lead the way towards the definition of a standard gloss observer.status: publishe

Assessement of drug-drug interaction between new antiretroviral drugs and combined oral contraceptives

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Impact of HIV Treatment on clearance of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection in HIV-infected Women

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Distribution of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Genotypes in a Cohort of African HIV-positive Women Living in Europe: Estimation of Coverage by Current and Future HPV Vaccines

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Exploring the potential of crop specific green area index time series to improve yield estimation at regional scale

peer reviewedCrop status, such as the Green Area Index (GAI), can be retrieved from satellite observations by modelling and inverting the radiative transfer within the canopy. Providing such information along the growing season can potentially improve crop growth modelling and yield estimation. However, such approaches have proven difficult to apply on coarse resolution satellite data due to the fragmented land cover in many parts of the World. Advances in operational crop mapping will sooner or later allow the production of crop maps relatively early in the crop growth season, thereby providing an opportunity to sample pixels from medium/coarse spatial resolution data with relatively high cover fraction of a particular crop type to derive crop specific GAI time series. This research explores how to use such time series derived from MODIS to produce indicators of crop yield using two approaches over part of Belgium. The first method consists in looking at metrics of the decreasing part of the GAI curves when senescence occurs. Such metrics, like the position of the inflexion point, have been shown to be significantly correlated to yield. The second approach is to optimize the WOFOST model used in the European Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) based on the GAI time series. Results show that, although the optimized model shows considerably better performance than the model running on the default parameter, the model is sometimes outperformed by the simpler metric approach. In all cases, indicators including remote sensing information provide better estimates that the average yield of previous years

Long lasting viral suppression and immune reconstitution of a great magnitude reduce the risk of cervical dysplasia in HIV-positive women

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Sustained Viral Suppression and Higher CD4 Cell Count Reduces the Risk of Cervical Infection with High-risk Human Papillomavirus (HR-HPV) in HIV-positive Women

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