Growth of Infants Fed Formula with Evolving Nutrition Composition: A Single-Arm Non-Inferiority Study.

The nutritional composition of human milk evolves over the course of lactation, to match the changing needs of infants. This single-arm, non-inferiority study evaluated growth against the WHO standards in the first year of life, in infants consecutively fed four age-based formulas with compositions tailored to infants' nutritional needs during the 1st, 2nd, 3rd-6th, and 7th-12th months of age. Healthy full-term formula-fed infants (n = 32) were enrolled at ≤14 days of age and exclusively fed study formulas from enrollment, to the age of four months. Powdered study formulas were provided in single-serving capsules that were reconstituted using a dedicated automated preparation system, to ensure precise, hygienic preparation. The primary outcome was the weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) at the age of four months (vs. non-inferiority margin of -0.5 SD). Mean (95% CI) z-scores for the WAZ (0.12 (-0.15, 0.39)), as well as for the length-for-age (0.05 (-0.19, 0.30)), weight-for-length (0.16 (-0.16, 0.48)), BMI-for-age (0.11 (-0.20, 0.43)), and head circumferencefor-age (0.41 (0.16, 0.65)) at the age of four months, were non-inferior. Throughout the study, anthropometric z-scores tracked closely against the WHO standards (within ±1 SD). In sum, a fourstage, age-based infant formula system with nutritional compositions tailored to infants' evolving needs, supports healthy growth consistent with WHO standards, for the first year of life

Applying System Engineering to Pharmaceutical Safety

While engineering techniques are used in the development of medical devices and have been applied to individual healthcare processes, such as the use of checklists in surgery and ICUs, the application of system engineering techniques to larger healthcare systems is less common. System safety is the part of system engineering that uses modeling and analysis to identify hazards and to design the system to eliminate or control them. In this paper, we demonstrate how to apply a new, safety engineering static and dynamic modeling and analysis approach to healthcare systems. Pharmaceutical safety is used as the example in the paper, but the same approach is potentially applicable to other complex healthcare systems. System engineering techniques can be used in re-engineering the system as a whole to achieve the system goals, including both enhancing the safety of current drugs while, at the same time, encouraging the development of new drugs

Control of neoclassical tearing modes by Sawtooth control

The onset of a neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) depends on the existence of a large enough seed island. It is shown in the Joint European Torus that NTMs can be readily destabilized by long-period sawteeth, such as obtained by sawtooth stabilization from ion-cyclotron heating or current drive. This has important implications for burning plasma scenarios, as alpha particles strongly stabilize the sawteeth. It is also shown that, by adding heating and current drive just outside the inversion radius, sawteeth are destabilized, resulting in shorter sawtooth periods and larger beta values being obtained without NTMs

Gut microbiota analysis reveals a marked shift to bifidobacteria by a starter infant formula containing a synbiotic of bovine milk-derived oligosaccharides and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis CNCM I-3446.

Non-digestible milk oligosaccharides were proposed as receptor decoys for pathogens and as nutrients for beneficial gut commensals like bifidobacteria. Bovine milk contains oligosaccharides, some of which are structurally identical or similar to those found in human milk. In a controlled, randomized double-blinded clinical trial we tested the effect of feeding a formula supplemented with a mixture of bovine milk-derived oligosaccharides (BMOS) generated from whey permeate, containing galacto-oligosaccharides and 3'- and 6'-sialyllactose, and the probiotic Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis (B. lactis) strain CNCM I-3446. Breastfed infants served as reference group. Compared with a non-supplemented control formula, the test formula showed a similar tolerability and supported a similar growth in healthy newborns followed for 12 weeks. The control, but not the test group, differed from the breast-fed reference group by a higher faecal pH and a significantly higher diversity of the faecal microbiota. In the test group the probiotic B. lactis increased by 100-fold in the stool and was detected in all supplemented infants. BMOS stimulated a marked shift to a bifidobacterium-dominated faecal microbiota via increases in endogenous bifidobacteria (B. longum, B. breve, B. bifidum, B. pseudocatenulatum)

JAK2 V617F Constitutive Activation Requires JH2 Residue F595: A Pseudokinase Domain Target for Specific Inhibitors

The JAK2 V617F mutation present in over 95% of Polycythemia Vera patients and in 50% of Essential Thrombocythemia and Primary Myelofibrosis patients renders the kinase constitutively active. In the absence of a three-dimensional structure for the full-length protein, the mechanism of activation of JAK2 V617F has remained elusive. In this study, we used functional mutagenesis to investigate the involvement of the JH2 αC helix in the constitutive activation of JAK2 V617F. We show that residue F595, located in the middle of the αC helix of JH2, is indispensable for the constitutive activity of JAK2 V617F. Mutation of F595 to Ala, Lys, Val or Ile significantly decreases the constitutive activity of JAK2 V617F, but F595W and F595Y are able to restore it, implying an aromaticity requirement at position 595. Substitution of F595 to Ala was also able to decrease the constitutive activity of two other JAK2 mutants, T875N and R683G, as well as JAK2 K539L, albeit to a lower extent. In contrast, the F595 mutants are activated by erythropoietin-bound EpoR. We also explored the relationship between the dimeric conformation of EpoR and several JAK2 mutants. Since residue F595 is crucial to the constitutive activation of JAK2 V617F but not to initiation of JAK2 activation by cytokines, we suggest that small molecules that target the region around this residue might specifically block oncogenic JAK2 and spare JAK2 wild-type

NetPath: a public resource of curated signal transduction pathways

NetPath, a novel community resource of curated human signaling pathways is presented and its utility demonstrated using immune signaling data

Novel mutations and their functional and clinical relevance in myeloproliferative neoplasms: JAK2, MPL, TET2, ASXL1, CBL, IDH and IKZF1

Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) originate from genetically transformed hematopoietic stem cells that retain the capacity for multilineage differentiation and effective myelopoiesis. Beginning in early 2005, a number of novel mutations involving Janus kinase 2 (JAK2), Myeloproliferative Leukemia Virus (MPL), TET oncogene family member 2 (TET2), Additional Sex Combs-Like 1 (ASXL1), Casitas B-lineage lymphoma proto-oncogene (CBL), Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) and IKAROS family zinc finger 1 (IKZF1) have been described in BCR-ABL1-negative MPNs. However, none of these mutations were MPN specific, displayed mutual exclusivity or could be traced back to a common ancestral clone. JAK2 and MPL mutations appear to exert a phenotype-modifying effect and are distinctly associated with polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia and primary myelofibrosis; the corresponding mutational frequencies are ∼99, 55 and 65% for JAK2 and 0, 3 and 10% for MPL mutations. The incidence of TET2, ASXL1, CBL, IDH or IKZF1 mutations in these disorders ranges from 0 to 17% these latter mutations are more common in chronic (TET2, ASXL1, CBL) or juvenile (CBL) myelomonocytic leukemias, mastocytosis (TET2), myelodysplastic syndromes (TET2, ASXL1) and secondary acute myeloid leukemia, including blast-phase MPN (IDH, ASXL1, IKZF1). The functional consequences of MPN-associated mutations include unregulated JAK-STAT (Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription) signaling, epigenetic modulation of transcription and abnormal accumulation of oncoproteins. However, it is not clear as to whether and how these abnormalities contribute to disease initiation, clonal evolution or blastic transformation