Adding low-dose antidepressants to interferon alpha treatment for chronic hepatitis C improved psychiatric tolerability in a patient with schizoaffective psychosis

Treatment of chronic hepatitis C with interferon alpha (IFN-alpha) is relatively contraindicated in patients with psychiatric disorders because of possible severe psychiatric side effects. We report on a case of a female patient with a chronic schizoaffective psychosis, who was treated for 3 months with 3 x 3 mio IE IFN-alpha s.c./week because of a chronic hepatitis C (genotype Ib). Psychosis was stable with flupentixol monotherapy. After 2 months, she developed a severe depressive syndrome which lead to suicidal ideation. Until this time, she was without any antidepressive medication. Depressive symptoms disappeared after interferon therapy was stopped. Under prophylactic treatment with low-dose trimipramine (50 mg) or nefazodone (200 mg/day) therapy with IFN-alpha 3 x 3 mio IE/week was re-established after several months and again 2 years later adding ribavirin 1200 mg/day, a virustaticum. In contrast to the symptoms during monotherapy with IFN-alpha, during the time of both combination treatments, no psychiatric side effects occurred. While for ribavirin antidepressant effects are not known, we suppose that antidepressants may in serotonergic or noradrenergic caused by IFN-alpha. prevent changes neurotransmission caused by IFN-alpha. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel

Detection of gravitational-wave signals from binary neutron star mergers using machine learning

As two neutron stars merge, they emit gravitational waves that can potentially be detected by Earth-bound detectors. Matched-filtering-based algorithms have traditionally been used to extract quiet signals embedded in noise. We introduce a novel neural-network-based machine learning algorithm that uses time series strain data from gravitational-wave detectors to detect signals from nonspinning binary neutron star mergers. For the Advanced LIGO design sensitivity, our network has an average sensitive distance of 130 Mpc at a false-alarm rate of ten per month. Compared to other state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, we find an improvement by a factor of 4 in sensitivity to signals with a signal-to-noise ratio between 8 and 15. However, this approach is not yet competitive with traditional matched-filtering-based methods. A conservative estimate indicates that our algorithm introduces on average 10.2 s of latency between signal arrival and generating an alert. We give an exact description of our testing procedure, which can be applied not only to machine-learning-based algorithms but all other search algorithms as well. We thereby improve the ability to compare machine learning and classical searches. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society

Neutrino induced hard exclusive D_s production

Motivated by the possibility to use high intensity neutrino beams for neutrino-nucleon scattering experiments we analyze charged current induced exclusive meson production within the framework of generalized parton distributions. The cross section for hard exclusive D_s production is estimated in this formalism to leading order in QCD. The integrated cross section proves to be sizable. It is shown that the considered process is well suited to provide novel information on the gluon structure of nucleons, which is contained in the generalized gluon parton distribution.Comment: 7 pages; modified plots in Fig. 3; accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

CCL18 as an indicator of pulmonary fibrotic activity in idiopathic interstitial pneumonias and systemic sclerosis

Objective In diffuse parenchymal lung diseases, the evolution of pulmonary fibrosis is often devastating and may result in death. In this study the role of CCL18 as a biomarker of disease activity in idiopathic interstitial pneumonias (IIPs) and systemic sclerosis (SSc) with lung involvement was evaluated. Methods CCL18 was assessed in supernatants of cultured bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cells as well as BAL fluid and serum samples from 43 patients with IIPs, 12 patients with SSc, and 23 healthy control subjects. Concentrations of CCL18 were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and expression of CCL18 was assessed by flow cytometry. Results CCL18 concentrations were statistically significantly increased in all patients with fibrotic lung diseases. Spontaneous CCL18 production by BAL cells was negatively correlated with total lung capacity and the diffusion capacity for carbon monoxide, whereas there was a positive correlation of CCL18 concentrations with BAL neutrophil and eosinophil cell counts. Flow cytometry revealed an increase in the percentage of CCL18-positive alveolar macrophages and an increase in the CCL18 fluorescence intensity per cell in patients with fibrotic lung diseases. In a cohort of patients who were followed up for at least 6 months (n = 40), a close negative correlation was observed between changes in the predicted total lung capacity and changes in CCL18 serum concentrations. Conclusion These findings suggest that CCL18 production by BAL cells and serum CCL18 concentrations reflect pulmonary fibrotic activity in patients with IIPs and those with SSc. Monitoring changes in CCL18 production might be an extraordinarily useful tool in clinical practice and in studies aimed at evaluating new approaches for treatment of fibrotic lung diseases.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56037/1/22559_ftp.pd

Bartonella Adhesin A Mediates a Proangiogenic Host Cell Response

Bartonella henselae causes vasculoproliferative disorders in humans. We identified a nonfimbrial adhesin of B. henselae designated as Bartonella adhesin A (BadA). BadA is a 340-kD outer membrane protein encoded by the 9.3-kb badA gene. It has a modular structure and contains domains homologous to the Yersinia enterocolitica nonfimbrial adhesin (Yersinia adhesin A). Expression of BadA was restored in a BadA-deficient transposon mutant by complementation in trans. BadA mediates the binding of B. henselae to extracellular matrix proteins and to endothelial cells, possibly via β1 integrins, but prevents phagocytosis. Expression of BadA is crucial for activation of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 in host cells by B. henselae and secretion of proangiogenic cytokines (e.g., vascular endothelial growth factor). BadA is immunodominant in B. henselae–infected patients and rodents, indicating that it is expressed during Bartonella infections. Our results suggest that BadA, the largest characterized bacterial protein thus far, is a major pathogenicity factor of B. henselae with a potential role in the induction of vasculoproliferative disorders

Critical Dynamics of Gelation

Shear relaxation and dynamic density fluctuations are studied within a Rouse model, generalized to include the effects of permanent random crosslinks. We derive an exact correspondence between the static shear viscosity and the resistance of a random resistor network. This relation allows us to compute the static shear viscosity exactly for uncorrelated crosslinks. For more general percolation models, which are amenable to a scaling description, it yields the scaling relation $k=\phi-\beta$ for the critical exponent of the shear viscosity. Here $\beta$ is the thermal exponent for the gel fraction and $\phi$ is the crossover exponent of the resistor network. The results on the shear viscosity are also used in deriving upper and lower bounds on the incoherent scattering function in the long-time limit, thereby corroborating previous results.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures (revtex, amssymb); revised version (minor changes

Angular distributions in hard exclusive production of pion pairs

Using the leading order amplitudes of hard exclusive electroproduction of pion pairs we have analyzed the angular distribution of the two produced particles. At leading twist a pion pair can be produced only in an isovector or an isoscalar state. We show that certain components of the angular distribution only get contributions from the interference of the I=1 and the (much smaller) I=0 amplitude. Therefore our predictions prove to be a good probe of isospin zero pion pair production. We predict effects of a measurable size that could be observed at experiments like HERMES. We also discuss how hard exclusive pion pair production can provide us with new information on the effective chiral Lagrangian.Comment: 17 pages, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Quark Distributions of Octet Baryons from SU(3) Symmetry

SU(3) symmetry relations between the octet baryons are introduced in order to connect both the unpolarized and polarized quark distributions of the octet baryons with those of the nucleon. Two different parametrizations of the nucleon quark distributions are used. A new scenario of quark flavor and spin structure of the $\Lambda$ is found and compared with two other models: a perturbative QCD based analysis and a quark diquark model. The $u$ and $d$ quarks inside the $\Lambda$ are predicted to be positively polarized at large Bjorken variable $x$ in the new scenario. By using an approximate relation connecting the quark fragmentation functions with the quark distributions, the hadron polarizations of the octet baryons in $e^+e^-$-annihilation, polarized charged lepton deep inelastic scattering (DIS) processes, and neutrino (antineutrino) DIS processes are predicted. The predictions for $\Lambda$ polarizations in several processes are compatible with the available data at large fragmentation momentum fraction $z$, and support the prediction of positively polarized $u$ and $d$ quarks inside the $\Lambda$ at large $x$. Predictions for Drell-Yan processes from $\Sigma^{\pm}$ and $\Xi^-$ beams on an isoscalar target are also given and discussed.Comment: 29 latex pages, 16 figures, to appear in PR