Invasive meningococcal disease is a recognized public health problem worldwide, with a dynamic and changeable epidemiology. In Turkey, the second most common pathogenic meningococcal serogroup (after serogroup B) is W-135, including an epidemic in 2005, which has been strongly associated with Hajj pilgrims and their close contacts. In two studies ...

One hundred twenty Burkholderia cepacia complex isolates collected during 2004-2010 from 66 patients in two cystic fibrosis reference centers in Argentina were analyzed. B. contaminans was the species most frequently recovered (57.6%) followed by B. cenocepacia (15%), a species distribution not reported so far. The recA-PCR-based techniques applied to the ...

Previous studies have documented the roles of transport via the reduced folate carrier, retention via polyglutamylation and increased levels of the target enzyme, dihydrofolate reductase in sensitivity to methotrexate. Recent studies have shown that the mitochondrial enzymes in the cellular metabolism of serine, folate and glycine are overexpressed in a ...

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to observe the photolysis and recombination of a new EPR-silent CO-inhibited form of α-H195Q nitrogenase from Azotobacter vinelandii. Photolysis at 4 K reveals a strong negative IR difference band at $\tilde {\nu}$=1938 cm(-1) , along with a weaker negative feature at 1911 cm(-1) . These bands ...

Upon irradiation with UV light, an arenyl dienol was transformed into linear and angular meta photocycloadducts and ortho derived photoadducts. Extended exposure to UV radiation resulted in the formation of other degradation products, which shed light on the chemical processes taking place. One of the linear meta photocycloadducts was thermally ...

A fluorenone based alternating copolymer () with a furan based fused aromatic moiety has been designed and synthesized. exhibits a small band gap with a lower HOMO value. Testing this polymer semiconductor as the active layer in organic thin-film transistors results in hole mobilities as high as 0.15 cm(2) V(-1) ...

Integrity of the sperm membrane, of which phosphatidyl serine (PS) plays a central role, is essential for fertilization. The externalisation of PS (EPS) occurs during capacitation and the acrosome reaction. EPS, from the inner to the outer membrane, is considered as a sign of early apoptosis. Therefore, EPS may have ...

During cotranslational protein targeting by the Signal Recognition Particle (SRP), information about signal sequence binding in the SRP's M-domain must be effectively communicated to its GTPase domain to turn on its interaction with the SRP receptor (SR) and thus deliver the cargo proteins to the membrane. A universally conserved 'fingerloop' ...

The efficacy of chlortetracycline (CTC) in-feed medication to treat pigs with clinical respiratory disease was investigated in a farrow-to-finish pig herd infected with Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, and with clinical respiratory disease in growing pigs. In total, 533 pigs were included. The animals were vaccinated against M hyopneumoniae and porcine circovirus type ...

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: To review evidence published since the 2001 American Academy of Neurology (AAN) practice parameter regarding the effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of steroids and antiviral agents for Bell palsy. METHODS: We searched Medline and the Cochrane Database of Controlled Clinical Trials for studies published since January 2000 that compared ...

The endoribonuclease III (RNase III) belongs to the enzyme family known to process double-stranded RNAs. Staphylococcus aureus RNase III was shown to regulate, in concert with the quorum sensing induced RNAIII, the degradation of several mRNAs encoding virulence factors and the transcriptional repressor of toxins Rot. Two of the mRNA-RNAIII ...

Vaccine adjuvant-induced inflammation augments vaccine immunity in part by recruiting APCs to vaccine draining lymph nodes (LNs). However, the role of one APC subtype, inflammatory monocytes, in regulating vaccine immunity in healthy animals has not been fully examined in detail. Therefore, vaccine-mediated monocyte recruitment and subsequent immune responses were investigated ...

Abstract The antibacterial activity of 31 Greek and Cypriot honeys against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa was initially screened using an agar-well diffusion assay in comparison with manuka honey. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was determined in broth using a spectrophotometric-based assay. The MIC of treated honeys with catalase or ...

Resolving the physiological mechanisms by which rhizobacteria enhance plant growth is difficult, since many such bacteria contain multiple plant growth-promoting properties. To understand further how the 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase (ACCd)-containing rhizobacterium Variovorax paradoxus 5C-2 affects plant growth, the flows and partitioning of mineral nutrients and abscisic acid (ABA) and ABA ...

Theory is essential to understand our interprofessional educational (IPE) practice. As a discipline, IPE has moved from being widely atheoretical to having a plethora of theories imported from the psychosocial disciplines that have utility to understand, articulate and improve IPE practice and evaluation. This paper proposes that when taking this ...

Since 1995, a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clone has spread in southern Germany. The strain was assigned to the Rhine-Hesse PFGE type by the staphylococcal reference center and was highly similar to epidemic clones known to belong to clonal complex 5 (CC5, USA100) based on multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Here ...

Hydrogen sulfide (H(2) S) is a newly-discovered signaling molecule in plants and has caused increasing attention in recent years, but its function in stomatal movement is unclear. In plants, H(2) S is synthesized via cysteine degradation catalyzed by D-/L-cysteine desulfhydrase (D-/L-CDes). AtD-/L-CDes::GUS transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants were generated and used ...

Many therapeutic drugs are excluded from entering the brain due to their lack of transport through the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The development of new strategies for enhancing drug delivery to the brain is of great importance in diagnostics and therapeutics of central nervous diseases. To overcome this problem, a viral ...

OBJECTIVE:To review the activity of 3 new agents approved for the management of advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC): sipuleucel-T, cabazitaxel, and abiraterone acetate.DATA SOURCES:Literature was accessed through MEDLINE (1977-June 2012) and abstracts from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2000-2012) using the terms castration-resistant and hormone-refractory prostate cancer, sipuleucel-T, cabazitaxel, ...

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this level 4, retrospective cohort study was to detail the outcomes of primary, revision, and endoscopic modified Lothrop procedure (EMLP) (Draf III) frontal sinus surgery and evaluate whether risk factors would help determine which patients would benefit from which procedures. METHODS: The study used a retrospective ...

Background Inefficient alveolar wound repair contributes to the development of pulmonary fibrosis. Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a potent growth factor for alveolar type II epithelial cells (AECII) and may improve repair and reduce fibrosis. We studied if targeted gene transfer of HGF specifically to AEC II cells improves lung ...

Abstract Rare inheritable conditions may present without warning in the neonatal period and thus lead curious staff to institute expansive clinical investigations. Non-ketotic hyperglycaemia (NKH) in a normal fully grown male infant following an essentially eventful pregnancy associated with unrelated condition provoked much clinical curiosity. NKH should therefore be included ...

Abstract Purpose: To study, characterize and compare chromosome aberrations and karyotype anomalies among newborns from high (> 1.5 mGy/y) and normal (≤ 1.5 mGy/y) level natural radiation areas of monazite-sand bearing southwest coast of Kerala in India. Materials and methods: Cord blood samples from newborns were collected from selected Government ...

The cytosolic RNA helicases melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 and retinoic acid-inducible gene-I and their adaptor IFN-β promoter stimulator (IPS-1) have been implicated in the recognition of viral RNA and the production of type I IFN. Complementing the endosomal TLR, melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5, and retinoic acid-inducible gene-I provides alternative mechanisms ...

Meiosis is at the heart of Mendelian heredity. Recently, much progress has been made in the understanding of this process, in various organisms. In the last 15 years, the functional characterization of numerous genes involved in meiosis has dramatically deepened our knowledge of key events, including recombination, the cell cycle, ...

The protein kinase v-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog (AKT), a key regulator of cell survival and proliferation, is frequently hyperactivated in human cancers. Intramolecular pleckstrin homology (PH) domain-kinase domain (KD) interactions are important in maintaining AKT in an inactive state. AKT activation proceeds after a conformational change that dislodges ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Trifunctional bispecific antibodies (trAb) are a special class of bispecific molecules recruiting and activating T cells and accessory immune cells simultaneously at the targeted tumor. The new trAb Ektomab that targets the melanoma-associated ganglioside antigen GD2 and the signaling molecule human CD3 (hCD3) on T cells demonstrated potent ...

Hypertension and diabetes have been related to noradrenergic system impairment, especially to the response mediated by alpha-1 receptors. The aim of this work was to investigate possible changes in the expression of alpha-1 adrenergic receptors in aorta and carotid arteries of Wistar Kyoto and spontaneously hypertensive rats after 4 weeks ...

Establishment and maintenance of epigenetic memories are essential for development. Replacement of canonical histone H3 by its variant H3.3 has been implicated in cellular memory. Drosophila sequence-specific DNA-binding protein GAGA factor and a chromatin factor FACT direct H3.3 replacement in conjunction with H3.3-specific chaperone HIRA at chromatin boundaries to counteract ...

The mechanism leading to an alteration of heat aggregation of whey protein isolate (WPI) in the presence of pectin was investigated by assessing structural changes of proteins using Raman spectroscopy. WPI solutions were heated without or with pectin at 0.015-0.2 pectin to WPI weight ratios and pH 6.0 to 6.4. ...

The aim of this study was to determine whether women with recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) and concurrent premenstrual syndrome (PMS) who underwent desensitization with sex hormones had an improved obstetric outcome. This manuscript summarizes a 10 year open label prospective follow up study of 26 women with RPL, aged 25-42 ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The number of elderly living in long-term care (LTC) institutions has been increasing in many countries. The objective of this study was to evaluate the caregivers' attitudes and considerations regarding oral health and oral health practices in an LTC institution in Porto Alegre, Brazil. MATERIALS AND METHODS: ...

The epithelial Na(+) channel (ENaC) is a key transporter participating in the fine tuning of Na(+) reabsorption in the nephron. ENaC activity is acutely upregulated by epidermal growth factor (EGF), insulin, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). It was also proposed that reactive oxygen species (ROS) have a stimulatory effect on ...

BACKGROUND: Fatty acids in blood may be related to the risk of prostate cancer, but epidemiologic evidence is inconsistent. Blood fatty acids are correlated through shared food sources and common endogenous desaturation and elongation pathways. Studies of individual fatty acids cannot take this into account, but pattern analysis can. Treelet ...

YB-1 is a multifunctional cold shock domain containing protein that is involved virtually in all DNA- and mRNA-dependent cellular events. Its amount is regulated at the level of both transcription and translation. We showed previously that translation of poly A(-) YB-1 mRNA in vitro is selectively controlled by two proteins, ...

IntroductionMost home haemodialysis (HD) modalities are limited to home use since they are based on a single-pass (SP) technique, which requires preparation of large amounts of dialysate. We present a new dialysis method, which requires minimal dialysate volumes, continuously recycled during treatment [multipass HD (MPHD)]. Theoretical calculations suggest that MPHD ...

Relying on the successful journey of metal oxides in phosphoproteomics, lanthanum oxide is employed for the engineering of an affinity material for phosphopeptide enrichment. The lanthanum oxide is chemically modified on the surface of silica and characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and Fourier transform ...

The anterior nares is the site of choice for the Veterans Administration methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) surveillance program; however, correlation between nares colonization and concomitant wound infections has not been well established. The purpose of this study was threefold: to determine the relatedness of MRSA isolates from 40 paired wound ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Plant microRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in the transcriptional responses to environmental stresses. However, the role of miRNAs in responses to insect herbivory has not been thoroughly explored. To identify herbivory-responsive miRNAs, we first identified conserved miRNAs in the ecological model plant Nicotiana attenuata whose interactions with herbivores ...

In Drosophila, Maelstrom is a conserved component of the perinuclear nuage, a germline-unique structure that appears to serve as a site for Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) production to repress deleterious transposons. Maelstrom also functions in the nucleus as a transcriptional regulator to repress the expression of microRNA-7, a process that is ...

The structural properties of polymer brushes, formed by dendron polymers up to the third generation, were studied by means of Brownian dynamics simulations for the macroscopic state of good solvent. The distributions of polymer units, of the free-ends, of the dendrons centers of mass and of the units of every ...

The transcription factor p53 is a key tumor suppressor protein. In about half of human cancers, p53 is inactivated directly through mutation in its sequence-specific DNA-binding domain. Drosophila p53 (Dmp53) has similar apoptotic functions as its human homolog and is therefore an attractive model system for studying cancer pathways. To ...

Metabolic acidosis is a common clinical condition that is caused by a decrease in blood pH and bicarbonate concentration. Increased extraction and mitochondrial catabolism of plasma glutamine within the renal proximal convoluted tubule generates ammonium and bicarbonate ions that facilitate the excretion of acid and partially restore acid-base balance. Previous ...

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is second in importance to smoking cessation treatment in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Access to the service is limited and less than half of those referred complete the treatment. AIMS: We assessed the obstacles to participation in PR among COPD patients in ...

Recent studies in normal subjects suggested the callosal motor fibers pass through the posterior body of the corpus callosum (CC) but this has not been tested in patients with callosal infarction. The objective of the study is to define the pathways involved in transcallosal inhibition by examining patients with infarctions ...

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) immediate-early proteins BZLF1 and BRLF1 can both induce lytic EBV reactivation when overexpressed in latently infected cells. Although EBV genome methylation is required for BZLF1-mediated activation of lytic gene expression, the effect of viral genome methylation on BRLF1-mediated viral reactivation has not been well studied. Here, ...

The degradation of basement membranes by tumor cells involves secretion and activation of proteinases, such as the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), and results from an imbalance between their inhibitors and activators that are controlled by various growth factors or cytokines, among which TGF-β1 may be the most intriguing. In order to ...

The potential roles of serum butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) activity and platelet indices in type 1 diabetes (T1D) remain uncertain. We aimed to investigate the correlation among the platelet indices, serum BChE activity, and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). Sixty-one T1D patients, 29 patients with DKA, and 30 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled. ...

We developed a single-tube multiplex real-time PCR assay capable of simultaneously detecting and discriminating Legionella spp., Legionella pneumophila, and Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 in primary specimens. Evaluation of 21 clinical specimens and 115 clinical isolates demonstrated this assay to be a rapid, high-throughput diagnostic test with 100% specificity that may ...

Bioassay-guided fractionation of an extract of leaves of Macaranga kurzii yielded four new compounds, a stilbene (furanokurzin, 1) and three flavonoids (macakurzin A-C, 2-4). Nine known compounds were also isolated (5-13). Their structures were determined by spectroscopic analyses including MS and 2D NMR. The isolates were all evaluated for acetylcholinesterase ...