Extended cortical activations during evaluating successive pain stimuli

Comparing pain is done in daily life and involves short-term memorizing and attention focusing. This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the short-term brain activations associated with the comparison of pain stimuli using a delayed discrimination paradigm. Fourteen healthy young volunteers compared two successive pain stimuli administered at a 10 s interval to the same location at the nasal mucosa. Fourteen age- and sex-matched subjects received similar pain stimuli without performing the comparison task. With the comparison task, the activations associated with the second pain stimulus were significantly greater than with the first stimulus in the anterior insular cortex and the primary somatosensory area. This was observed on the background of a generally increased stimulus-associated brain activation in the presence of the comparison task that included regions of the pain matrix (insular cortex, primary and secondary somatosensory area, midcingulate cortex, supplemental motor area) and regions associated with attention, decision making, working memory and body recognition (frontal and temporal gyri, inferior parietal lobule, precuneus, lingual cortices). This data provides a cerebral correlate for the role of pain as a biological alerting system that gains the subject''s attention and then dominates most other perceptions and activities involving pain-specific and non-pain-specific brain regions.     

Conditional ligands for Asian HLA variants facilitate the definition of CD8+ T‐cell responses in acute and chronic viral diseases

Conditional ligands have enabled the high‐throughput production of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) libraries that present defined peptides. Immunomonitoring platforms typically concentrate on restriction elements associated with European ancestry, and such tools are scarce for Asian HLA variants. We report 30 novel irradiation‐sensitive ligands, specifically targeting South East Asian populations, which provide 93, 63, and 79% coverage for HLA‐A, ‐B, and ‐C, respectively. Unique ligands for all 16 HLA types were constructed to provide the desired soluble HLA product in sufficient yield. Peptide exchange was accomplished for all variants as demonstrated by an ELISA‐based MHC stability assay. HLA tetramers with redirected specificity could detect antigen‐specific CD8⁺ T‐cell responses against human cytomegalovirus, hepatitis B (HBV), dengue virus (DENV), and Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV) infections. The potential of this population‐centric HLA library was demonstrated with the characterization of seven novel T‐cell epitopes from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, HBV, and DENV. Posthoc analysis revealed that the majority of responses would be more readily identified by our unbiased discovery approach than through the application of state‐of‐the‐art epitope prediction. This flow cytometry‐based technology therefore holds considerable promise for monitoring clinically relevant antigen‐specific T‐cell responses in populations of distinct ethnicity.     

E-Health und die Realität – was sehen wir heute schon in der Klinik?

Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz - Die Begriffe E‑Health und Digitalisierung sind Kernelemente eines Wandels unserer Zeit. Wesentliche Treiber dieses Wandels...     

Nachruf auf Dr. Holger Dausch

Der Freie Zahnarzt - Landesverband Rheinland-Pfalz Am 18.03.2018 verstarb im Alter von 63 Jahren unser hochgeschätzter Kollege Dr. Holger Dausch.