B cells mediate chronic allograft rejection independently of antibody production

Chronic rejection is the primary cause of long-term failure of transplanted organs and is often viewed as an antibody-dependent process. Chronic rejection, however, is also observed in mice and humans with no detectable circulating alloantibodies, suggesting that antibody-independent pathways may also contribute to pathogenesis of transplant rejection. Here, we have provided direct evidence that chronic rejection of vascularized heart allografts occurs in the complete absence of antibodies, but requires the presence of B cells. Mice that were deficient for antibodies but not B cells experienced the same chronic allograft vasculopathy (CAV), which is a pathognomonic feature of chronic rejection, as WT mice; however, mice that were deficient for both B cells and antibodies were protected from CAV. B cells contributed to CAV by supporting splenic lymphoid architecture, T cell cytokine production, and infiltration of T cells into graft vessels. In chimeric mice, in which B cells were present but could not present antigen, both T cell responses and CAV were markedly reduced. These findings establish that chronic rejection can occur in the complete absence of antibodies and that B cells contribute to this process by supporting T cell responses through antigen presentation and maintenance of lymphoid architecture.     

WOMENtorship: The #WomenInMedicine perspective

Abstract

Mentorship is essential for career development, personal development, and job satisfaction for physicians in academic medicine. Women in academic medicine face unique challenges including significant gender disparities in positions of leadership as well as difficulty finding mentors. As leaders in academic medicine, we have collated several structured recommendations for physicians of both genders seeking to be better mentors to female trainees and early career physicians. We discuss each of these recommendations in detail including the following: acknowledging your own strengths and limitations as a mentor, addressing issues of work-life integration, helping your mentee set long-term career goals, and acting as a sponsor as well as a mentor. We hope these suggestions are helpful for current and aspiring mentors and provide a platform to improve career development for female physicians and reduce gender inequities in academic medicine.     

Newspaper Coverage of Mental Illness: Is It Changing?

Abstract

Because the public gets much of its knowledge of mental illness from the news media, it is important to understand what those media report about mental illnesses. It is also useful to know whether or not news coverage of mental illness is changing. The current study looked at 300 newspaper articles containing the key phrase “mental illness” from 6 different newspapers for 1989 and for 1999. Each article was read and rated with respect to a variety of elements, including what specific disorders were named, what the main themes of each article were, and what was the overall tone of the article. Results indicated that there was more coverage of issues of stigma and mental health insurance parity, fewer themes of dangerousness, and fewer articles with negative tone in 1999 than in 1989. However, dangerousness was still the most common theme of 1999 articles and negative articles were still twice as likely to occur as positive ones. Articles in 1999, as in 1989, tended not to name specific psychiatric disorders, tended not to describe the symptoms of those disorders named, and rarely included the perspectives of mental health consumers.