Production of Antibodies against Enterocin B for Immunological Detection and Purification Purposes

Polyclonal antibodies were generated against the bacteriocin enterocin B by conjugating enterocin B (ENT) to bovine serum albumin (BSA) through a bifunctional crosslinking agent. Rabbits immunized with the ENT-BSA conjugates developed antibodies specific for enterocin B. Non-competive indirect (NCI) ELISAs were able to detect the presence of enterocin B in the supernatant of a producer strain and from a partially-purified sample. Competitive indirect (CI) ELISAs demonstrated concentrations of enterocin B ranging from 400-1600 ng ml^-1 were required for 50% antibody binding inhibition. An immunoaffinity chromatography column was developed by linking the antibodies to CNBr-activated Sepahrose 4B. The purification method yielded pure enterocin; however, the harsh elution conditions did not render a regeneratable column.     

论“就医者看病是否属于消费“

该文从经济学原理分析出发,医疗市场中存在着供需双方,医疗卫生服务的消费者就是病人和健康的就医者.医疗消费具有三个特殊性,医患双方的知识和信息不对称;医患双方处于主体与代理人的关系;医疗消费具有疾病和财务的风险性,因此患者在医疗消费时总是处于不平等的地位,其权益需要得到保护.医疗消费者的权益应包括治疗自主权、卫生服务提供者的选择权、人格尊重权、知情权、隐私权等健康权.作者认为医疗服务也应列入<消费者权益保护法>的范畴之内.     

The effect of Interceed for reducing adhesion as a middle ear packing agent: an experimental study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Interceed (oxidized regenerated cellulose) has been used to prevent postoperative abdominal adhesion. However, the efficacy and safety of using Interceed in middle ear surgery have not been thoroughly studied. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The animals were divided into two groups: the Interceed group and the Gelfoam (Gelatin sponge) group. In every group, the study was performed on five guinea pigs (ten ears). Under the aseptic condition, the middle ear mucosa was abraded using a pick through a myringotomy incision. Interceed and Gelfoam were then packed into the guinea pigs' middle ear cavities. The auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) were assessed preoperatively and at 3 weeks after the operation with the animals under general anesthesia. Histopathologic study was performed 3 weeks after the operation. RESULTS: The ABR results on postoperative week 3 showed no statistically significant difference for myringotomy and postpacking. The fibrosis, middle ear mucosa thickening and adhesion formation appeared to be less in the Interceed group compared with the Gelfoam group. Any foreign body reaction was not observed in the Interceed group. CONCLUSION: Our results show that Interceed is nonototoxic and biocompatible with the guinea pig's middle ear cavity. Therefore, these results suggest that Interceed could be used safely in the middle ear as a middle ear packing agent during otosurgery.     

Agent Orange exposure, Vietnam War veterans, and the risk of prostate cancer

BACKGROUND.

It has been demonstrated that Agent Orange exposure increases the risk of developing several soft tissue malignancies. Federally funded studies, now nearly a decade old, indicated that there was only a weak association between exposure and the subsequent development of prostate cancer. Because Vietnam War veterans are now entering their 60s, the authors reexamined this association by measuring the relative risk of prostate cancer among a cohort of men who were stratified as either exposed or unexposed to Agent Orange between the years 1962 and 1971 and who were followed during the interval between 1998 and 2006.

METHODS.

All Vietnam War era veterans who receive their care in the Northern California Veteran Affairs Health System were stratified as either exposed (n = 6214) or unexposed (n = 6930) to Agent Orange. Strata‐specific incidence rates of prostate cancer (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision code 185.0) were calculated. Differences in patient and disease characteristics (age, race, smoking history, family history, body mass index, finasteride exposure, prebiopsy prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) level, clinical and pathologic stage, and Gleason score) were assessed with chi‐square tests, t tests, a Cox proportional hazards model, and multivariate logistic regression.

RESULTS.

Twice as many exposed men were identified with prostate cancer (239 vs 124 unexposed men, respectively; odds ratio [OR], 2.19; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.75‐2.75). This increased risk also was observed in a Cox proportional hazards model from the time of exposure to diagnosis (hazards ratio [HR], 2.87; 95% CI, 2.31‐3.57). The mean time from exposure to diagnosis was 407 months. Agent Orange‐exposed men were diagnosed at a younger age (59.7 years; 95% CI, 58.9‐60.5 years) compared with unexposed men (62.2 years; 95% CI, 60.8‐63.6 years), had a 2‐fold increase in the proportion of Gleason scores 8 through 10 (21.8%; 95% CI, 16.5%‐27%) compared with unexposed men (10.5%; 95% CI, 5%‐15.9%), and were more likely to have metastatic disease at presentation than men who were not exposed (13.4%; 95% CI, 9%‐17.7%) than unexposed men (4%; 95% CI, 0.5%‐7.5%). In univariate analysis, distribution by race, smoking history, body mass index, finasteride exposure, clinical stage, and mean prebiopsy PSA were not statistically different. In a multivariate logistic regression model, Agent Orange was the most important predictor not only of developing prostate cancer but also of high‐grade and metastatic disease on presentation.

CONCLUSIONS.

Individuals who were exposed to Agent Orange had an increased incidence of prostate cancer; developed the disease at a younger age, and had a more aggressive variant than their unexposed counterparts. Consideration should be made to classify this group of individuals as ‘high risk,’ just like men of African‐American heritage and men with a family history of prostate cancer. Cancer 2008. © 2008 American Cancer Society.     

甲状腺乳头状癌超声造影定量参数与微血管密度的相关性

目的 探讨甲状腺乳头状癌（PTC）超声造影定量参数与病理微血管密度（MVD）的相关性。方法 回顾性分析33例PTC患者（共36枚结节）术前常规超声及超声造影检查的声像图资料。应用Qlab软件绘制结节边缘及中心区域时间-强度曲线（TIC），获得不同部位的超声造影定量参数值，包括峰值强度和曲线下面积；术后对标本均进行CD31因子免疫组化染色，并分别计算结节边缘区域及中心区域的MVD，并分析上述超声造影定量参数与MVD的相关性。结果 PTC结节整体呈不均匀低增强，结节边缘区域增强程度多高于中心区域。PTC结节边缘区域RT、PI、AUC及MVD分别为（3.24±2.10sec、7.84±2.55dB、182.63±87.83dB sec、35.09±9.61条/HP），均高于结节中心（2.42±1.93sec、4.01±2.36dB、89.90±54.67dB sec、15.97±6.07条/HP），差异均有统计学意义（均P＜0.05）。PTC结节边缘区域的峰值强度和曲线下面积与边缘区域MVD均呈正相关（r= 0.831，P=0.000；r= 0.705，P=0.000）；PTC结节中心区域的峰值强度和曲线下面积与中心区域MVD之间均呈正相关（r= 0.678，P=0.000；r= 0.684，P=0.000）。结论 PTC结节的超声造影定量参数峰值强度和曲线下面积能反映PTC不同部位组织的MVD，CEUS可作为术前评估PTC结节MVD的无创性方法。     

Agent Orange and long-term outcomes after radical prostatectomy

PurposeTo investigate the association between Agent Orange (AO) exposure and long-term prostate cancer (PC) outcomes.Material and MethodsData from 1,882 men undergoing radical prostatectomy for PC between 1988 and 2011 at Veterans Affairs Health Care Facilities were analyzed from the Shared Equal Access Regional Cancer Hospital database. Men were stratified by AO exposure (binary). Associations between AO exposure and biopsy and pathologic Gleason sum (GS) and pathologic stage were determined by logistic regression models adjusted for preoperative characteristics. Hazard ratios for biochemical recurrence (BCR), secondary treatment, metastases, and PC-specific mortality were determined by Cox models adjusted for preoperative characteristics.ResultsThere were 333 (17.7%) men with AO exposure. AO-exposed men were younger (median 59 vs. 62 y), had lower preoperative prostate-specific antigen levels (5.8 vs. 6.7 ng/ml), lower clinical category (25% vs. 38% palpable), and higher body mass index (28.2 vs. 27.6 kg/m²), all P<0.01. Biopsy GS, pathologic GS, positive surgical margins, lymph node positivity, and extracapsular extension did not differ with AO exposure. At a median follow-up of 85 months, 702 (37.4%) patients had BCR, 603 (32.2%) patients received secondary treatment, 78 (4.1%) had metastases, and 39 (2.1%) died of PC. On multivariable analysis, AO exposure was not associated with BCR, secondary treatment, metastases, or PC mortality.ConclusionsAO exposure was not associated with worse preoperative characteristics such as elevated prostate-specific antigen levels or biopsy GS nor with BCR, secondary treatment, metastases, or PC death. Thus, as data on AO-exposed men mature, possible differences in PC outcomes observed previously are no longer apparent.     

Modeling the Emergence of Lexicons in Homesign Systems

It is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge not just from human brains but also from rich communities of interacting human brains (Senghas, 2005). Yet the precise role of such communities and such interaction in the emergence of core properties of language has largely gone uninvestigated in naturally emerging systems, leaving the few existing computational investigations of this issue at an artificial setting. Here, we take a step toward investigating the precise role of community structure in the emergence of linguistic conventions with both naturalistic empirical data and computational modeling. We first show conventionalization of lexicons in two different classes of naturally emerging signed systems: (a) protolinguistic “homesigns” invented by linguistically isolated Deaf individuals, and (b) a natural sign language emerging in a recently formed rich Deaf community. We find that the latter conventionalized faster than the former. Second, we model conventionalization as a population of interacting individuals who adjust their probability of sign use in response to other individuals' actual sign use, following an independently motivated model of language learning (Yang, 2002, 2004). Simulations suggest that a richer social network, like that of natural (signed) languages, conventionalizes faster than a sparser social network, like that of homesign systems. We discuss our behavioral and computational results in light of other work on language emergence, and other work of behavior on complex networks.     

In Vivo and In Vitro Phosphorylation Regions of Bone Sialoprotein

The present study for the first time evaluated both the in vitro and in vivo phosphorylation regions of bone sialoprotein (BSP) by utilizing multiple approaches and techniques. The in vitro phosphorylation sites were determined by 32 P-labeling of native BSP using purified casein kinase II (CKII), followed by peptide mapping and solid-phase N-terminal sequence analyses. The in vivo phosphorylation sites were determined by (i) derivatization with 1-S-[ 14 C]carboxymethyl-dithiothreitol ([ 14 C] CM-DTT) of the proteolytic digests of BSP, followed by isolation and N-terminal peptide sequence analysis; and (ii) analyzing the proteolytic peptides of native BSP using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight-mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS). Native BSP incorporated ~2.5 mol of phosphate/mol of BSP by CKII, which were distributed over four major peptide peaks and three shoulder peaks within the peptide map with varying degrees of phosphorylation. Further studies using the [ 14 C] CM-DTT thiol reagent indicated that native and deglycosylated BSP incorporated 5.84 and 5.80 mol of 14 C/mol of BSP, respectively. This confirmed that there were ~5.8 mol P-Ser/mol of BSP naturally (in vivo) occurring phosphorylation sites and that there was no overlap between the phosphorylation and glycosylation sites. The 5.8 mol P-Ser/mol BSP reflects the total number of mols of naturally occurring phosphorylation, phosphorylated in vivo by CKII (4.1 mol), protein kinase C (0.9 mol), and cGMP-dependent kinase (0.8 mol). Peptide N-terminal sequence analyses of both in vitro ( 32 P) and in vivo ( 14 C) phosphorylated peptides indicated that the phosphorylated residues were predominantly on the N-terminal half of the protein that included recognition sequences for CKII, e.g., LESDEENGVFK (residues 12-22).     

靶向Toll样受体药物研究进展

Toll样受体(TLRs)家族是主要的模式识别受体,能够识别多种人侵的病原体,启动炎性应答通路而调节或控制固有免疫与适应性免疫.一旦TLRs与其特异配体结合后,可激活信号转导级联,在急性炎症反应、细胞信号转导和细胞凋亡中起重要作用.目前临床上有很多靶向TLRs的药物来治疗炎症、免疫疾病以及肿瘤等,因此,深入研究TLRs信号系统与靶向TLR药物的作用机制,有助于拓宽新药研究思路,从而寻找针对性强而有效的治疗药物.