Abstract Purpose Usher syndrome is a ciliopathy involving photoreceptors and cochlear hair cells (sensory cilia): since sensory and motor ciliopathies can overlap, we analysed the respiratory cilia ...(motile) in 17 patients affected by Usher syndrome and 18 healthy control subject. Patients and methods We studied the mucociliary transport time with the saccharine test, ciliary motility and ultrastructure of respiratory cilia obtained by nasal brushing; we also recorded the classical respiratory function values by spirometry. Results All enrolled subjects showed normal respiratory function values. The mean mucociliary transport time with saccharine was 22.33 ± 17.96 min, which is in the range of normal values. The mean ciliary beat frequency of all subjects was 8.81 ± 2.18 Hz, which is a value approaching the lower physiological limit. None of the classical ciliary alterations characterizing the “ciliary primary dyskinesia” was detected, although two patients showed alterations in number and arrangement of peripheral microtubules and one patient had abnormal ciliary roots. Conclusions Respiratory cilia in Usher patients don’t seem to have evident ultrastructural alterations, as expected, but the fact that the ciliary motility appeared slightly reduced could emphasize that a rigid distinction between sensory and motor ciliopathies may not reflect what really occurs.
The ML Flow test is an immunochromatographic assay that detects IgM antibodies against M. leprae-specific anti-phenolic glycolipid I (PGL-I). In addition to slit skin smears stained by the ...Ziehl-Neelsen technique, it can be helpful in the operational classification of leprosy patients for treatment purposes.
This work studied the relationship between antibody levels as detected by semi-quantitative ML Flow serologic test and bacterial load as quantified by slit skin smear.
135 patients with newly detected leprosy at the reference service in Sanitary Dermatology in Brazil had slit skin smears (registered as bacillary index - BI) and an ML Flow test (registered qualitatively and semi-quantitatively) performed at admission. A logistic regression and agreement measures (kappa index) were calculated.
Slit skin smears were positive in 35.9% of patients and 57% of patients were seropositive for PGL-1 antibodies. Among the seropositive patients, 416% had five or fewer skin lesions, and 65.8% had more than one peripheral nerve involved. Slit skin smears were positive in only three seronegative patients (5.6%), and negative in 41.9% of seropositive patients. Patients with a BI of 4 + had an OR of 33 for being seropositive in comparison to those with a low BI.
There is a correlation between serologic test and slit skin smear results. Therefore, an ML Flow test may become a useful tool in the clinical classification of leprosy, besides slit skin smears, which require a proper laboratory infrastructure and experienced personnel.
We conjecture that, because of color confinement, the physical vacuum forms an event horizon for quarks and gluons, which can be crossed only by quantum tunneling, i.e., through the QCD counterpart ...of Hawking radiation at black holes. Since such radiation cannot transmit information to the outside, it must be thermal, of a temperature determined by the chromodynamic force at the confinement surface, and it must maintain color neutrality. We explore the possibility that the resulting process provides a common mechanism for thermal hadron production in high energy interactions, from e+e- annihilation to heavy ion collisions.
The research investigates the potential use of maize cobs (or corncobs) from five genotypes, including the B73 inbred line and four locally cultivated landraces from Northern Italy, as substrate for ...implementing Solid State fermentation processes with four Medicinal Mushrooms (MMs). The corncobs were characterized based on their proximate composition, lignin, phenolics content (both free and bound), and total antioxidant capacity. Among the MMs tested, Pleurotus ostreatus and Ganoderma annularis demonstrated the most robust performance. Their growth was parametrized using Image Analysis technique, and chemical composition of culture samples was characterized compared to that of corncobs alone. In all culture samples, the growth of MMs led to a significant reduction (averaging 40%) in the total phenolics contents compared to that measured in corncobs alone. However, the high content of free phenolics in the cobs negatively impacted the growth of P. ostreatus. The final MM-corncob matrix exhibited reduced levels of free sugars and starch (≤ 2.2% DW, as a sum) and increased levels of proteins (up to 5.9% DW) and soluble dietary fiber (up to 5.0% DW), with a notable trend toward higher levels of β-glucan compared to corncobs alone. This research paves the way for the use of this matrix as an active ingredient to enhance the nutritional value of food preparations.
The thermodynamic geometry formalism is applied to strongly interacting matter to estimate the deconfinement temperature. The curved thermodynamic metric for QCD is evaluated on the basis of lattice ...data, whereas the hadron resonance gas model is used for the hadronic sector. Since the deconfinement transition is a crossover, the geometric criterion used to define the (pseudo)critical temperature, as a function of the baryonchemical potential μB, is R(T,μB)=0, where R is the scalar curvature. The (pseudo)critical temperature, Tc, resulting from QCD thermodynamic geometry is in good agreement with lattice and phenomenological freeze-out temperature estimates. The crossing temperature, Th, evaluated by the hadron resonance gas, which suffers from some model dependence, is larger than Tc (about 20%) signaling remnants of confinement above the transition.
The mode of inheritance of Alport syndrome (ATS) has long been controversial. In 1927, the disease was hypothesized as a dominant condition in which males were more severely affected than females. In ...1990, it was considered an X‐linked (XL) semidominant condition, due to COL4A5 mutations. Later on, a rare autosomal recessive (AR) form due to COL4A3/COL4A4 mutations was identified. An autosomal dominant (AD) form was testified more recently by the description of some large pedigrees but the real existence of this form is still questioned by many and its exact prevalence is unknown. The introduction of next generation sequencing (NGS) allowed us to perform an unbiased simultaneous COL4A3‐COL4A4‐COL4A5 analysis in 87 Italian families (273 individuals) with clinical suspicion of ATS. In 48 of them (55%), a mutation in one of the three genes was identified: the inheritance was XL semidominant in 65%, recessive in 4% and most interestingly AD in 31% (15 families). The AD form must therefore be seriously taken into account in all pedigrees with affected individuals in each generation. Furthermore, a high frequency of mutations (>50%) was shown in patients with only 1 or 2 clinical criteria, suggesting NGS as first‐level analysis in cases with a clinical suspicion of ATS.
PDF
