•Transcriptome analysis in M. bovis-infected bovine PBMCs was performed.•Regulation of lymphocyte chemotaxis and migration increased based on GO analysis.•Type 1 immune response increased in M. ...bovis-infected PBMCs.•Lymphocyte activated related factors increased in M. bovis-infected PBMCs.
Mycoplasma bovis is a pathogenic bacterium in bovines that causes huge global economic losses. Numerous factors play important roles in M. bovis pathogenesis; however, the host immune response involved in M. bovis infection has not been fully elucidated. We aimed to determine the characteristics of the host immune response to Mycoplasma infection. We evaluated the responsiveness of bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) stimulated with M. bovis via microarray analysis. The transcriptional abundance of innate immune-related genes IL-36A, IL-27, IFN-γ, and IL-17 in PBMCs increased after M. bovis exposure. Upon M. bovis infection, there was increased expression of the lymphocyte activated genes basic leucine zipper transcription factor (BATF) and signaling lymphocytic activation molecule family members 1 and 7 (SLAMF 1 and SLAMF 7) in PBMCs compared with that in unstimulated cells. The study revealed that the transcriptional abundance of innate immunity genes in PBMCs increased during M. bovis infection. This induced the activation of PBMCs, giving rise to an immune response, which is followed by the development of the inflammatory response. The results from this study could be used as the basis for the development of novel vaccine candidates against M. bovis.
Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis) is a significant worldwide pathogen of cattle. Neutrophils have an important role in the innate immune response during infection with M. bovis. However, even though ...neutrophils accumulate in M. bovis infection, the interaction of M. bovis and neutrophils has not been fully elucidated. We attempted to elucidate the innate immune response of neutrophils stimulated with M. bovis and evaluate the transcriptome and functional analysis of bovine neutrophils stimulated with M. bovis. Proinflammatory cytokines, such as inducible nitric oxide (iNOS), which was the most increased gene in transcriptome analysis, were increased in quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis of bovine neutrophils stimulated with live or heat-killed M. bovis. Nitric oxide and intracellular reactive oxygen species production of neutrophils stimulated with M. bovis was significantly increased. Neutrophils stimulated with M. bovis showed an increased ratio of nonapoptotic cell death compared to unstimulated controls. We demonstrated that neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) formation was not recognized in neutrophils stimulated with live M. bovis. However, heat-killed M. bovis induced NETs formation. We also showed the interaction with M. bovis and bovine neutrophils regarding proinflammatory cytokine gene expression and functional expression related to NETs formation. Live and killed M. bovis induced innate immune responses in neutrophils and had the potential to induce NETs formation, but live M. bovis escaped NETs.
We measured head and eye movements while subjects viewed 4K high-definition images to clarify the influence of different viewing positions. Subjects viewed three images from nine viewing positions: ...three viewing distances x three viewing positions. Though heads rotated toward the center irrespective of viewing screen positions, they also tended to turn straight forward as the viewing distance became close to an image.
As the impact of population aging becomes increasingly serious, more problems emerge with regard to medical and long-term care for the older individuals, which require solution. In long-term care, ...accidental falls frequently occur and are a significant cause of serious injuries and bed confinement due to leg fractures. Older people are especially prone to fall out of bed when they try to get up on their own. To reduce the occurrence of such accidents, one important solution is to detect the getting-up behavior of older individuals and to alert nursing staff to come and check. Although many studies have proposed various solutions such as the use of wearable devices and vision-based sensors, there are many issues in practical application. The complexity of device installation, high initial cost, and maintenance problems have restricted most care facilities to using fall prevention systems with mediocre results, such as pressure pad sensors. In this paper, we propose a fall prevention system based on a single camera (with infrared function) and infrared reflective sheets (IR sheets). The system detects the IR sheets placed on the shoulders of an individual and obtains position data. The relative positions of the IR sheets can be used to identify the state of the person on the bed. To improve the identification ability of the system, we propose to define an identification area. To identify the state more accurately, we propose to establish sub-areas within the identification area. We conducted experiments by recruited 19 subjects. The data of 6 subjects were used to construct the sub-areas. The other 13 subjects participated in testing the ability of the system in identifying the various states of the person in bed. Compared with the performance of other studies, our experimental results demonstrate that our system has a high identification rate, in addition to being low-cost and easy to set up.
Background: Malignant lymphoma with central nervous system (CNS) involvement has an extremely poor prognosis. We retrospectively studied the risk factors for CNS involvement in patients with diffuse ...large B‐cell lymphoma (DLBCL) treated by cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (CHOP) or rituximab (R) ‐CHOP chemotherapy.
Patients and methods: We studied 375 consecutive patients who were newly diagnosed with DLBCL between 1996 and 2006. Patients with primary CNS involvement and patients who received CNS prophylaxis were excluded. All the patients received CHOP (n = 172) or R‐CHOP (n = 203) chemotherapy. The following variables were assessed for their potential to predict CNS involvement: gender, age, serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level, performance status, clinical stage, number of extranodal involvements, International Prognostic Index (IPI), bone marrow involvement, presence of a bulky mass, presence of B symptom, and treatment.
Results: CNS involvement was observed in 13 cases (3.5%). In univariate analysis, LDH more than normal range, LDH more than twice as normal range, high IPI, bone marrow involvement, and systemic relapse were the predictors for CNS involvement. In multivariate analysis, no risk factors were detected for CNS involvement. The use of rituximab did not have an impact on CNS involvement.
Conclusions: The incidence of CNS involvement dose not decrease in rituximab‐era.
Stereoscopic vision technology is applied in a wide range of fields, from 3D movies to medical care. Stereoscopic vision makes it possible to observe images in parallax between both eyes. However, ...parallax images cannot be used all the time due to a situation called “occlusion”, in which an object is hidden in the depths by another object. In this case, different images are projected on the right and left retina. Here, we propose a psychology experiment to elucidate the function of parvocellular cells in the LGN of the visual cortex of the brain using occlusion perception. As a new psychology experiment to clarify whether parvocellular cells in the LGN of the visual cortex, said to process chromatic and luminance information, can detect a disagreement between the retinal images produced by each eye, we measured convergence eye movement when gazing at the rim of a column under occlusion using an equiluminance random dot pattern. When eye movement prevented the disagreement of the retinal images caused by occlusion, we thought that convergence eye movement to move both eyes in front of the rim or divergence eye movement to move them behind the rim would occur. In other words, we thought that we could clarify whether there was parvocellular system process agreement or disagreement between the right and left retinal images under equiluminance. Therefore, we examined whether a system to detect disagreement between the retinal images exists in the brain when gazing at the rim of a column onto which an equiluminance random dot texture was mapped. Results suggested that the mechanism to avoid disagreement between the retinal images of the eyes caused by occlusion occurs in the parvocellular cells, which mainly process color information, as well as in the magnocellular cells, which process binocular disparity.
Central nervous system (CNS) events, including CNS relapse and progression to CNS, are known to be serious complications in the clinical course of patients with lymphoma. This study aimed to evaluate ...the risk of CNS events in patients with diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma in the rituximab era. We performed a retrospective survey of Japanese patients diagnosed with diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma who underwent primary therapy with R‐CHOP chemoimmunotherapy between September 2003 and December 2006. Patients who had received any prophylactic CNS treatment were excluded. Clinical data from 1221 patients were collected from 47 institutions. The median age of patients was 64 years (range, 15–91 years). We noted 82 CNS events (6.7%) and the cumulative 5‐year probability of CNS events was 8.4%. Patients with a CNS event demonstrated significantly worse overall survival (P < 0.001). The 2‐year overall survival rate after a CNS event was 27.1%. In a multivariate analysis, involvement of breast (relative risk RR 10.5), adrenal gland (RR 4.6) and bone (RR 2.0) were identified as independent risk factors for CNS events. We conclude that patients with these risk factors, in addition to patients with testicular involvement in whom CNS prophylaxis has been already justified, are at high risk for CNS events in the rituximab era. The efficacy and manner of CNS prophylaxis in patients for each involvement site should be evaluated further. (Cancer Sci 2012; 103: 245–251)
Abstract Previous works have demonstrated considerable variability in hospital cleanliness in Japan, suggesting that contamination is driven by factors that are currently poorly controlled. We ...undertook 16S rRNA sequence analysis to study population structures of hospital environmental microbiomes to see which factor(s) impacted contamination. One hundred forty-four samples were collected from surfaces of three hospitals with distinct sizes (“A”: >500 beds, “B”: 100–500 beds, “C”: <100 beds). Sample locations of two ward types (Surgical and Internal) included patient room bed table (multiple) (4BT), patient overbed table (multiple) (4OT), patient room sink (multiple) (4S), patient room bed table (single) (SBT), patient overbed table (single) (SOT), patient room sink (single) (SS), nurse desk (ND), and nurse wagon (NW). Total DNA was extracted from each sample, and the 50 samples that yielded sufficient DNA were used for further 16S rRNA sequencing of hospital microbiome populations with cluster analysis. The number of assigned bacterial OTU populations was significantly decreased in hospital “C” compared to the other hospitals. Cluster analysis of sampling locations revealed that the population structure in almost all locations of hospital “C” and some locations in the other hospitals was very similar and unusually skewed with a family, Enterobacteriaceae . Interestingly, locations included patient area (4OT, 4BT, SBT) and nurse area (ND), with a device (NW) bridging the two and a place (4S and SS) shared between patients or visitors. We demonstrated diversity changes of hospital environmental microbiomes with a skewed population, presumably by medical staff pushing NWs or sinks shared by patients or visitors.
Central nervous system (CNS) involvement is a serious complication in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and evaluating CNS risk is an important issue. Using the standard ...international prognostic index (IPI) and CNS-IPI, a recently proposed model including IPI risk factors and adrenal/kidney involvement, we assessed CNS risk in 1220 untreated DLBCL patients who received R-CHOP without prophylaxis. According to the standard IPI, the cumulative incidences of CNS involvement at 2 years were 1.3, 4.6, 8.8, and 12.7% in the low-, low-intermediate-, high-intermediate-, and high-risk groups, respectively (p <.001). This result is comparable with that of the CNS-IPI. Patients with breast involvement tended to have lower risk according to the standard IPI but showed frequent CNS involvement, similar to patients with testis involvement. The standard IPI is also a useful predictor of CNS involvement. Patients with breast/testis involvement would be candidates for prophylaxis regardless of the standard IPI risk.
We retrospectively studied the association between iron overload and bloodstream infections (BSI) in the 100-day period following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) for ...acute myeloid leukemia or myelodysplastic syndromes. Serum ferritin was measured before transplantation to evaluate iron overload. Of 114 adult patients who underwent transplantation between 2000 and 2008, 36 (32%) developed BSI. Of the 44 isolates, 63% were Gram-positive bacteria, 32% were Gram-negative bacteria, and 4% were fungi. The median time to the onset of the first BSI was day 28 (range day 0–95) after transplantation. Univariate analysis revealed a significantly higher incidence of BSI in the high (≥1,000 ng/ml,
n
= 57) than in the low (<1,000 ng/ml,
n
= 57) ferritin group (42.1 versus 21.1%, respectively,
P
= 0.017). Peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) (
n
= 23) showed a greater protective effect against BSI compared with bone marrow (
n
= 71) and cord blood (
n
= 20) transplantation. Pretransplantation serum ferritin (HR = 2.844, 95% CI: 1.180–6.859,
P
= 0.020) and PBSCT (HR = 0.135, 95% CI: 0.025–0.717,
P
= 0.019) were significant factors on multivariate analysis. In conclusion, pretransplantation serum ferritin significantly predicts BSI within the 100-day period after allo-HSCT.
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