Over the past decade, there have been an increasing number of studies on the association between vitamin D deficiency and anthropometric state. However, we did not identify any meta‐analyses of the ...relationship between obesity and vitamin D deficiency in different age groups. Thus, we evaluated the association between obesity and vitamin D deficiency. We searched for observational studies published up to April 2014 in PubMed/Medline, Web of Science and Scopus databases. We performed a meta‐analysis in accordance with the random‐effects model to obtain the summary measurement (prevalence ratio, PR). Among the 29,882 articles identified, 23 met the inclusion criteria. The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was 35% higher in obese subjects compared to the eutrophic group (PR: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.21–1.50) and 24% higher than in the overweight group (PR: 1.24; 95% CI: 1.14–1.34). These results indicate that the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was more elevated in obese subjects. The vitamin D deficiency was associated with obesity irrespective of age, latitude, cut‐offs to define vitamin D deficiency and the Human Development Index of the study location.
SARS‐CoV‐2 has emerged as a human pathogen, causing clinical signs, from fever to pneumonia—COVID‐19—but may remain mild or asymptomatic. To understand the continuing spread of the virus, to detect ...those who are and were infected, and to follow the immune response longitudinally, reliable and robust assays for SARS‐CoV‐2 detection and immunological monitoring are needed. We quantified IgM, IgG, and IgA antibodies recognizing the SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor‐binding domain (RBD) or the Spike (S) protein over a period of 6 months following COVID‐19 onset. We report the detailed setup to monitor the humoral immune response from over 300 COVID‐19 hospital patients and healthcare workers, 2500 University staff, and 198 post‐COVID‐19 volunteers. Anti‐SARS‐CoV‐2 antibody responses follow a classic pattern with a rapid increase within the first three weeks after symptoms. Although titres reduce subsequently, the ability to detect anti‐SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibodies remained robust with confirmed neutralization activity for up to 6 months in a large proportion of previously virus‐positive screened subjects. Our work provides detailed information for the assays used, facilitating further and longitudinal analysis of protective immunity to SARS‐CoV‐2. Importantly, it highlights a continued level of circulating neutralising antibodies in most people with confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2.
The setup of a versatile COVID19 serology ELISA system is described, allowing Yes/No screening with a two‐step method that reduces false‐positives. Accurate antibody titer screening indicates a classic pattern of antibody production, peaking at 3 weeks post‐infection and remaining detectable for at least 6 months in 90% of the subjects tested. The antibody response does not correlate with age, but with severity of disease, and show an initial higher response in men.
R loops are nucleic acid structures composed of an RNA-DNA hybrid and a displaced single-stranded DNA. Recently, evidence has emerged that R loops occur more often in the genome and have greater ...physiological relevance, including roles in transcription and chromatin structure, than was previously predicted. Importantly, however, R loops are also a major threat to genome stability. For this reason, several DNA and RNA metabolism factors prevent R-loop formation in cells. Dysfunction of these factors causes R-loop accumulation, which leads to replication stress, genome instability, chromatin alterations or gene silencing, phenomena that are frequently associated with cancer and a number of genetic diseases. We review the current knowledge of the mechanisms controlling R loops and their putative relationship with disease.
I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of ...simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society.
The book provides a comprehensive overview of the characterizations of real normed spaces as inner product spaces based on norm derivatives and generalizations of the most basic geometrical ...properties of triangles in normed spaces. Since the appearance of Jordan-von Neumann's classical theorem (The Parallelogram Law) in 1935, the field of characterizations of inner product spaces has received a significant amount of attention in various literature texts. Moreover, the techniques arising in the theory of functional equations have shown to be extremely useful in solving key problems in the characterizations of Banach spaces as Hilbert spaces.
Bacterial communities associated with roots impact the health and nutrition of the host plant. The dynamics of these microbial assemblies over the plant life cycle are, however, not well understood. ...Here, we use dense temporal sampling of 1,510 samples from root spatial compartments to characterize the bacterial and archaeal components of the root-associated microbiota of field grown rice (Oryza sativa) over the course of 3 consecutive growing seasons, as well as 2 sites in diverse geographic regions. The root microbiota was found to be highly dynamic during the vegetative phase of plant growth and then stabilized compositionally for the remainder of the life cycle. Bacterial and archaeal taxa conserved between field sites were defined as predictive features of rice plant age by modeling using a random forest approach. The age-prediction models revealed that drought-stressed plants have developmentally immature microbiota compared to unstressed plants. Further, by using genotypes with varying developmental rates, we show that shifts in the microbiome are correlated with rates of developmental transitions rather than age alone, such that different microbiota compositions reflect juvenile and adult life stages. These results suggest a model for successional dynamics of the root-associated microbiota over the plant life cycle.
Dendritic Cell-Based Cancer Vaccines Santos, Patricia M; Butterfield, Lisa H
The Journal of immunology (1950),
01/2018, Letnik:
200, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Dendritic cells (DC) are specialized immune cells that play a critical role in promoting an immune response against Ags, which can include foreign pathogenic Ags and self-tumor Ags. DC are capable of ...boosting a memory T cell response but most importantly they are effective initiators of naive T cell responses. Many years of studies have focused on the use of DC vaccines against cancer to initiate and shape an antitumor-specific immune response and/or boost existing spontaneous antitumor T cell responses. In this study we give a brief overview of DC biology, function, and cellular subsets, and review the current status of the field of DC as cancer vaccines.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a hematological malignancy characterized by the clonal proliferation of plasma cells within the bone marrow. Diagnosing MM presents considerable challenges, involving the ...identification of plasma cells in cytology examinations on hematological slides. At present, this is still a time-consuming manual task and has high labor costs. These challenges have adverse implications, which rely heavily on medical professionals' expertise and experience. To tackle these challenges, we present an investigation using Artificial Intelligence, specifically a Machine Learning analysis of hematological slides with a Deep Neural Network (DNN), to support specialists during the process of diagnosing MM. In this sense, the contribution of this study is twofold: in addition to the trained model to diagnose MM, we also make available to the community a fully-curated hematological slide dataset with thousands of images of plasma cells. Taken together, the setup we established here is a framework that researchers and hospitals with limited resources can promptly use. Our contributions provide practical results that have been directly applied in the public health system in Brazil. Given the open-source nature of the project, we anticipate it will be used and extended to diagnose other malignancies.
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