Human beta-defensins (hBDs) are antimicrobial peptides known to play a major role in intestinal innate host defence. Altered mucosal expression of hBDs has been suggested to be implicated in chronic ...inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis. However, little is known about expression of these peptides in children.
Intestinal biopsies were obtained from the duodenum (n = 88), terminal ileum (n = 90) and ascending colon (n = 105) of children with Crohn's disease (n = 26), ulcerative colitis (n = 11) and healthy controls (n = 16). Quantitative real-time (RT) PCR was performed and absolute mRNA copy numbers analyzed for hBD1-3 as well as inflammatory cytokines IL-8 and TNF-alpha.
Significant induction of hBD2 and hBD3 was observed in the inflamed terminal ileum and ascending colon of IBD children. In the ascending colon induction of hBD2 was found to be significantly lower in children with Crohn's disease compared to ulcerative colitis. A strong correlation was found between inducible defensins hBD2 and 3 and the inflammatory cytokines IL-8 and TNF-alpha, both in the terminal ileum and ascending colon.
Our study demonstrates distinct changes in hBD expression throughout the intestinal tract of children with IBD, lending further support for their potential role in disease pathogenesis.
Histiostomatidae represent a clade within the Astigmata and disperse phoretically by the highly modified deutonymph. A monophyletic species group within the Histiostomatidae, the bark-beetle-clade, ...includes mites associated with bark beetles (Scolytinae). Histiostoma ovalis Müller, 1860, only known by the morphology of its deutonymph, is a member of this clade. Since almost 150 years other developmental stages of the mite were never described. Thus we hereby present adults and nymphal instars of H. ovalis for the first time and designate a neotype. Mites were reared starting from phoretic deutonymphs, collected from adults of Ips sexdentatus and from its original galleries, found in Southern Italy and Germany. Additional deutonymphs were examined from the Slovak Republic and Croatia. During the last 60 years there has been confusion about the identity of two species, Histiostoma ovalis Müller, 1860 and H. gladiger Vitzthum, 1926, which were assumed by some authors to be synonymous. We do not contribute new findings about H. gladiger , but in this paper we define the mite, which is usually associated with Ips sexdentatus , as H. ovalis . Almost 100% of adult beetle individuals collected from their galleries in the bark of pine trees were covered with deutonymphs. The average number of deutonymphs per beetle and information of the preferred areas for mite-attachment on the beetle body are presented. Fungal spores were discovered sticking to the cuticle of deutonymphs and other mite instars. Hyperphoresy with deutonymphs of H. ovalis , riding on gamasid mites, which represent also phoretic passengers of I. sexdentatus , was additionally observed. For a better description of H. ovalis , mite specimens from Germany were used to achieve DNA barcoding-sequences. A Baltic amber fossil of an extinct bark beetle, which has four phoretic histiostomatid mite deutonymphs attached to its body, is presented. There is morphological evidence that those deutonymphs could be phylogenetically closely related to H. ovalis .
In summer 2017, the World Health Organization published 10 facts on asthma, which is known as a major non-communicable disease of high clinical and scientific importance with currently several ...hundred million people-with many children among them-suffering from air passages inflammation and narrowing. Importantly, the World Health Organization sees asthma as being underdiagnosed and undertreated. Consequently, much more efforts in clinical disease management and research need to be spent on reducing the asthma-related health burden. Particularly, for young approximately 6 months aged patients presenting recurrent bronchitic respiratory symptoms, many parents anxiously ask the doctors for risk prognosis for their children's future life. Therefore, we urgently need to reevaluate if the current diagnostic and treatment measures are in concordance with our yet incomplete knowledge of pathomechanisms on exacerbation. To contribute to this increasing concern worldwide, we established a multicentric pediatric exacerbation study network, still recruiting acute exacerbated asthmatics (children >6 years) and preschool asthmatics/wheezers (children <6 years) since winter 2018 in Germany. The current study that has a currently population comprising 176 study participants aims to discover novel holistic entry points for achieving a better understanding of the poorly understood plasticity of involved molecular pathways and to define biomarkers enabling improved diagnostics and therapeutics. With this study description, we want to present the study design, population, and few ongoing experiments for novel biomarker research.
: German Clinical Trials Register (Deutsches Register für Klinische Studien, DRKS): DRKS00015738.
High-resolution phase-contrast X-ray computed tomography (CT) reveals the phoretic deutonymph of a fossil astigmatid mite (Acariformes: Astigmata) attached to a spider's carapace (Araneae: ...Dysderidae) in Eocene (44–49 Myr ago) Baltic amber. Details of appendages and a sucker plate were resolved, and the resulting three-dimensional model demonstrates the potential of tomography to recover morphological characters of systematic significance from even the tiniest amber inclusions without the need for a synchrotron. Astigmatids have an extremely sparse palaeontological record. We confirm one of the few convincing fossils, potentially the oldest record of Histiostomatidae. At 176 µm long, we believe this to be the smallest arthropod in amber to be CT-scanned as a complete body fossil, extending the boundaries for what can be recovered using this technique. We also demonstrate a minimum age for the evolution of phoretic behaviour among their deutonymphs, an ecological trait used by extant species to disperse into favourable environments. The occurrence of the fossil on a spider is noteworthy, as modern histiostomatids tend to favour other arthropods as carriers.
Although the nose, as a gateway for organism-environment interactions, may have a key role in asthmatic exacerbation, the rhinobiome of exacerbated children with asthma was widely neglected to date. ...The aim of this study is to understand the microbiome, the microbial immunology, and the proteome of exacerbated children and adolescents with wheeze and asthma. Considering that a certain proportion of wheezers may show a progression to asthma, the comparison of both groups provides important information regarding clinical and phenotype stratification. Thus, deep nasopharyngeal swab specimens, nasal epithelial spheroid (NAEsp) cultures, and blood samples of acute exacerbated wheezers (WH), asthmatics (AB), and healthy controls (HC) were used for culture (
= 146), 16 S-rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (
= 64), and proteomic and cytokine analyses. Interestingly,
were over-represented in WH, whereas
and
were associated with AB. In contrast,
commonly colonized HCs. Moreover,
, and
were significantly more abundant in AB compared to WH and HC. The α-diversity analyses demonstrated an increase of bacterial abundance levels in atopic AB and a decrease in WH samples. Microbiome profiles of atopic WH differed significantly from atopic AB, whereby atopic samples of WH were more homogeneous than those of non-atopic subjects. The NAEsp bacterial exposure experiments provided a disrupted epithelial cell integrity, a cytokine release, and cohort-specific proteomic differences especially for
cultures. This comprehensive dataset contributes to a deeper insight into the poorly understood plasticity of the nasal microbiota, and, in particular, may enforce our understanding in the pathogenesis of asthma exacerbation in childhood.
The species composition and abundance of phoretic mites of the bark beetle Pityokteines curvidens caught in pheromone traps were investigated in Croatia. The P. curvidens trapping programs have been ...in an experimental phase in Croatia since 2004 as a possible monitoring and control system. The trapping program also permits the opportunity to sample phoretic mites found associated with the beetles. Beetles were caught using Curviwit pheromones in Theysohn traps placed in the Litorić region of Croatia. A total of 12 mite species were recovered, including Schizostethus simulatrix, Dendrolaelaps quadrisetus, Histiostoma piceae, H. cf. varia, Paraleius leontonychus, Pleuronectocelaeno barbara, Tarsonemus minimax, Trichouropoda lamellosa, Uroobovella ipidis, Schwiebea sp., Phauloppia lucorum and Dolicheremaeus dorni. Five species, Pl. barbara, Schwiebea sp., H. cf. varia, Ph. lucorum and Do. dorni, are identified for the first time in association with P. curvidens. These findings increase the number of mite species known to be phoretic on P. curvidens from 11 to 16. The present study also increases the number of known mite associates of Pityokteines spp. from 14 to 18.
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