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Background: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is a chronic inflammatory process initiated when cholesterol-carrying low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is retained in the arterial wall. CD4+ T cells, some of which recognize peptide components of LDL as antigen, are recruited to the forming lesion, resulting in T-cell activation. Although these T cells are thought to be proatherogenic, LDL immunizat

Abstract – Background: Cytologic examination of lymph nodes and serous effusions is of value in the diagnosis of small cell lymphomas. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently published a reporting system relating to the cytologic examination of lymph nodes, spleen, and thymus to standardise the approach to reporting such specimens. Summary: An overview of the WHO reporting system is given

T-helper 2 (Th2) cell responses defend against parasites. Although dendritic cells (DCs) are vital for the induction of T-cell responses, the DC subpopulations that induce Th2 cells in the intestine are unidentified. Here we show that intestinal Th2 responses against Trichuris muris worms and Schistosoma mansoni eggs do not develop in mice with IRF-4-deficient DCs (IRF-4f/f CD11c-cre). Adoptive tr

PURPOSE: This study investigated the value of intense follow-up compared with no follow-up after curative surgery of cancer in the colon or rectum. METHODS: One hundred seven patients were randomized to no follow-up (control group; n=54) or intense follow-up (follow-up group; n=53) after surgery and early postoperative colonoscopy. Patients in the follow-up group were followed at frequent interval

Theory predicts democracy should reduce corruption. Yet, scholars have found that while corruption is low at high levels of democracy, it is high at modest levels, as well as low when democracy is absent. A weakness of studies that aim to explain this inverted curvilinear relationship is that they do not disaggregate the complex concepts of democracy and corruption. By contrast, this paper disaggr

There is a clinical need for improved wound treatments that prevent both infection and excessive inflammation. TCP-25, a thrombin-derived peptide, is antibacterial and scavenges pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), such as lipopolysaccharide, thereby preventing CD14 interaction and Toll-like receptor dimerization, leading to reduced downstream immune activation. Here, we describe the de

Therapeutic antibodies are the fastest growing class of drugs but suffer from a crowded target-space where many antibodies, against a few targets, are developed in parallel. The aim of this thesis is to find methods to enable discovery of novel antibody-target combinations and thereby increase the target-space. A strategy to achieve this is to use phage display antibody libraries and selection on

The atrioventricular (AV) node plays a central role during atrial fibrillation (AF). We have recently proposed a statistical AV node model defined by parameters characterizing the arrival rate of atrial impulses, the probability of an impulse choosing either one of the dual AV nodal pathways, the refractory periods of the pathways, and the prolongation of refractory periods. All model parameters a

We propose a technique to generate non-projective word orders in an efficient statistical linearization system. Our approach predicts liftings of edges in an unordered syntactic tree by means of a classifier, and uses a projective algorithm for tree linearization. We obtain statistically significant improvements on six typologically different languages: English, German, Dutch, Danish, Hungarian, a

As a group of stars having high luminosity and thus being able to be detected to great distances, massive M supergiants are extremely helpful to the study of the kinematics of the Milky Way. They are also partly responsible for the creation of post iron-group elements through the weak s-process of nucleosynthesis. As there are relatively few classified M supergiants, owing to their rapid pace of e

The driving force behind oncoproteomics is to identify protein signatures that are associated with a particular malignancy. Here, we have used a recombinant scFv antibody microarray in an attempt to classify sera derived from pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients versus healthy subjects. Based on analysis of nonfractionated, directly labeled, whole human serum proteomes we have identified a protein s

The chronic active inflammation caused by Helicobacter pylori is dominated by neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes and plasma cells. Several interleukins are involved in the inflammatory process. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of astaxanthin on gastric inflammation in patients with functional dyspepsia. Forty-four consecutive patients were included, and biopsies were examined

Previously, we found that emergence of the X4 viral phenotype in HIV-1-infected children was related to the presence of X4 in their mothers (C. H. Casper et al., J Infect Dis 2002; 186: 914-921). Here, we investigated the origin of the X4 phenotype in the child, analyzing two mother-child pairs (Ma-Ca, Mb-Cb) where the mothers carried X4 and their children developed X4 after an initial presence of

To analyze the role of the classical and alternative pathways of complement activation in the effector phase of arthritis, we have induced arthritis in C3- and factor B (FB)-deficient (C3(-/-) and FB-/-) DBA/1J mice using well-defined monoclonal IgG2b and IgG2a antibodies to type II collagen. In control DBA/1J mice, severe swelling of the joints, destruction of cartilage and erosion of bone develo

BACKGROUND: Our recently reported finding of rapid bi-exponential elimination of free prostate-specific antigen (PSA) after radical retropubic prostatectomy in patients with moderately elevated PSA levels, which contrasted a very slow, linear elimination of PSA complexed to alpha-1-antichymotrypsin (ACT), prompted us to study whether these elimination rates were applicable for patients selected fo

BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer cells secrete unique proteases such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and human glandular kallikrein 2 (hK2) that represent targets for the activation of prodrugs as systemic treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. Previously, a combinatorial peptide library was screened to identify a highly active peptide substrate for hK2. The peptide was coupled to an analog of the

Antibody-based microarrays are a rapidly emerging technology that has advanced from the first proof-of-concept studies to demanding serum protein profiling applications during recent years, displaying great promise within disease proteomics. Miniaturized micro- and nanoarrays can be fabricated with an almost infinite number of antibodies carrying the desired specificities. While consuming only min

The suppressors of cytokine signaling ( SOCS) family is thought to act largely as a negative regulator of signaling by cytokines and some growth factors. Surprisingly, the SOCS-6 transgenics had no significant defects in the cytokine signaling and hematopoietic system but displayed significant improvements in glucose metabolism. Insulin stimulation of Akt/protein kinase B was also potentiated. Bio