Search results for "CLASSIFICATION"
showing 10 items of 29475 documents
Endothelial nitric oxide synthase gene polymorphisms and cardiovascular damage in hypertensive subjects: an Italian case-control study
2008
Abstract Background Nitric oxide (NO) synthesized by endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) plays an important role in regulation of endothelial function and in the control of blood pressure. However, the results from some studies on the association between three clinically relevant eNOS gene polymorphisms (G894T, T786C and intron 4b/a) and essential hypertension are unclear. We designed a case-control study to evaluate the influence of eNOS polymorphisms on target organ damage in 127 hypertensives and 67 normotensives. Clinical evaluation, biochemical parameters, Urinary Albumin Excretion (UAE) and echocardiogram were performed to characterize target organ damage. eNOS polymorphism were …
CD11b Regulates Fungal Outgrowth but Not Neutrophil Recruitment in a Mouse Model of Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis
2019
Abstract Background and Aims: In immunosuppressed individuals Aspergillus (A.) fumigatus is a frequent cause of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) which is highly associated with relevant morbidity and mortality. Moreover, it often occurs in patients suffering from leukocyte-adhesion deficiency type 1 (LAD1) which is triggered by a functional loss of CD18 in ß2 integrin receptors as these receptors consist of an alpha subunit (CD11a-CD11d) and CD18 as the common beta subunit. ß2 integrin receptors are differentially expressed by leukocytes, and are required for cell-cell interaction, transendothelial migration, uptake of opsonized pathogens, and cell signaling processes. Here, we asked …
Prediction of Specific TCR-Peptide Binding From Large Dictionaries of TCR-Peptide Pairs
2019
Abstract The T cell repertoire is composed of T cell receptors (TCR) selected by their cognate MHC-peptides and naive TCR that do not bind known peptides. While the task of distinguishing a peptide-binding TCR from a naive TCR unlikely to bind any peptide can be performed using sequence motifs, distinguishing between TCRs binding different peptides requires more advanced methods. Such a prediction is the key for using TCR repertoires as disease-specific biomarkers. We here used large scale TCR-peptide dictionaries with state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) methods to produce ERGO (pEptide tcR matchinG predictiOn), a highly specific classifier to predict which TCR binds to which…
THE ROLE OF EXTRACELLULAR VESICLES IN MODULATING THE HOST IMMUNE RESPONSE DURING PARASITIC INFECTIONS
2014
Parasites are the cause of major diseases affecting billions of people. As the inflictions caused by these parasites affect mainly developing countries, they are considered as neglected diseases. These parasitic infections are often chronic and lead to significant immunomodulation of the host immune response by the parasite, which could benefit both the parasite and the host and are the result of millions of years of co-evolution. The description of parasite extracellular vesicles (EVs) in protozoa and helminths suggests that they may play an important role in host–parasite communication. In this review, recent studies on parasitic (protozoa and helminths) EVs are presented and their potent…
New Insight into Immunity and Immunopathology of Rickettsial Diseases
2011
Human rickettsial diseases comprise a variety of clinical entities caused by microorganisms belonging to the generaRickettsia,Orientia,Ehrlichia, andAnaplasma. These microorganisms are characterized by a strictly intracellular location which has, for long, impaired their detailed study. In this paper, the critical steps taken by these microorganisms to play their pathogenic roles are discussed in detail on the basis of recent advances in our understanding of molecularRickettsia-host interactions, preferential target cells, virulence mechanisms, three-dimensional structures of bacteria effector proteins, upstream signalling pathways and signal transduction systems, and modulation of gene exp…
γδ T Cells Cross-Link Innate and Adaptive Immunity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection
2011
Protective immunity against mycobacterial infections such asMycobacterium tuberculosisis mediated by interactions between specific T cells and activated antigen presenting cells. To date, many aspects of mycobacterial immunity have shown that innate cells could be the key elements that substantially may influence the subsequent adaptive host response. During the early phases of infection, innate lymphocyte subsets play a pivotal role in this context. Here we summarize the findings of recent investigations onγδT lymphocytes and their role in tuberculosis immunity.
Functional Signatures of Human CD4 and CD8 T Cell Responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis
2014
With 1.4 million deaths and 8.7 million new cases in 2011, tuberculosis (TB) remains a global health care problem and together with HIV and Malaria represents one of the three infectious diseases world-wide. Control of the global TB epidemic has been impaired by the lack of an effective vaccine, by the emergence of drug-resistant forms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and by the lack of sensitive and rapid diagnostics. It is estimated, by epidemiological reports, that one third of the world's population is latently infected with Mtb, but the majority of infected individuals develop long-lived protective immunity, which controls and contains Mtb in a T cell-dependent manner. Development o…
Nivolumab Enhances In Vitro Effector Functions of PD-1+ T-Lymphocytes and Leishmania-Infected Human Myeloid Cells in a Host Cell-Dependent Manner
2017
Functional impairment of T-cells and a concomitant augmented expression of programmed death-1 (PD-1) have been observed in visceral leishmaniasis patients, as well as in experimental models for visceral and cutaneous leishmaniasis. The PD-1/PD-1-ligand (PD-1/PD-L) interaction negatively regulates T-cell effector functions, which are required for parasite control during leishmaniasis. The aim of this study was to elucidate the impact of the PD-1/PD-L axis in a human primary in vitro infection model of Leishmania major (Lm). Blocking the PD-1/PD-L interaction with nivolumab increased T-cell proliferation and release of the proinflammatory cytokines TNFα and IFNγ during the cocultivation of Lm…
The role of 18F-FDG PET/CT in early infectious discitis: a case report after a negative MRI
2019
We present the case of a 70 years old woman with infectious discitis which was detected using Fluorine fluodeoxiglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT), after a negative magnetic resonance imaging. A Streptococuss gallolyticus (bovis gender bacteria) grow on culture. In addition 18F-FDG PET also demonstrated infectious endocarditis which was confirmed by transesophageal echocardiography and a colonic neoplasm. Here we have highlighted the potential role of 18F-FDG PET/CT study in patients with a clinical history suggestive of infectious discitis with a negative or indifferent magnetic resonance imaging. Keywords: 18F-FDG PET/TC, Spondylodiscitis, Pyogenic v…
A novel solution based on scale invariant feature transform descriptors and deep learning for the detection of suspicious regions in mammogram images.
2020
Background: Deep learning methods have become popular for their high-performance rate in the classification and detection of events in computer vision tasks. Transfer learning paradigm is widely adopted to apply pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN) on medical domains overcoming the problem of the scarcity of public datasets. Some investigations to assess transfer learning knowledge inference abilities in the context of mammogram screening and possible combinations with unsupervised techniques are in progress. Methods: We propose a novel technique for the detection of suspicious regions in mammograms that consist of the combination of two approaches based on scale invariant feature …