Proteins at Interfaces are Universal, but still Poorly Understood: A Challenge

Q Fever: An Old but Still a Poorly Understood Disease

Q fever is a bacterial infection affecting mainly the lungs, liver, and heart. It is found around the world and is caused by the bacteria Coxiella burnetii. The bacteria affects sheep, goats, cattle, dogs, cats, birds, rodents, and ticks. Infected animals shed this bacteria in birth products, feces, milk, and urine. Humans usually get Q fever by breathing in contaminated droplets released by in...

Premenstrual asthma: still poorly understood.

Thrombosis – Besieged but Poorly Understood

In biology, thrombosis is a mechanism of maintaining the integrity of biological surfaces in higher mammals, limiting fluid loss, and facilitating the recognition, containment, and destruction of pathogens and foreign materials by a scaffold of fibrin and DNA strands. However, thrombosis may also lead to vascular occlusion and subsequent tissue damage. In medicine, thrombosis is a hallmark of l...

Nephrogenic ascites: a poorly understood syndrome.

Nephrogenic ascites is a condition characterized by the presence of massive ascites in a patient with ESRD. Neither the exact cause nor the pathogenesis of ascites formation is clearly understood. Patients frequently present with hypertension, moderate to massive ascites, minimal extremity edema, cachexia, and a history of dialysis-associated hypotension. The ascitic fluid is typically an exuda...

Chronic Prostatitis Syndrome: A Common, but Poorly Understood Condition. Part I

Chronic Prostatitis Syndrome (CPS) is a frequent disease. Before the PSA era, data from various sources showed that there were more outpatient visits for CPS than for BPH or prostate cancer. CPS has a very negative impact on the patients’ quality of life. However, this debilitating disease stimulates relatively little enthusiasm in the urological world. The classification proposed by the Nation...