INTRODUCTION Rheumatic Fever represents a serious public health problem in developing countries, with thousands of new cases each year. It is an autoimmune disease, which occurs in response to infection by streptococcus A. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the immunolabeling and protein expression for endothelin-1 and 3 (ET-1, ET-3) and its receptors (ETA, ETB) in rheumatic mitr...

I examine some aspects of the interaction between the massive star Eta Carinae and its companion, in particular during the eclipse-like event, known as the spectroscopic event or the shell event. The spectroscopic event is thought to occur when near periastron passages the stellar companion induces much higher mass loss rate from the primary star, and/or enters into a much denser environment ar...

The role of Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (ETA) as a virulence factor in the lung infections of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients is not well understood. Transcript-accumulation studies of bacterial populations in sputum reveal high levels of transcription of toxA, which encodes ETA, in some patients with CF. However, in general, tissue damage in the lungs of patients with CF does not seem to b...

Fault tree analysis is a traditional and well-established technique for analyzing system design and robustness. Its purpose is to identify sets of basic events, called cut sets, which can cause a given top level event, e.g., a system malfunction, to occur. In this paper we present an algorithm that extracts ordering information, i.e., finds out possible ordering constraints which are required t...

BACKGROUND: Accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment of ventilator associatedpneumonia (VAP) is crucial for good outcomes. Endotracheal suctioning is performed inventilated patients as part of routine care and for tracheal toileting. AIM: We evaluatedif quantitative endotracheal aspirate (ETA) was a suitable alternative to bronchoalveolarlavage (BAL) for suspected VAP. In ad...