IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) has regulatory effects on IL-1 activity both in vitro and in vivo. In the IgG immune complex model of lung injury in rats, exogenously administered human IL-1Ra suppressed neutrophil recruitment and ensuing lung injury. In this study, we sought to determine if endogenous rat IL-1Ra might regulate this lung-inflammatory response. By Northern blot analysis of lun...

We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit ⇤CDM models with various parameterizations of the reionization histo y. We obtain a Thomson optical depth ⌧ = 0.058 ± 0.012 for the commonly adopted instantaneous reionization ...

Neutrophils are central to the pathology of inflammatory diseases, where they can damage host tissue through release of reactive oxygen metabolites and proteases, and drive inflammation via secretion of cytokines and chemokines. Many cytokines, such as those generated during inflammation, can induce a similar "primed" phenotype in neutrophils, but it is unknown if different cytokines utilise co...

RATIONALE Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex disorder with high mortality worldwide. Studies on the role of candidate genes and their polymorphisms in COPD development have so far produced ambiguous results. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to reveal the role of COPD candidate genes using data collected in previous research. METHODS We performed meta-analyses on 2...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study is to identify key genes and microRNAs (miRNAs) involved in autoantibody-mediated arthritis (AMA). METHODS A time-course microarray data (ID: GSE27492) of peripheral blood leukocytes, ankle tissue, and synovial fluid from K/BxN mouse serum-transferred mice were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus. Those samples were collected at days 0, 1, 3, 7, 12, an...

Hematogenous osteomyelitis (HO) is a bone infection wherein bacteria penetrate to the bone through the blood stream. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated with susceptibility to infectious diseases. In this study, we investigated the contribution of SNPs in interleukin (IL)-1B1 (rs16944), IL1A (rs1800587), IL1B (rs1143634), toll-like receptor (TLR)-2 (rs3804099), T...

Islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) aggregates to form amyloid fibrils in patients with type 2 diabetes and acts as a potent stimulus for interleukin (IL)-1β secretion by bone marrow-derived macrophages. We sought to determine the contribution of resident islet macrophages to IAPP-induced inflammation and β-cell dysfunction. In cultured islets, macrophages (F4/80(+)CD11b(+)CD11c(+) cells) were req...

The interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) is a naturally occurring molecule that shares homology with IL-1alpha and IL-1beta and binds competitively to IL-1 receptors. Serum concentrations of IL-1ra were measured by ELISA in patients enrolled in Phase I clinical trials of IL-1alpha and IL-1beta given by 15-min infusion. Pretreatment levels of IL-1ra were <1500 (mean, 453 +/- 57) pg/ml. IL-...

BACKGROUND An association has been described between mortality in children with meningococcal disease and functional polymorphisms in the interleukin-1 (IL1) cluster. We undertook a multicenter study to evaluate associations of these polymorphisms in a Central European population. PATIENTS AND METHODS The study involved 95 Middle European pediatric hospitals. We collected blood samples from, ...

The usefulness of IRAP (inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism) and ITS-RFLP (restriction of PCR-amplified internal transcribed spacers of the rDNA) markers in the analysis of 39 Pyrenophora graminea isolates was determined. Each marker system could discriminate between all of the isolates in detecting polymorphism, albeit with variable efficiency. IRAP and ITS-RFLP produced 85% and 77% p...