background: mercury is widespread and persistent in the environment. one organic form of mercury, methylmercury (mehg), can accumulate in the food chain in aquatic ecosystems and lead to high concentrations of mehg in fish, which, when consumed by humans, can result in an increased risk of adverse effects. currently, the joint fao/who expert committee on food additives (jecfa) has established p...

A critical barrier to future implementation of regenerative treatments for sensorineural hearing loss is the lack of diagnostic tools that can specify the target(s) within the cochlea and auditory nerve for delivery of therapeutic agents. This study used a gerbil model to test the idea of mapping auditory nerve firing density by tracking the amplitude of high-level compound action potentials (C...

This review introduces the pathology of aminoglycoside antibiotic and the cisplatin chemotherapy classes of drugs, discusses oxidative stress in the inner ear as a primary trigger for cell damage, and delineates the ensuing cell death pathways. Among potentially ototoxic (damaging the inner ear) therapeutics, the platinum-based anticancer drugs and the aminoglycoside antibiotics are of critical...

Multicellular eukaryotes coevolve with microbial pathogens, which exert strong selective pressure on the immune systems of their hosts. Plants and animals use intracellular proteins of the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat (NLR) superfamily to detect many types of microbial pathogens. The NLR domain architecture likely evolved independently and convergently in each kingdom, and the...

This case report describes a 41-year-old Afro-Caribbean lady presenting with a constellation of pyrexia, conjunctivitis, arthralgia, sterile dysuria, apthous ulceration, labial crusting and widespread erythema multiforme. A diagnosis of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome was made. She had taken no medications recently (the most common precipitant of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome) and a full screen for the com...

Human class I major histocompatibility complex allele HLA-B27 is associated with a group of human diseases called "spondyloarthropathies." Studies on transgenic rats expressing HLA-B27 and human beta 2-microglobulin have confirmed the role of HLA-B27 in disease pathogenesis. Here we report spontaneous inflammatory arthritis in HLA-B27 transgenic mice lacking beta 2-microglobulin (B27+ beta 2m-/...

H u m a n class I major histocompatibility complex allele HLA-B27 is associated with a group of human diseases called "spondyloarthropathies." Studies on transgenic rats expressing HLA-B27 and human 132-microglobulin have confirmed the role of HLA-B27 in disease pathogenesis. Here we report spontaneous inflammatory arthritis in HLA-B27 transgenic mice lacking 132microglobulin (B27+132m-/-). In ...