RATIONALE The influence of developmental nicotine exposure on the brain represents an important health topic in light of the popularity of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) as a smoking cessation method during pregnancy. OBJECTIVES In this study, we used a model of NRT during pregnancy and breastfeeding to explore the consequences of chronic developmental nicotine exposure on cerebral neurop...

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is a lymphotropic betaherpesvirus which productively infects human CD4+ T cells and monocytes. HHV-6 is the etiologic agent for exanthem subitum (roseola), and it is well-known that central nervous system complications occur frequently during the course of HHV-6-associated disease. In addition, HHV-6 has been associated with encephalitis or encephalopathy. However, v...

OBJECTIVES We investigated the antibody levels against early antigens of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV6) in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and healthy controls, and further correlated these antibodies to haematology/biochemistry, serology, and disease activity measures. METHOD Immunoglobulin (Ig)M, IgG, and IgA levels against the DN...

The structure of two novel 2-(N’-benzylidenehydrazino)-4-trifluoromethyl-pyrimidines has been determined by X-ray crystallography and their energy-minimized structures were stablished by molecular orbital calculations (AM1) by means of comparison. Additionally, the bond lengths of the compounds were analyzed in order to verify the occurance of electronic resonance. Bond lengths and bond angles ...

Adeno-associated virus type 5 is unique among adeno-associated virus serotypes in that it uses a polyadenylation site in the center of the genome. The great majority of transcripts generated from the upstream P7 and P19 promoters are polyadenylated at a site in the central intron ((pA)p); however, most of the viral transcripts generated by the proximal P41 promoter are polyadenylated at the dis...

OBJECTIVES Laboratory tests are now being used to identify seropositive cases in patients suspected of having a Lyme borreliosis (LB) infection. From 2005 to 2009, we analyzed the serological and epidemiological characteristics of 53 LB positive cases in Korea using immunoblot assay. METHODS During the five-year study period, a total of 1897 serum samples from suspected LB cases were referred...

Astrocytes are nonprofessional APCs that may participate in Ag presentation and activation of pathogenic CD4+ T cells involved in central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory diseases. Using immortalized pure astrocytes as a complement to the study of primary astrocytes, we investigated whether these astrocytes express elements involved in the class II endocytic pathway and if they are capable of ...

In an effort to implicate immune responses to specific Borrelia burgdorferi proteins that may have a role in chronic Lyme arthritis, we studied the natural history of the antibody response to B. burgdorferi in serial serum samples from 25 patients monitored throughout the course of Lyme disease. In these patients, the immunoglobulin G (IgM) and IgG antibody responses to 10 recombinant B. burgdo...

Mitochondrial dysregulation has long been investigated on the linear microtubules of axons as it makes exploring trafficking relatively simple. In contrast, non-neuronal cells form complex networks which mitochondria can move, and gap in publications mitochondrial dynamics between these cell types illustrates difficulties. Despite this, recent suggest that motion may fuel some metastatic cancer...