Behçet Disease and Relapsing Polychondritis Behçet disease (BD) is a chronic idiopathic relapsing-remitting multisystem vascular-inflammatory disease characterized by recurrent orogenital ulcerations and uveitis. Five to ten percent of patients with BD have clinical evidence of nervous system involvement. The neurologic manifestations of BD are most commonly due to brain stem or diencephalic in...

A genetic component to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has been suggested by associations of the malignancy with human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) in Southern Chinese populations, among which NPC is a major cancer. Data from other races are inconclusive. We have investigated associations between NPC and HLA antigens at the HLA-A, B, C, and DQ loci and alleles at the DRB1 locus in a population-base...

Sugarcane mosaic disease is mainly caused by the sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV), which can significantly reduce stalk yield and sucrose content of sugarcane in the field. Coat protein mediated protection (CPMP) is an effective strategy to improve virus resistance. A 2-year field study was conducted to compare five independent transgenic sugarcane lines carrying the SCMV-CP gene (i.e., B2, B36, B...

OBJECTIVE Behçet's disease (BD) is a systemic vasculitis with a significantly varying clinical course following relapses and remissions, which may involve a number of organs such as the skin, joints, lungs, and blood vessels as well as systems such as the central nervous system and gastrointestinal system. Its prognosis is known to be worse in males. There are several studies in the literature ...

Background: It has been argued that unprecedented degree of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci polymorphism within a population is required to avoid the devastating effects of infectious diseases. The present study was conducted to determine the associations between some of HLA class I genes and the outcome of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Methods: Using sequential sampling method, 64 indi...

BACKGROUND Behcet's disease is a multisystemic inflammatory disease which may lead to blindness. The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the clinical features and visual outcome of Behcet's uveitis in Taiwan. METHODS The medical charts of 227 consecutive patients (414 eyes) with Behcet's uveitis who were seen in the Uveitis Clinic of Taipei Veterans General Hospital were reviewe...

OBJECTIVE Actinic keratoses (AK) are proliferation of neoplastic keratinocytes confined to the epidermis induced by damaging solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR). When the neoplastic keratinocytes extend in to papillary-reticular dermis, then the lesion termed as squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). We have compared HLA class I and II antigen profiles in three patient groups namely: AK (n: 31) (patients...

We consider the accuracy of several methods for combining forward and reverse free-energy perturbation averages for two systems ~labeled 0 and 1!. The practice of direct averaging of these measurements is argued as not reliable. Instead, methods are considered of the form b(A12A0) 52ln@^w(u)exp(2bu/2)&0 /^w(u)exp(1bu/2)&1# , where A is the free energy, b51/kT is the reciprocal temperature, u5U1...