The Chinese attenuated equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) vaccine has successfully protected millions of equine animals from EIA disease in China. Given that the induction of immune protection results from the interactions between viruses and hosts, a better understanding of the characteristics of vaccine strain infection and host responses would be useful for elucidating the mechanism of th...

This review concerns how the primary inflammation preceding the generation of certain key damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) arises in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In doing so, it places soluble amyloid β (Aβ), a protein hitherto considered as a primary initiator of AD, in a novel perspective. We note here that increased soluble Aβ is one of the proinflammatory cytokine-induced DAMPs rec...

The study of the role cytokines play in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has provided a whole new range of targets for drug development. Many of them (e.g. TNF, IL-1, IL-6, IL-15 and IL-18) are already being targeted in the clinic with success using neutralizing monoclonal antibodies or soluble cytokine receptors. Targeting TNF, in particular, has shown great efficacy in controllin...

BACKGROUND Inflammatory lung diseases are a major morbidity factor in children. Therefore, novel strategies for early detection of inflammatory lung diseases are of high interest. Bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is recognized via Toll-like receptors and CD14. CD14 exists as a soluble (sCD14) and membrane-associated (mCD14) protein, present on the surface of leukocytes. Previous studies sugge...

Opportunistic infections are common in HIV-infected patients; they activate HIV replication and contribute to disease progression. In the present study we examined the role of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and TLR9 in HIV-long terminal repeat (HIV-LTR) trans-activation and assessed whether TLR4 synergized with TLR2 or TLR9 to induce HIV replication. Soluble Mycobacterium tuberculosis factor (STF)...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are present in most cells, serving as molecular chaperones, and they play a role in cell protection from damage in response to stress stimuli. However, accumulating data indicate the involvement of HSPs in the pathogenesis of diseases. The aim of this article is to update the progress concerning the role of HSPs in atherosclerosis. It has been demonstrated that HSPs a...

SCOPE The major receptor for β(1-3)-glucans on immune cells is considered to be Dectin-1 receptor. Particulate β-glucans induce stronger immune responses than soluble β-glucans by clustering of Dectin-1 receptors. Here, it was hypothesized that activation of other pattern recognition receptors such as Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) can also contribute to enhanced activity of immune cells after exp...

The Toll-like receptor family mediates the innate immune system through recognizing the molecular patterns of microorganisms and self-components and leading the synthesis of the inflammatory mediators. We retrospectively examined whether or not genetic variations in toll-like receptor 1 (rs5743551, -7202GQ>A), toll-like receptor 2 (rs7656411, 22215G>T), and toll-like receptor 4 (rs11536889, +37...

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In earlier work a toll pricing framework for congestion pricing has been developed for both fixed and elastic demand traffic assignment models as an alternative to traditional marginal social cost pricing. Within the framework it is possible to define alternative objectives such as minimizing toll costs, minimizing the number of toll booths, etc. This paper will report the results of recent com...