Toluene diisocyanate (TDI) is the most common cause of occupational asthma in western countries. The aim of this study was to investigate whether genetic factors are involved in toluene diisocyanate-induced asthma. We studied the frequency of human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class II genetic markers in three groups of subjects: 1) subjects with TDI-induced asthma (n = 30); 2) exposed subjects with...

Single-copy sequences can be enzymatically amplified from genomic DNA by the polymerase chain reaction. By using unequal molar amounts of the two amplification primers, it is possible in a single step to amplify a single-copy gene and produce an excess of single-stranded DNA of a chosen strand for direct sequencing or for use as a hybridization probe. Further, individual alleles in a heterozygo...

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder, has no specific cause, and is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and uncontrollable sleep attacks. In case of strong emotions such as laughter, anger or joy, a cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone, lasting for a short period of time) may occur (1, 2). Other symptoms of narcolepsy include sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations (3,...

Recently, most dehazed image quality assessment (DQA) methods mainly focus on the estimation of remaining haze, omitting impact distortions from side effect dehazing algorithms, which lead to their limited performance. Addressing this problem, we proposed a learning both Visibility and Distortion Aware features no-reference (NR) Dehazed Quality Assessment method (VDA-DQA). aware are exploited c...

OBJECTIVE To study the influence MHC class II and TAP2 alleles exert on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) susceptibility and on the clinical and serological manifestations of the disease, in a cohort of Spanish patients. METHODS HLA-DR serological typing and HLA-DQA, DQB, and TAP2 DNA sequence specific oligotyping, were carried out in 85 unrelated Spanish SLE patients and 186 healthy control...

OBJECTIVES To assess availability and completeness of data collected before and after a data quality audit (DQA) in voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) sites in Zimbabwe to determine the effect of this process on data quality. SETTING 4 of 10 VMMC sites in Zimbabwe that received a DQA in February, 2015 selected by convenience sampling. PARTICIPANTS Retrospective reviews of all client...

T helper 1 cells play a major role in protective immunity against mycobacterial pathogens. Since the antigen (Ag) specificity of CD4(+) human T cells is strongly controlled by HLA class II polymorphism, the immunogenic potential of candidate Ags needs to be defined in the context of HLA polymorphism. We have taken advantage of class II-deficient (Ab0) mice, transgenic for either HLA-DRA/B1*0301...

Delivery quality assurance (DQA) has been performed for each Tomotherapy patient either using ArcCHECK or MatriXX Evolution in our clinic since 2012. ArcCHECK is a quasi-3D dosimeter whereas MatriXX is a 2D detector. A review of DQA results was performed for all patients in the last three years, a total of 221 DQA plans. These DQA plans came from 215 patients with a variety of treatment sites i...

The HLA association with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is highest among individuals heterozygous for DR3 and DR4. To investigate potential mechanisms to account for this association, we performed two-dimensional gel-electrophoretic analysis of HLA molecules from DR3/4 heterozygous patients. These studies demonstrated hybrid molecular dimers corresponding to products of HLA-DQ genes linked...