In recent articles (1, 4), the results of studies comparing several of the Clostridium difficile toxin enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) with tissue culture assay were presented and points were made concerning the low specificity and high rate of indeterminate results with the Tox-A Test. We point out that the Tox-A Tests used in those studies were labeled "For Investigational Use Onl...

IMPORTANCE Clostridium difficile is a major cause of health care-associated infection, but disagreement between diagnostic tests is an ongoing barrier to clinical decision making and public health reporting. Molecular tests are increasingly used to diagnose C difficile infection (CDI), but many molecular test-positive patients lack toxins that historically defined disease, making it unclear if ...

ADME-Tox properties are very important in pharmaceutical research, determining the fate of many molecules in the drug design sequence. Knowledge of ADME-Tox properties in the earliest stages of drug design is therefore highly desirable. The aim of this investigation is to construct low throughput in silico QSAR models in which ADME-Tox properties of single compounds are predicted with high accu...

Introduction The public sphere includes a range of credible discourses asserting that proportion teenagers (“teens”) has an unhealthy dependence upon continuous connection with media devices, and especially smartphones. A review discourse (Jaunzems et al.) in Australia, critical Australia Belgium (Zaman al.), reveal both positive negative commentary around screentime. Despite the “emotionally l...

A direct enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is described that uses horseradish peroxidase-labeled antigen for detection of immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgA antibodies to toxoplasma. In this assay, polystyrene microtiter plates were sensitized with anti-human IgM or IgA antibody to separate IgM or IgA from other classes of antibody. The presence of IgM or IgA antibodies to toxoplasma (Tox-I...

Phage group II Staphylococcus aureus has been identified as the etiological agent of the staphylococcal scaleded skin syndrome. The development of an animal model system permitted fulfillment of Koch's postulates and recognition of exfoliative toxin (ET) as being responsible for some of the clinical manifestations of this syndrome. Initial studies directed toward associating a lysogenic phage w...

Major efforts are invested to characterize the factors controlling the proliferation of neural stem cells. During mammalian corticogenesis, our group has identified a small pool of genes that are transiently downregulated in the switch of neural stem cells to neurogenic division and reinduced in newborn neurons. Among these switch genes, we found Tox, a transcription factor with hitherto unchar...

Early development of the mammalian cerebral cortex proceeds via a sequence of proliferative and differentiative steps from neural stem cells toward neurons and glia. However, how these steps are molecularly orchestrated is still only partially understood. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Artegiani and colleagues implicate Tox, a HMG-box transcription factor previously known only for its role ...

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile infection is considered the most common cause of nosocomial infectious diarrhea among adults in the developed world. It is responsible for virtually all cases of pseudomembranous colitis. The Tox A/B enzyme immunoassay (EIA) is the most widely used test for the detection of C. difficile toxins A and B. However, it is associated with poor sensitivity and an unacc...

TOX, an evolutionarily conserved member of the HMG-box family of proteins, is essential for the development of various cells of both the innate and adaptive immune system. TOX is required for the development of CD4(+) T lineage cells in the thymus, including natural killer T and T regulatory cells, as well as development of natural killer cells and fetal lymphoid tissue inducer cells, the latte...