Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system caused by binding of pathogenic IgG autoantibodies (NMO-IgG) to astrocyte water channel aquaporin-4 (AQP4). Astrocyte damage and downstream inflammation require NMO-IgG effector function to initiate complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC). He...

The pathogenesis of neuromyelitis optica (NMO) involves binding of IgG autoantibodies (NMO-IgG) to aquaporin-4 (AQP4) on astrocytes in the central nervous system (CNS). We studied the in vivo processing in mice of a recombinant monoclonal human NMO-IgG that binds strongly to mouse AQP4. Following intravenous administration, serum [NMO-IgG] decreased with t(½) ∼18 hours in wildtype mice and ∼41 ...

BACKGROUND Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) IgG is a specific marker for NMO. Furthermore, a high proportion of patients with longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis (characterized by spinal cord lesions extending 3 vertebral segments or more on magnetic resonance imaging) are seropositive for NMO-IgG and are considered to have a limited form of NMO. The NMO-IgG status in mild cases of acute par...

background: neuromyelitis optica (nmo) is an uncommon neuro- inflammatory syndrome that has shown to be distinct from multiple sclerosis (ms) and associated with the autoantibody marker nmo-immunoglobulin g (igg). there are still only a few studies regarding the epidemiology of nmo in iran. in the present study, we tried to describe the epidemiology of nmo in khuzestan as one of the densely pop...

BACKGROUND Neuromyelitis optica (NMO), a severe demyelinating disease, represents itself with optic neuritis and longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis. Serum NMO-IgG autoantibodies (Abs), a specific finding in NMO patients, target the water channel protein aquaporin-4 (AQP4), which is expressed as a long (M-1) or a short (M-23) isoform. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The aim of this st...

BACKGROUND Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that predominantly affects the optic nerves and spinal cord. Although NMO has long been considered a subtype of multiple sclerosis (MS), the effects of interferon-β treatment are different between NMO and MS. Recent findings of NMO-IgG suggest that NMO could be a distinct disease rather than a subtype...

BACKGROUND A number of reports have described the presence of tuberculosis (TB) in neuromyelitis optica (NMO) patients. However, a definite association between the two conditions has not been conclusively demonstrated. METHODS To investigate the association between NMO and TB in a Chinese population, we performed a retrospective review of hospital records of NMO patients, control patients and...

We calculate the dynamics of a nanomechanical oscillator NMO coupled capacitively to a Cooper-pair box CPB by solving a stochastic Schrödinger equation with two Lindblad operators Commun. Math. Phys. 48, 119 1976 . . Both the NMO and the CPB are assumed dissipative, and the coupling is treated within the rotating wave approximation. We show numerically that, if the CPB decay time is smaller tha...