Hui Chen1, Yang Xiao2∗,†, Xiaoyan Hong2, Fei Hu3 and Jiang (Linda) Xie4 1Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Virginia State University, P.O. Box 9068, Petersburg, VA 23806, U.S.A. 2Department of Computer Science, The University of Alabama, 101 Houser Hall, P.O. Box 870290, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, U.S.A. 3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Alabama...

To investigate why human leukocyte-associated antigen-DRB1*0301 (HLA-DRB1*0301) positive Scandinavian patients have a better prognosis than HLA-DRB1*0301 negative patients, the present authors examined patterns of cytokine expression in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cells and BAL fluid (BALF) from patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis and controls. Using real-time PCR, the mRNA expression of selec...

The determination of 34 trace metals in a river water certified reference material (CRM), i.e. JSAC 0301-1, which was issued by the Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry in January 2004, was performed by ICP-MS with a high efficiency nebulizer after preconcentration with a laboratory-made chelating resin-packed minicolumn, with which trace metals were concentrated 100-fold from 50 mL of a rive...

Tao Ju 1,2,*, Xiaoshe Dong 1,*, Heng Chen 1 and Xingjun Zhang 1 1 School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China; [email protected] (H.C.); [email protected] (X.Z.) 2 School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Lanzhou Jiaotong Universtiy, Lanzhou 730370, China * Correspondence: [email protected] (T.J.); xsdong@xjt...

1Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870290, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, USA 2Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan 3Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083, USA 4Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA...

Autoantibodies to phospholipids (APA) occur frequently in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and other autoimmune disorders and predispose to intravascular thromboses. Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II alleles (HLA-DR and DQ) were determined by restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLP) in 20 patients with APA (lupus anticoagulant). HLA-DQw7 (DQB1 *0301), linked to HLA-DR5 a...

Antibodies against the extracellular domain of bullous pemphigoid antigen 2 (BPAG2) are thought to play a key role in the pathogenesis of bullous pemphigoid (BP), the most frequent autoimmune bullous disease of the skin. Autoreactive T cell responses to BPAG2 were investigated in 16 BP patients and 24 healthy controls by coculture of PBMC with two recombinant BPAG2 proteins (extracellular domai...

The critical role of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system in presenting peptides to antigen-specific T cell receptors may explain why only some human papillomavirus (HPV)-infected women progress to cervical cancer. HLA class II DRB1 and DQB1 genes were examined in 315 women with invasive squamous cell cervical cancer (SCC) and 381 control subjects. Increased risks of SCC were associated wit...

BACKGROUND Sarcoidosis is a systemic disease of unknown aetiology frequently affecting the lungs. CD4+ T cells, in particular, accumulate in the lungs, implicating them in the pathogenesis of the disease. METHODS T cell receptor (TCR) variable (V) gene expression on bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid T cells and the HLA DR alleles of 121 Scandinavian patients with sarcoidosis was determined. ...