A Review of Evaluations of Electronic Event-Based Biosurveillance Systems

Electronic event-based biosurveillance systems (EEBS’s) that use near real-time information from the internet are an increasingly important source of epidemiologic intelligence. However, there has not been a systematic assessment of EEBS evaluations, which could identify key uncertainties about current systems and guide EEBS development to most effectively exploit web-based information for biosurveillance. To conduct this assessment, we searched PubMed and Google Scholar to identify peer-reviewed evaluations of EEBS’s. We included EEBS’s that use publicly available internet information sources, cover events that are relevant to human health, and have global scope. To assess the publications using a common framework, we constructed a list of 17 EEBS attributes from published guidelines for evaluating health surveillance systems. We identified 11 EEBS’s and 20 evaluations of these EEBS’s. The number of published evaluations per EEBS ranged from 1 (Gen-Db, GODsN, MiTAP) to 8 (GPHIN, HealthMap). The median number of evaluation variables assessed per EEBS was 8 (range, 3–15). Ten published evaluations contained quantitative assessments of at least one key variable. No evaluations examined usefulness by identifying specific public health decisions, actions, or outcomes resulting from EEBS outputs. Future EEBS assessments should identify and discuss critical indicators of public health utility, especially the impact of EEBS’s on public health response.     

Antitumor activity of amidino-substituted benzimidazole and benzimidazo[1,2-a]quinoline derivatives tested in 2D and 3D cell culture systems

Due to a poor clinical predictive power of 2D cell cultures, standard tool for in vitro assays in drug discovery process, there is increasing interest in developing 3D in vitro cell cultures, biologically relevant assay feasible for the development of robust preclinical anti-cancer drug screening platforms. Herein, we tested amidino-substituted benzimidazoles and benzimidazo[1,2-a]quinolines as a small platform for comparison of antitumor activity in 2D and 3D cell culture systems and correlation with structure–activity relationship. 3D cell culture method was applied on a human cancer breast (SK-BR-3, MDA-MB-231, T-47D) and pancreatic cancer cells (MIA PaCa-2, PANC-1). Results obtained in 2D and 3D models were highly comparable, but in some cases we have observed significant disagreement indicating that some prominent compounds can be discarded in early phase of researching because of compounds with false positive result. To confirm which of cell culture systems is more accurate, in vivo profiling is needed.     

Comparison of Flow Cytometry,Fluorescence Microscopy and Spectrofluorometry for Analysis of Gene Electrotransfer Efficiency

In this study, we compared three different methods used for quantification of gene electrotransfer efficiency: fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry and spectrofluorometry. We used CHO and B16 cells in a suspension and plasmid coding for GFP. The aim of this study was to compare and analyse the results obtained by fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry and spectrofluorometry and in addition to analyse the applicability of spectrofluorometry for quantifying gene electrotransfer on cells in a suspension. Our results show that all the three methods detected similar critical electric field strength, around 0.55 kV/cm for both cell lines. Moreover, results obtained on CHO cells showed that the total fluorescence intensity and percentage of transfection exhibit similar increase in response to increase electric field strength for all the three methods. For B16 cells, there was a good correlation at low electric field strengths, but at high field strengths, flow cytometer results deviated from results obtained by fluorescence microscope and spectrofluorometer. Our study showed that all the three methods detected similar critical electric field strengths and high correlations of results were obtained except for B16 cells at high electric field strengths. The results also demonstrated that flow cytometry measures higher values of percentage transfection compared to microscopy. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that spectrofluorometry can be used as a simple and consistent method to determine gene electrotransfer efficiency on cells in a suspension.     

Revealing the anti-HRP epitope in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Drosophila</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Caenorhabditis</Emphasis>

Antibodies are very often used as specific cell and/or tissue markers. An example of this is anti-horseradish peroxidase (HRP), an antibody raised against a plant glycoprotein, which was shown some twenty-five years ago to specifically stain neural tissue in an animal, Drosophila melanogaster. This peculiar finding was later expanded to other invertebrate species including Caenorhabditis elegans, which were also shown to bear anti-HRP epitopes. Initial experiments indicated that the epitopes recognised by anti-HRP in invertebrates are of carbohydrate nature. Indeed, more recent experiments have characterised relevant core α1-3-fucosylated N-glycan structures that act as epitopes in various model and parasitic organisms. Moreover, a number of enzymes required for the synthesis of such structures have been identified. Over the years, medically-relevant roles of these structures have become apparent as regards allergenicity and immunoregulation. Although major advances have been made in understanding of the underlying mechanisms and structures related to the anti-HRP epitope, the in vivo role of the relevant epitopes in neural and other tissues is yet to be resolved. Current understanding of the anti-HRP epitopes synthesis and their relevance is discussed and elaborated.

Spontaneous serial fractures of metatarsal bones in female patient with rheumatoid arthritis on long-term steroid therapy

Low-dose oral steroid therapies are very effective in active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), reducing disease activity in acute crisis either while waiting for disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) to take effect or if it was slow in response to DMARDs. However, long-term steroid therapies are associated with serious side effects, such as osteoporotic reduction of bone mass and frequent fractures. This paper reports a female patient who has suffered RA treated with low-dose oral steroid therapy in a long-term period. Suddenly, she developed severe pain and oedema of forefeet during home distance level walking, with no history of trauma. The diagnosis of spontaneous serial fractures of the 2nd to 4th metatarsal (MT) bone bilaterally was performed by feet radiography. Furthermore, in widening the diagnostic approaches the authors had performed diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound to exclude metatarsophalangeal joint effusion and exacerbation of RA. They also made a static analysis of feet on the electronic baropodometer system in order to register biomechanical changes in bipedal standing. One year after, the same diagnostic procedures were done, on which occasion the healing of fractures were verified, with better results in biomechanical static analysis of the feet but without complete regression of static disbalance. This could lead to further disturbances during level walking and daily activities. This paper reports a unique case of the RA patient on long-term low-dose steroid therapy with previously unreported sites of spontaneous metatarsal fractures of feet which causes further static disbalance; consequently the patient might experience problems in every-day life activities.     

Beneficial effect of agmatine in the acute phase of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in iNOS-/- knockout mice

The aim of the study was to investigate the hypothesis that agmatine (AGM) provides protection against oxidative stress in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE).     

Endogenous plasma proteins in edematous lungs and alveolar fluid in rabbits

In this study, we compared two methods of differentiating hydrostatic and permeability types of pulmonary edema. The first method entailed measurement of protein concentrations directly in samples of alveolar fluid (AF); the second method was an indirect technique in which protein concentration in extravascular extracellular water (EVECW) was calculated on the basis of separate measurements of the quantity of protein in the lung and the volume of EVECW. The concentration of albumin (Alb) and gamma-G-globulin was measured in EVECW and alveolar fluid in excised edematous rabbit lungs. Edema was caused by elevation of left ventricular end-diastolic pressure to 25 Torr (hydrostatic edema, HE) or by intravenous oleic acid, 0.09 ml/kg (permeability edema, PE). The volume of distribution of Na+ was utilized as a measure of EVECW in the lung. Protein concentration in EVECW and AF relative to plasma (EV/PL and AF/PL, respectively) was compared in the two types of edema. The EV/PL was 0.61 +/- 0.12 (SD) for Alb in He compared with 1.18 +/- 0.47 in PE (P less than 0.02). The AF/PL was 0.54 +/- 0.12 and 1.25 +/- 0.33 in HE and PE, respectively (P less than 0.001). There was good correlation between EV/PL and AF/PL for Alb (r = 0.74, P less than 0.001) but not for gamma-G-globulin. Thus EV/PL for Alb, AF/PL for Alb, and gamma-G-globulin all differentiated hydrostatic from permeability edema.