Paradise regained: “Miraculous healing” in an Israeli psychiatric clinic

The articulation of the experience of distress in terms of prevailing cultural idioms is deemed a crucially important factor in the effectiveness of healing devices across the globe. This curative factor, however, is not easily attainable in multicultural settings where therapist and patient do not share the same world view or explanatory models. In the following case presentation we report a culturally sensitive employment of strategic therapy with an ultra-orthodox psychiatric patient in Jerusalem. Despite the enormous cultural gap between the parties, the therapists were sufficiently sensitive to the patient's mythic world to enable him to recast his traumatic experiences in the mold of key idioms of his cultural background. These idioms were amplified by providing the patient with a myth-congruent metaphor and manipulated to afford a dramatic resolution of his emotional conflict. In what follows we discuss the setting of the therapy, the patient's background and diagnosis and the course of treatment. Following a verbatim account of the last therapeutic session, in which the patient's self-reconstitution had been completed, we discuss the cultural idioms synthesized in the text and the pertinence of hypnotic and metaphoric therapies to multicultural settings.     

Referate

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The evolution of pyrrolizidine alkaloid diversity among and within Jacobaea species

Plants produce many secondary metabolites showing considerable inter- and intraspecific diversity of concentration and composition as a strategy to cope with environmental stresses. The evolution of plant defenses against herbivores and pathogens can be unraveled by understanding the mechanisms underlying chemical diversity. Pyrrolizidine alkaloids are a class of secondary metabolites with high diversity. We performed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 80 pyrrolizidine alkaloids with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry of leaves from 17 Jacobaea species including one to three populations per species with 4–10 individuals per population grown under controlled conditions in a climate chamber. We observed large inter- and intraspecific variation in pyrrolizidine alkaloid concentration and composition, which were both species-specific. Furthermore, we sequenced 11 plastid and three nuclear regions to reconstruct the phylogeny of the 17 Jacobaea species. Ancestral state reconstruction at the species level showed mainly random distributions of individual pyrrolizidine alkaloids. We found little evidence for phylogenetic signals, as nine out of 80 pyrrolizidine alkaloids showed a significant phylogenetic signal for Pagel's λ statistics only, whereas no significance was detected for Blomberg's K measure. We speculate that this high pyrrolizidine alkaloid diversity is the result of the upregulation and downregulation of specific pyrrolizidine alkaloids depending on ecological needs rather than gains and losses of particular pyrrolizidine alkaloid biosynthesis genes during evolution.     

Fermentation of Gluten by Lactococcus lactis LLGKC18 Reduces its Antigenicity and Allergenicity

Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins - Wheat is a worldwide staple food, yet some people suffer from strong immunological reactions after ingesting wheat-based products. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)...     

Maximum fluorescence and electron transport kinetics determined by light-induced fluorescence transients (LIFT) for photosynthesis phenotyping

Photosynthesis Research - Photosynthetic phenotyping requires quick characterization of dynamic traits when measuring large plant numbers in a fluctuating environment. Here, we evaluated the...     

Induction of long-term B-cell depletion in refractory rheumatoid arthritis patients preferentially affects autoreactive more than protective humoral immunity

Introduction

B-cell depletion has become a common treatment strategy in anti-TNF-refractory rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Although the exact mechanism of how B-cell depletion leads to clinical amelioration in RA remains to be elucidated, repetitive treatment with B-cell-depleting agents leading to long-term B-cell depletion has been reported to be beneficial. The latter has led to the hypothesis that the beneficial effects of B-cell depletion might act through their influence on pathogenic autoreactive plasma cells.

Methods

In this study, we investigated the effects of a fixed retreatment regimen with anti-CD20 mAbs on the humoral (auto)immune system in a cohort of therapy-refractory RA patients.

Results

Fixed retreatment led to long-term B-cell depletion in peripheral blood, bone marrow and, to a lesser extent, synovium. Also, pathologic autoantibody secretion (that is, anticitrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPAs)) was more profoundly affected by long-term depletion than by physiological protective antibody secretion (that is, against measles, mumps and rubella). This was further illustrated by a significantly shorter estimated life span of ACPA-IgG secretion compared to total IgG secretion as well as protective antibody secretion.

Conclusion

By studying plasma cell function during an extensive 2-year period of B-cell depletion, autoantibody secretion was significantly shorter-lived than physiologically protective antibody secretion. This suggests that the longevity of autoreactive plasma cells is different from protective long-lived plasma cells and might indicate a therapeutic window for therapies that target plasma cells.     

May photoinhibition be a consequence, rather than a cause, of limited plant productivity?

Photoinhibition in leaves in response to high and/or excess light, consisting of a decrease in photosynthesis and/or photosynthetic efficiency, is frequently equated to photodamage and often invoked as being responsible for decreased plant growth and productivity. However, a review of the literature reveals that photoinhibited leaves characterized for foliar carbohydrate levels were invariably found to possess high levels of sugars and starch. We propose that photoinhibition should be placed in the context of whole-plant source–sink regulation of photosynthesis. Photoinhibition may represent downregulation of the photosynthetic apparatus in response to excess light when (1) more sugar is produced in leaves than can be utilized by the rest of the plant and/or (2) more light energy is harvested than can be utilized by the chloroplast for the fixation of carbon dioxide into sugars.     

Fire and the demography of camelthorn (Acacia erioloba Meyer) in the southern Kalahari – evidence for a bonfire effect?

Fires in arid environments are rare, so are not deemed as important as in mesic savannas. We investigated mortality and resprouting amongst camelthorn (Acacia erioloba) after two fires (at Vaalbos National Park and Susanna farm) in semi‐arid savanna near Kimberley, South Africa. Resprouting response 18 months after a fire was the greatest amongst <6.5 m high trees; extent of foliage damage by fire and bark thickness were the next best predictors of resprouting vigour amongst that size class. The largest size class (8–12 m height) of A. erioloba suffered the greatest mortality rates (40% and 83% at Vaalbos and Susanna respectively), with damage either severe or minor. We hypothesize that large tree mortality rates are partly attributable to well‐developed assemblages of flammable subcanopy plants producing a bonfire beneath trees. These mortality rates indicate that fire reduces both tree abundance and relative representation of large trees, and although able to resprout, A. erioloba is fire‐sensitive, which may explain its restriction to Kalahari sands where rainfall is less than 900 mm year^?1. Therefore, although relatively infrequent, fires shape Kalahari woodland structure, particularly as A. erioloba is long lived and slow growing. Large trees have been shown to be important to biodiversity in the southern Kalahari, so frequent fires could impact biodiversity.     

Tissue-type plasminogen activator is a multiligand cross-beta structure receptor

Tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) regulates fibrin clot lysis by stimulating the conversion of plasminogen into the active protease plasmin. Fibrin is required for efficient tPA-mediated plasmin generation and thereby stimulates its own proteolysis. Several fibrin regions can bind to tPA, but the structural basis for this interaction is unknown. Amyloid beta (Abeta) is a peptide aggregate that is associated with neurotoxicity in brains afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Like fibrin, it stimulates tPA-mediated plasmin formation. Intermolecular stacking of peptide backbones in beta sheet conformation underlies cross-beta structure in amyloid peptides. We show here that fibrin-derived peptides adopt cross-beta structure and form amyloid fibers. This correlates with tPA binding and stimulation of tPA-mediated plasminogen activation. Prototype amyloid peptides, including Abeta and islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) (associated with pancreatic beta cell toxicity in type II diabetes), have no sequence similarity to the fibrin peptides but also bind to tPA and can substitute for fibrin in plasminogen activation by tPA. Moreover, the induction of cross-beta structure in an otherwise globular protein (endostatin) endows it with tPA-activating potential. Our results classify tPA as a multiligand receptor and show that cross-beta structure is the common denominator in tPA binding ligands.     

Platelet-activating factor receptor contributes to host defense against Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia but is not essential for the accompanying inflammatory and procoagulant response

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major cause of nosocomial pneumonia, which is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Because of its ubiquitous nature and its ability to develop resistance to antibiotics, it is a problematic pathogen from a treatment perspective. Platelet-activating factor receptor (PAFR) is involved in phagocytosis of several pathogens. To determine the role of PAFR in the innate immune response to P. aeruginosa pneumonia, pafr gene-deficient (PAFR-/-) mice and normal wild-type (Wt) mice were intranasally inoculated with P. aeruginosa. PAFR deficiency impaired host defense as reflected by increased bacterial outgrowth and dissemination in mice with a targeted deletion of the PAFR gene. PAFR-/- neutrophils showed a diminished phagocytosing capacity of P. aeruginosa in vitro. Relative to Wt mice, PAFR-/- mice demonstrated increased lung inflammation and injury as reflected by histopathology, relative lung weights and total protein concentrations in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, which was accompanied by higher levels of proinflammatory cytokines in lung homogenates and plasma. In addition, PAFR deficiency was associated with exaggerated local and systemic activation of coagulation as determined by fibrin staining of lung tissue and pulmonary and plasma concentrations of thrombin-antithrombin complexes and D-dimer. These data suggest that PAFR is an essential component of an effective host response to P. aeruginosa pneumonia, at least partly via its contribution to the phagocytic properties of professional granulocytes. Additionally, our results indicate that PAFR signaling is not essential for the induction of a local and systemic inflammatory and procoagulant response to Pseudomonas pneumonia.