Chronic graft-versus-host disease: clinical presentation of multiple lesions of lichenoid and atrophic pattern

Graft-versus-host disease is observed mainly in recipients of hematopoietic cell transplantation and is expressed by cutaneous or systemic signals and symptoms. Graft-versus-host disease is clinically classified as acute or chronic. Chronic Graft-versus-host disease occurs in up to 70% of hematopoietic cell transplanted patients and its clinical manifestations have important impact on morbidity and quality of life. The authors report an expressive cutaneous, oral and adnexal involvement in a patient with chronic Graft-versus-host disease with multiple lesions of lichenoid and atrophic pattern.

Evaluation of the Host Response in Various Models of Induced Periodontal Disease in Mice

Background: The aim of this study is to characterize and evaluate the host response caused by three different models of experimental periodontitis in mice.Methods: C57BL/6 wild-type female mice were distributed into six experimental groups and sacrificed at 7, 15, and 30 days after the induction of periodontal disease: 1) group C: no treatment control group; 2) group L: periodontal disease induced by ligature; 3) group G-Pg: oral gavage with Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg); 4) group G-PgFn: oral gavage with Fusobacterium nucleatum + Pg; 5) group I-Pg: heat-killed Pg injected into the palatal mucosa between the molars; and 6) group I-V: phosphatebuffered saline injected into the palatal mucosa. The samples were used to analyze the immune-inflammatory process in the gingival tissue via descriptive histologic and real-time polymerase chain reaction analyses. The alveolar bone loss was evaluated using microcomputed tomography. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test, followed by a post hoc Dunn test and analysis of variance, followed by a Tukey test using a 5% significance level.Results: Only the ligature model displayed significant alveolar bone loss in the initial period (7 days), which was maintained with time. The group injected with heat-killed Pg displayed significant alveolar bone loss starting from day 15, which continued to progress with time (P < 0.05). A significant increase (P < 0.05) in the gene expression of proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6 and -1b) and proteins involved in osteoclastogenesis (receptor activator of nuclear factor-kB ligand and osteoprotegerin) was observed in the ligature group on day 7.Conclusion: The ligature and injection of heat-killed Pg models were the most representative of periodontal disease in humans, whereas the oral gavage models were not effective at inducing the disease under the experimental conditions.

Helicobacter pylori infection: Host immune response, implications on gene expression and microRNAs

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is the most common bacterial infection worldwide. Persistent infection of the gastric mucosa leads to inflammatory processes and may remain silent for decades or progress causing more severe diseases, such as gastric adenocarcinoma. The clinical consequences of H. pylori infection are determined by multiple factors, including host genetic predisposition, gene regulation, environmental factors and heterogeneity of H. pylori virulence factors. After decades of studies of this successful relationship between pathogen and human host, various mechanisms have been elucidated. In this review, we have made an introduction on H. pylori infection and its virulence factors, and focused mainly on modulation of host immune response triggered by bacteria, changes in the pattern of gene expression in H. pylori-infected gastric mucosa, with activation of gene transcription involved in defense mechanisms, inflammatory and immunological response, cell proliferation and apoptosis. We also highlighted the role of bacteria eradication on gene expression levels. In addition, we addressed the recent involvement of different microRNAs in precancerous lesions, gastric cancer, and inflammatory processes induced by bacteria. New discoveries in this field may allow a better understanding of the role of major factors involved in the pathogenic mechanisms of H. pylori. (C) 2014 Baishideng Publishing Group Co., Limited. All rights reserved.

Selective photoinactivation of Candida albicans in the non-vertebrate host infection model Galleria mellonella

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

New host records and a checklist of fishes infected with Austrodiplostomum compactum (Digenea: Diplostomidae) in Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

From cuckoos to chickens: a caught-in-the-act case of host shift in feather mites (Arachnida: Acari: Psoroptoididae)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Determination of photoinduced and intrinsic birefringences in PMMA/DR13 guest-host film

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A Social Parasite Evolved Reproductive Isolation from Its Fungus-Growing Ant Host in Sympatry

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Unusual broadening of the NIR luminescence of Er3+-doped Nb2O5 nanocrystals embedded in silica host: Preparation and their structural and spectroscopic study for photonics applications

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Trichodina heterodentata (Ciliophora) infestation on Prochilodus lineatus larvae: a host-parasite relationship study

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Partitioning the net effect of host diversity on an emerging amphibian pathogen

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Parasitoid-host interaction: sensory structures involved in the parasitism behavior of Bracon vulgaris (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Next-generation sequencing reveals large connected networks of intra-host HCV variants

Background: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) allows for sampling numerous viral variants from infected patients. This provides a novel opportunity to represent and study the mutational landscape of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) within a single host.Results: Intra-host variants of the HCV E1/E2 region were extensively sampled from 58 chronically infected patients. After NGS error correction, the average number of reads and variants obtained from each sample were 3202 and 464, respectively. The distance between each pair of variants was calculated and networks were created for each patient, where each node is a variant and two nodes are connected by a link if the nucleotide distance between them is 1. The work focused on large components having > 5% of all reads, which in average account for 93.7% of all reads found in a patient. The distance between any two variants calculated over the component correlated strongly with nucleotide distances (r = 0.9499; p = 0.0001), a better correlation than the one obtained with Neighbour-Joining trees (r = 0.7624; p = 0.0001). In each patient, components were well separated, with the average distance between (6.53%) being 10 times greater than within each component (0.68%). The ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous changes was calculated and some patients (6.9%) showed a mixture of networks under strong negative and positive selection. All components were robust to in silico stochastic sampling; even after randomly removing 85% of all reads, the largest connected component in the new subsample still involved 82.4% of remaining nodes. In vitro sampling showed that 93.02% of components present in the original sample were also found in experimental replicas, with 81.6% of reads found in both. When syringe-sharing transmission events were simulated, 91.2% of all simulated transmission events seeded all components present in the source.Conclusions: Most intra-host variants are organized into distinct single-mutation components that are: well separated from each other, represent genetic distances between viral variants, robust to sampling, reproducible and likely seeded during transmission events. Facilitated by NGS, large components offer a novel evolutionary framework for genetic analysis of intra-host viral populations and understanding transmission, immune escape and drug resistance.

Evolution and genomic organization of muscle microRNAs in fish genomes

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Heterorhabditis amazonensis RSC5 (Rhabditida: Heterorhabditidae) movement and host recognition

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)