PLoS medicine
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Meta Analysis
Serum uric acid and coronary heart disease in 9,458 incident cases and 155,084 controls: prospective study and meta-analysis.
It has been suggested throughout the past fifty years that serum uric acid concentrations can help predict the future risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), but the epidemiological evidence is uncertain. ⋯ Measurement of serum uric acid levels is unlikely to enhance usefully the prediction of CHD, and this factor is unlikely to be a major determinant of the disease in general populations.
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Lung adenocarcinomas from patients who respond to the tyrosine kinase inhibitors gefitinib (Iressa) or erlotinib (Tarceva) usually harbor somatic gain-of-function mutations in exons encoding the kinase domain of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Despite initial responses, patients eventually progress by unknown mechanisms of "acquired" resistance. ⋯ In patients with tumors bearing gefitinib- or erlotinib-sensitive EGFR mutations, resistant subclones containing an additional EGFR mutation emerge in the presence of drug. This observation should help guide the search for more effective therapy against a specific subset of lung cancers.
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Clinical Trial
T cell epitope immunotherapy induces a CD4+ T cell population with regulatory activity.
Synthetic peptides, representing CD4(+) T cell epitopes, derived from the primary sequence of allergen molecules have been used to down-regulate allergic inflammation in sensitised individuals. Treatment of allergic diseases with peptides may offer substantial advantages over treatment with native allergen molecules because of the reduced potential for cross-linking IgE bound to the surface of mast cells and basophils. ⋯ This study provides evidence for the induction of a population of CD4(+) T cells with suppressor/regulatory activity following PIT. Furthermore, up-regulation of cell surface levels of CD5 may contribute to reduced reactivity to allergen.