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Effect of Steroids on Anti-nephrin Autoantibodies and B cells in Minimal Change Disease
No full textInternational audienceIntroduction: The identification of autoantibodies against nephrin, a key signaling protein of the podocyte slit diaphragm, and their pathogenic role in patients with minimal change disease (MCD) has substantially changed our understanding of primary podocytopathies. However, details on underlying immune pathophysiological mechanisms such as the relation of anti-nephrin autoantibodies with immune cell subsets and therapy response remain to be determined.Methods: In this prospective study, we evaluated blood samples from adults with newly diagnosed, biopsy-proven MCD for circulating anti-nephrin antibodies using immunoprecipitation (IP) and B-cell subpopulations by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Samples were collected at diagnosis (t0) and after 8 weeks of steroid therapy (t1).Results: We detected anti-nephrin antibodies in 12 of 17 (70.6%) therapy-naïve patients with MCD at t0. All 12 patients (100%) positive for anti-nephrin antibodies achieved complete remission with no anti-nephrin antibodies detectable after 8 weeks of steroid treatment (t1). Two of 5 anti-nephrin negative patients (40%) did not reach clinical remission at t1. Anti-nephrin positive patients exhibited a larger fraction of plasmablasts than anti-nephrin negative patients at t0, albeit not statistically significant. Plasmablasts, naïve B cells, and transitional B cells significantly decreased, whereas marginal zone-like B cells increased within 8 weeks of steroid treatment in anti-nephrin positive patients (t1).Conclusion: Our study shows, for the first time, a therapeutically relevant short-term effect of steroids on the B-cell compartment and anti-nephrin antibody levels, explaining the high clinical response rate in patients with anti-nephrin-associated MCD
In the name of human value. Religion and ethics in the business world
No full textInternational audienceIt is easy to imagine that during an economic boom, company leaders would focus on their organization's expansion and the opportunities brought by the favorable new environment and consequently disregard social issues, unemployment, and worker insecurity. This idea could be reinforced by our focus, in the third and fourth chapters, on the way in which the social movement opposed employers, brought the question of precarity into the public sphere and influenced the arenas of negotiation in which social policies were forged. In this last chapter, we approach the question from a different angle. By observing how employers and companies mobilized a religious type of discourse in response to the social question and the social movements it gave rise to, we are reversing the perspective adopted at the beginning of the book, which was to examine social precarity from the point of view of the workers' experience. We are also offering a counterpoint to the question of the relationship between precarity and working-class culture that we have addressed in the previous chapters. Without, of course, rejecting outright an approach to labor relations based on the confrontation of interests, we are seeking to enrich it. Our aim is not to show that all business leaders responded to workers' demands and proposed effective policies in response to these demands. We intend to point out that some of them were not indifferent to the working-class condition. Some even engaged in activist discourse and practices, demonstrating that they were attuned to social issues. We are looking at a few of these businessmen who felt concerned by the working-class condition, in one way or another, due to their religious beliefs. In different national contexts, chief executives have shown a sustained interest in business ethics, often tied to religious beliefs, even amid times of growth. In this chapter, we aim to contribute to the current renewal of historiography on business ethics, or the search for a form of ethical capitalism, by highlighting companies and their leaders who have sought to define their role in society and how they might merge business activity and religious faith. This has occurred during periods of extraordinary economic progress -in Japan and France, in the prosperous decades following the end of World War II, and in contemporary China. In each country, these efforts are rooted in a long history that reveals an ambivalence between economic individualism and, paradoxically, a desire to take human welfare and human relationships into account
Living with a mobile river: floods, channel mobility and riparian communities along the Loire River during the Little Ice Age (14th-18th c.)
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Vulnerability of soil organic carbon in Amazonian Podsols to changes in environmental conditions
No full textInternational audienceIt has recently been shown that the C stocks in Amazonian podzols are very large. They are much larger than was previously thought, particularly in the Bh horizon, which has been estimated to contain in excess of 10 Pg C for Amazonia alone. It is predicted that changes in the regional climate will result in a drier soil moisture regime, which may affect the C dynamics in these generally waterlogged soils. In order to determine the vulnerability to decomposition of the organic C contained in the Amazonian podzols as a result of environmental changes, we established a series of incubation experiments in which the effects of different environmental factors were measured. The direct effect of drier soil moisture regimes was tested by incubating undisturbed cores from the Bh horizon at a range of matric potentials. Contrary to what is usually found in soils, no significant difference in mineralisation was found among matric potentials, suggesting that other factors control microbial mineralisation of this organic C. In a second series of incubations, the effect of nitrogen additions, of anoxic conditions and of labile C substrate additions were also tested on undisturbed cores of the Bh horizon. Samples incubated under oxic conditions produced more than twice as much CO2 as samples incubated under anoxic conditions, whilst the mineralisation rates of samples incubated under oxic conditions with the addition of N increased more than four-fold relative to the anoxic samples. The addition of labile C did not have a significant effect on C mineralisation. The data suggest that the large pool of C in Amazonian Podzols may be vulnerable to increases in N and O2 availability
Intercréativité et flow collectif en situations d’apprentissage ludo-fictionnelles
No full textNational audienceDans le cadre du projet pédagogique et de recherche en ludopédagogie EdUTeam, nous avons mené trois séries d'expérimentations ludopédagogiques pour comprendre les dynamiques de l'intercréativité et du flow collectif. Ces travaux ont été réalisés avec des wargames multijoueurs et ont fait l'objet d'une publication scientifique dans la revue Interdisciplinaire Management, Homme & Entreprise à l'été 2025. La conférence est une synthèse de ce travail de recherche mené en 2024 et 2025 sur l'influence mutuelle de l'intercréativité (co-construction de l'histoire) avec le flow collectif, en situations d’apprentissage ludo-fictionnelles
Les promoteurs immobiliers privés à l’épreuve de la sobriété et de la circularité dans la métropole nantaise
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Weakly-sparse and strongly flip-flat classes of graphs are uniformly almost-wide
No full textInternational audienceIn this work we take a step towards characterising strongly flip-flat classes of graphs. Strong flip-flatness appears to be the analogue of uniform almost-wideness in the setting of dense classes of graphs. We prove that strongly flip-flat classes of graphs that are weakly sparse are indeed uniformly almost-wide
Pyrroline-5-carboxylate dehydrogenase is a key actor of nitrogen metabolism in maturing seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana: P5CDH and seed development
No full textInternational audienceProline is a multifaceted amino acid in plants involved in both stress responses and development. Recent studies have shown that knock-out mutants lacking Pyrroline-5-carboxylate dehydrogenase (P5CDH), the enzyme responsible for the second step of proline catabolism, impaired nitrogen remobilisation and carbon allocation to seeds. Here, we demonstrate that seed development is also significantly impaired in p5cdh mutants, particularly from the transition between embryogenesis and maturation. Specifically, the p5cdh mutation leads to an arrest in embryo elongation and a reprogramming of seed metabolism during maturation, resulting in reduced accumulation of storage compounds and compromised acquisition of dehydration tolerance. These effects are further exacerbated under high nitrate conditions. Together, our findings highlight a crucial role for proline catabolism in supporting the ability of maturing embryos to utilize glutamine as a nitrogen source, particularly in response to nitrogen availability
Persistent deficiency of mucosal-associated invariant T cells during dermatomyositis
No full textInternational audienceObjectives: Mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are innate-like lymphocytes that are important for antibacterial immunity and may have regulatory roles. MAIT cells are decreased during SLE. However, their frequencies and phenotype have not been investigated in DM. We studied MAIT cell frequencies and phenotype in DM patients with active and inactive disease (after treatment).Methods: Peripheral blood flow cytometry analysis of MAIT cells was compared between DM (n = 22), SLE (n = 10), psoriasis (n = 7) and atopic dermatitis (n = 5) patients, and healthy controls (n = 19).Results: A dramatic decrease of circulating MAIT cell frequency was observed in active DM and SLE patients compared with healthy controls and other inflammatory skin diseases [active DM: median = 0.25% (interquartile range 0.19-0.6%), P < 0.0001; active SLE: median = 0.61 (0.55-0.77), P < 0.0001 vs healthy controls: 2.32% (1.18-4.45%)]. MAIT cells from active DM patients had an abnormal phenotype including increased expression of CD25 and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 that correlated with their low frequency in the blood.Conclusion: In DM, peripheral blood MAIT cells are dramatically reduced and have an activated/exhausted phenotype that may be linked to increased activation-induced cell death.Keywords: T-lymphocytes; autoimmunity; dermatomyositis; immunology; mucosal-associated invariant T cells
Étude de l'utilité clinique de la glycoprotéine alpha-1 acide et de la procalcitonine lors d'affections inflammatoires systémiques chez le chat à partir de 30 cas recrutés au CHUV-AC entre janvier 2024 et juin 2025
No full textAfter reviewing the current knowledge on the acute inflammatory response and the inflammatory proteins such as SAA, AGP and PCT in cats, it seemed relevant to experimentally investigate the potential use of these markers to distinguish cats affected by FIP (for AGP) and those suffering from bacterial infections (for PCT) among other cats with systemic inflammation. First, AntechTM Laboratories investigated a new method for measuring blood AGP concentration, called the “latex agglutination assay”. It would allow for a valid, rapid and accurate measurement of blood AGP in cats, and could be applied to a large number of blood samples. Then, a study was conducted to evaluate a new method for measuring plasma PCT concentration using the MyBioSource® ELISA kit. This method appears to be valid and accurate, while also being relatively easy to implement. Within our sample of diseased cats, plasma PCT did not have any diagnostic value for distinguishing bacterial infections from other forms of inflammation in cats. Moreover, our study suggests that, in order to differentiate cats suffering from severe bacterial infections from those with FIP, the threshold value of serum AGP concentration providing the highest specificity would be higher than that reported in previous studies. However, our findings support previous evidence indicating that AGP, unlike SAA, is a useful marker for distinguishing cats with FIP from other cats presenting systemic inflammation. However, the results of our study should be interpreted with caution, given the likely lack of statistical power due to the small sample sizes of both healthy and diseased cats, which represents the main limitation of our study. The recruitment of diseased cats is still underway to repeat the statistical analyses once greater statistical power has been achieved.Après avoir fait le point sur les connaissances actuelles concernant la réaction inflammatoire aigüe et les protéines de l'inflammation que sont la SAA, l'AGP et la PCT chez le chat, il semblait pertinent d'étudier expérimentalement à notre tour l'utilisation de ces marqueurs afin de discriminer des chats atteints de PIF (pour l'AGP) et ceux atteints d'infection bactérienne (pour la PCT) parmi d'autres chats atteints d'inflammation systémique. Tout d'abord, le laboratoire AntechTM Laboratories a étudié une nouvelle méthode de mesure de la concentration sanguine en AGP intitulée le « latex agglutination assay ». Elle permettrait une mesure valide, rapide, précise et réalisable sur un nombre important d'échantillons sanguins de la concentration sérique en AGP chez le chat. Ensuite, une étude a été menée sur une nouvelle méthode de mesure de la concentration plasmatique en PCT via le kit ELISA MyBioSource®. Elle représenterait une méthode valide et précise en plus d'être relativement simple à mettre en place. Au sein de notre échantillon de chats malades, la concentration plasmatique en PCT n'a pas présenté de valeur diagnostique permettant de distinguer des infections bactériennes des autres formes d'inflammations chez le chat. De plus, notre étude suggère que, afin de distinguer des chats souffrant d'infection bactérienne sévère de chats souffrant de PIF, la valeur seuil de la concentration sérique en AGP permettant d'avoir la spécificité la plus haute serait plus importante que celle ayant été déterminée par des études précédentes. Mais notre étude se révèle être en faveur des résultats précédemment établis, qui sont que l'AGP serait un marqueur utile (contrairement à la SAA) afin de discriminer les chats atteints de PIF des autres chats présentant une inflammation systémique. Il convient d'interpréter les résultats de notre étude avec précaution, étant donné le manque probable de puissance statistique dû à des échantillons de chats sains et malades de faibles effectifs, ce qui constitue la principale limite de notre étude. Le recrutement de chats malades se poursuit, afin de réitérer les analyses statistiques en ayant une puissance statistique plus importante