1,720,973 research outputs found
Human-Animal Interface: The Case for Influenza Interspecies Transmission
No full textSince the 1990s, the threat of influenza viruses to veterinary and human public health has increased. This coincides with the larger global populations of poultry, pigs, and people and with changing ecological factors. These factors include the redistribution of the human population to cities, rapid mass transportation of people and infectious agents, increased global land use, climate change, and possible changes in viral ecology that perpetuate highly pathogenic influenza viruses in the aquatic bird reservoir. The emergence of H5N1, H7N9, and H9N2 subtypes of influenza A virus and the increased genetic exchange among influenza viruses in wild aquatic birds, domestic poultry, swine, and humans pose a continuing threat to humanity. Here we consider the fundamental and practical knowledge of influenza A viruses at the human-animal interfaces to facilitate the development of novel control strategies and modified agricultural practices that will reduce or prevent interspecies transmission
Pro-inflammatory cytokines/ chemokines production after infection of A549 Human epithelial cell line with different strains of human influenza viruses
No full textBACKGROUND. Influenza virus infection causes early release of cytokines and chemokines that are important for controlling the spread of the virus. However, an excessive release of mediators may lead to tissue damage. Generally, disease severity correlates strongly with cytokine levels and markedly elevated levels of cytokines and chemokines have been observed following infection with highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus and with pandemic H1N1 virus of 1918 Spanish flu. Respiratory epithelial cells, the primary targets for influenza virus infection, have been shown to up-regulate pro-inflammatory mediators following in vitro infection with influenza viruses. Because of the importance of knowing factors contributing to the pathogenesis of influenza viruses, we investigated the abilities of different A and B human influenza viruses isolated during the past years in Italy to induce pro-inflammatory cytokine and chemokine expression in the human epithelial cell line A549. METHODS. MDCK cells were used for propagating viruses and virus titrations. For the measurement of pro-inflammatory cytokine/chemokines levels A549 cells were infected at an m.o.i. of 1. After 1 hour of incubation, the inoculum was removed, fresh culture medium with 2% fetal bovine serum was added, and cells were incubated at 37°C in 5% CO2. Cell-culture supernatants were harvested at 4, 12, 24 and 48 hours post-infection and analyzed for the presence of IL-6, IL-8, TNF-alpha, RANTES and MCP-1 using specific immunoenzymatic assays. Mock infected cells served as control. The results reported are those obtained from three different experiments and the values are expressed as percent increase in cytokine production respect to mock-infected cells. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS. All influenza viruses tested were capable of inducing increases in the production of IL-6, IL-8, TNF-alpha, RANTES and MCP-1 after infection of A549 cells. Moreover higher levels of some of these factors were produced upon viral infection with the pandemic influenza virus (H1N1/2009) as compared with an antigenically related epidemic descendent virus or with an influenza B virus isolated from a patient with severe influenza as compared with B virus responsible of mild illness. Thus, our in vitro studies show an influenza virus regulated expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines/chemokines and suggest the contribution of these mediators to the entity of clinical manifestation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Vaccination for seasonal influenza in patients with cancer: recommendations of the Italian Society of Medical Oncology (AIOM).
No full textBACKGROUND:
Influenza virus causes annual epidemics in the winter-spring season with significant morbidity in the general population and important mortality in high-risk groups, including cancer patients. Opinions on the suitability of patients with malignancies not undergoing active treatment and in different phases of antineoplastic therapy, to receive influenza vaccination, vary considerably among oncologists, sometimes even within one center.
METHODS:
We reviewed available data, including recommendations by national health authorities, on impact of influenza in patients with cancer and their capacity to mount protective immunological responses to vaccination, thus allowing, on behalf of Italian Association of Medical Oncology, to make suitable recommendations for the prevention and treatment of seasonal influenza.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:
Patients with cancer often have disease- or treatment-related immunosuppression, and as a consequence, they may have a suboptimal serologic response to influenza vaccination. The protective effect of the different preparations of influenza vaccines in patients with cancer has not been widely investigated, especially in adult patients harboring solid tumors. The optimal timing for administration of influenza vaccines in patients receiving chemotherapy is also not clearly defined. However, since vaccination is the most effective method, along with antiviral drugs in selected patients, for preventing influenza infection, it has to be recommended for cancer patients. Implementing vaccination of close contacts of oncology patients would be an additional tool for enhancing protection in fragile patient population
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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