122,111 research outputs found
Smell and autoimmunity: a comprehensive review
No full textThe sense of smell is an ancient sensory modality vital for sampling and perceiving the chemical composition of surrounding environments. Olfaction involves a pathway of biochemical and electrophysiological processes, which allows the conversion of molecular information into sensations. Disturbances in the olfactory function have been investigated mainly in neurological/neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases; impaired sense of smell has been associated with depressed mood. Only recently, smell capability was tested in other diseases, particularly autoimmune diseases. Shoenfeld and colleagues opened this chapter showing that patients affected with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have disturbances in their olfactory functions and revealed its association with neuropsychiatric manifestations of the disease. This evidence was confirmed in experimental models and replicated in other SLE populations. The connection between autoimmunity and the sense of smell was lately emphasized by studies on patients with Sjögren's syndrome and in patients with other autoimmune/immune-mediated diseases, such as polydermatomyositis, recurrent spontaneous abortion, and hereditary angioedema. Genetic susceptibility and hormonal and environmental factors may play a role in these conditions. Olfactory receptor gene clusters are located in proximity to key locus of susceptibility for autoimmune diseases such as the major histocompatibility complex, suggesting not only a physic linkage, but a functional association. Nonetheless, gender- and hormone-mediated effects are fundamental in the development of autoimmune diseases. The different connections between smell and autoimmunity, genes and hormones may suggest that this is another tessera of a mosaic which is waiting the answer of Oedipus
Classical examples of the concept of the ASIA syndrome
No full textAutoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) was first introduced in 2011 by Shoenfeld et al. and encompasses a cluster of related immune mediated diseases, which develop among genetically prone individuals as a result of adjuvant agent exposure. Since the recognition of ASIA syndrome, more than 4400 documented cases have been reported so far, illustrated by heterogeneous clinical manifestations and severity. In this review, five enigmatic conditions, including sarcoidosis, Sjögren’s syndrome, undifferentiated connective tissue disease, silicone implant incompatibility syndrome (SIIS), and immune related adverse events (irAEs), are defined as classical examples of ASIA. Certainly, these disorders have been described after an adjuvant stimulus (silicone implantation, drugs, infections, metals, vaccines, etc.) among genetically predisposed individuals (mainly the HLA DRB1 and PTPN22 gene), which induce an hyperstimulation of the immune system resulting in the production of autoantibodies, eventually leading to the development of autoimmune diseases. Circulating autonomic autoantibodies in the sera of patients with silicone breast implants, as well as anatomopathological aspects of small fiber neuropathy in their skin biopsies have been recently described. To our knowledge, these novel insights serve as a common explanation to the non specific clinical manifestations reported in patients with ASIA, leading to the redefinition of the ASIA syndrome diagnostic criteria
Unraveling the soul of autoimmune diseases: pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment adding dowels to the puzzle
No full textEvidence of impaired sense of smell in hereditary angioedema
No full textHereditary angioedema (HAE) is an autosomal-dominant disorder resulting from C1-inhibitor (C1INH) deficiency. Smell impairments were found in patients affected with systemic lupus erythematosus, that, similarly to HAE, is characterized by the activation of the classical complement pathway with C4 consumption. In this study, we aimed at evaluating the sense of smell in patients with HAE
Erratum: Corrigendum to “Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) 2013: Unveiling the pathogenic, clinical and diagnostic aspects” (Journal of Autoimmunity (2013) 47 (1–16) (S0896841113001364) (10.1016/j.jaut.2013.10.004))
No full textThe authors would like to inform the readers that the following error was made in the original article: The paper incorrectly described an elevated risk of fetal death following maternal influenza vaccination. However, Håberg SE et al. (Håberg SE, Trogstad L, Gunnes N, Wilcox AJ, Gjessing HK, Samuelsen SO et al. Risk of fetal death after pandemic influenza virus infection or vaccination. N Engl J Med 2013;368:333e40) found that the fetal death risk decreased after vaccination. They found among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza that the risk of fetal death was increased (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.07 to 3.41) but the risk of fetal death was reduced with vaccination during pregnancy, although this reduction was not significant (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.66 to 1.17). Thus, influenza vaccination should be considered an effective preventive strategy during pregnancy. The authors wish to apologise for any inconvenience caused
A Multi-Language Comparison of Influences on Author Verification using Character N-Grams
No full textWe create a new multi-language corpus for author verification based on Wikipedia talkpages, and evaluate the influence that differences in topic and time have on character n-gram author profiles. Topic alignment between two texts is found to increase author verification precision, and an authors writing style is found to change over time, but not more significantly after 3 years than after 1 year.Information ArchitectureWISElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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