Search

Huntington's disease (HD) is a hereditary neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG tract expansion in the huntingtin gene (HTT). HD is characterized by involuntary movements, cognitive decline, and behavioral changes. Pathologically, patients with HD show selective striatal neuronal vulnerability at the early disease stage, although the mutant protein is ubiquitously expressed. Activation of the immune system and glial cell-mediated neuroinflammatory responses are early pathological features and have been found in all neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs), including HD. However, the role of inflammation in HD, as well as its therapeutic significance, has been less extensively studied compared to other NDDs. This review highlights the significantly elevated levels of inflammatory proteins and cellular markers observed in various HD animal models and HD patient tissues, emphasizing the critical roles of microglia, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes in mediating neuroinflammation in HD. Moreover, it expands on recent discoveries related to the peripheral immune system's involvement in HD. Although current immunomodulatory treatments and inflammatory biomarkers for adjunctive diagnosis in HD are limited, targeting inflammation in combination with other therapies, along with comprehensive personalized treatment approaches, shows promising therapeutic potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversible data-hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) plays a pivotal role in preserving privacy within images stored on cloud platforms. Recently, Wang et al. introduced a dual-stage permutation encryption scheme, which is highly compatible with RDHEI techniques. In this study, we undertake an exhaustive examination of the characteristics inherent to the dual-stage permutation scheme and propose two cryptanalysis schemes leveraging a large-kernel convolutional neural network (LKCNN) and a known plaintext attack (KPA) scheme, respectively. Our experimental findings demonstrate the effectiveness of our cryptanalysis schemes in breaking the dual-stage permutation encryption scheme. Based on our investigation, we highlight significant security vulnerabilities in the dual-stage permutation encryption scheme, raising concerns about its suitability for secure image storage and privacy protection in cloud environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial recognition systems have emerged as indispensable components in identity verification. These systems heavily rely on facial data, which is stored in a biometric database. However, storing such data in a database raises concerns about privacy breaches. To address this issue, several technologies have been proposed for protecting facial biometrics. Unfortunately, many of these methods can cause irreversible damage to the data, rendering it unusable for other purposes. In this paper, we propose a novel reversible anonymization scheme for face images via cyclic learning. In our scheme, face images can be de-identified for privacy protection and reidentified when necessary. To achieve this, we employ generative adversarial networks with a cycle consistency loss function to learn the bidirectional transformation between the de-identified and re-identified domains. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme performs well in terms of both de-identification and reidentification. Furthermore, a security analysis validates the effectiveness of our system in mitigating potential attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data hiding in digital images is a potent solution for covert communication, embedding sensitive data into cover images. However, most existing methods are tailored for one-to-one scenarios, which present security risks. To mitigate this vulnerability, we introduce an innovative one-to-two data hiding scheme that employs a two-tier bit-flipping strategy to embed sensitive data in dual images. This process produces two stego images which are then transmitted to two distinct recipients who cannot extract any sensitive data alone. The sensitive data can only be extracted when the two recipients trust each other. Through this method, we can secure the stego images. The experimental results illustrate that our method achieves an excellent data payload while maintaining high visual quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Streptococcus pneumoniae ( Sp ), a leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia, can spread from the lung into the bloodstream to cause septicemia and meningitis, with a concomitant threefold increase in mortality. Limitations in vaccine efficacy and a rise in antimicrobial resistance have spurred searches for host-directed therapies that target pathogenic immune processes. Polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) are essential for infection control but can also promote tissue damage and pathogen spread. The major Sp virulence factor, pneumolysin, triggers acute inflammation by stimulating the 12-lipoxygenase (12-LOX) eicosanoid synthesis pathway in epithelial cells. This pathway is required for systemic spread in a mouse pneumonia model and produces a number of bioactive lipids, including hepoxilin A3 (HXA 3 ), a hydroxy epoxide PMN chemoattractant that has been hypothesized to facilitate breach of mucosal barriers. To understand how 12-LOX-dependent inflammation promotes dissemination during Sp lung infection and dissemination, we utilized bronchial stem cell-derived air-liquid interface cultures that lack this enzyme to show that HXA 3 methyl ester (HXA 3 -ME) is sufficient to promote basolateral-to-apical PMN transmigration, monolayer disruption, and concomitant Sp barrier breach. In contrast, PMN transmigration in response to the non-eicosanoid chemoattractant N-formyl-L-methionyl-L-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP) did not lead to epithelial disruption or bacterial translocation. Correspondingly, HXA 3 -ME but not fMLP increased the release of neutrophil elastase (NE) from Sp -infected PMNs. Pharmacologic blockade of NE secretion or activity diminished epithelial barrier disruption and bacteremia after pulmonary challenge of mice. Thus, HXA 3 promotes barrier-disrupting PMN transmigration and NE release, pathological events that can be targeted to curtail systemic disease following pneumococcal pneumonia.IMPORTANCE Streptococcus pneumoniae ( Sp ), a leading cause of pneumonia, can spread from the lung into the bloodstream to cause systemic disease. Limitations in vaccine efficacy and a rise in antimicrobial resistance have spurred searches for host-directed therapies that limit pathologic host immune responses to Sp . Excessive polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) infiltration into Sp -infected airways promotes systemic disease. Using stem cell-derived respiratory cultures that reflect bona fide lung epithelium, we identified eicosanoid hepoxilin A3 as a critical pulmonary PMN chemoattractant that is sufficient to drive PMN-mediated epithelial damage by inducing the release of neutrophil elastase. Inhibition of the release or activity of this protease in mice limited epithelial barrier disruption and bacterial dissemination, suggesting a new host-directed treatment for Sp lung infection., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.