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Background: Ocular trauma is the leading cause of monocular blindness in children. This study aimed to identify and compare pediatric ocular injuries at two national university hospitals: Benha University Hospital (BUH) and South Valley University Hospital (SVUH) while evaluating the predictive utility of the Ocular Trauma Score (OTS) for post-traumatic permanent visual infirmity., Design and Methods: This multicenter observational study enrolled children under 18 years at BUH and SVUH Ophthalmology Departments from May 31 to December 31, 2022. Comprehensive medical histories and detailed data on eye trauma were obtained, with each undergoing thorough eye examinations at the initial presentation and during the 6-month follow-up period. The final visual outcome was permanent visual infirmity that was defined as the Best Corrected Visual Acuity in the better eye worse than 3/60 or near vision worse than N6 according to the International Classification of Diseases 11., Results: The study included 120 cases evenly distributed between the two hospitals, with a mean age of 10.03 (±3.30) years, 74.17% male and 51.67% urban residents. Blunt, sharp, and foreign objects were the most common causes (39.17%, 33.33%, and 11.67%, respectively). Closed-globe injuries prevailed at BUH (83.33%) than SVUH (40.0%). Most injuries were accidental and outdoors, with an average interval of 9.93 (±23.57) hours to seek medical care. Lack of education, open-globe injuries, poor initial visual acuity, longer intervals from admission to intervention, and lower OTS were associated with visual impairment., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

YscX was discovered as an essential part of the Yersinia type III secretion system about 20 years ago. It is required for substrate secretion and is exported itself. Despite this central role, its precise function and mode of action remain unknown. In order to address this knowledge gap, this present study refocused attention on YscX to build on the recent advances in the understanding of YscX function. Our experiments identified an N-terminal secretion domain in YscX promoting its secretion, with the first five codons constituting a minimal signal capable of promoting secretion of the signal less β-lactamase reporter. Replacing the extreme YscX N-terminus with known secretion signals of other Ysc-Yop substrates revealed that the YscX N-terminal segment contains non-redundant information needed for YscX function. Further, both in cis deletion of the YscX N-terminus in the virulence plasmid and ectopic expression of epitope-tagged YscX variants again lead to stable YscX production but not type III secretion of Yop effector proteins. Mislocalisation of the needle components, SctI and SctF, accompanied this general defect in Yops secretion. Hence, a coupling exists between YscX secretion permissiveness and the assembly of an operational secretion system., (© 2022 The Authors. Molecular Microbiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Many previous studies have noticed obvious alterations in different white matter tracts among patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Growing evidence also strongly suggest a role of leptin in the pathogenesis of MDD, but with conflicting results of leptin levels. However, no previous studies have examined the relationship between leptin and white matter integrity of patients with MDD. Therefore, we aimed in this study to investigate the relationship between white matter alterations and plasma leptin levels in both drug-naïve and medicated MDD patients. We measured plasma leptin levels and white matter integrity using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and voxel-based analysis (VBA) in 140 participants (40 drug-naïve MDD patients; 40 medicated MDD patients; 60 healthy controls) aged between 18 and 49 years old. A significant reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) value in the dorsomedial thalamus was found for both drug-naïve and medicated MDD patients compared to the healthy non-depressed participants ( p < 0.01, corrected). In addition, leptin levels were significantly higher in the drug-naïve MDD patients and were negatively correlated with the detected white matter alteration. Our results suggest that the elevated plasma leptin levels in the drug-naïve MDD group might be associated with the changes of the white matter integrity in the dorsomedial thalamus region.

Type III secretion systems harbored by several Gram-negative bacteria are often used to deliver host-modulating effectors into infected eukaryotic cells. About 20 core proteins are needed for assembly of a secretion apparatus. Several of these proteins are genetically and functionally conserved in type III secretion systems of bacteria associated with invertebrate or vertebrate hosts. In the Ysc family of type III secretion systems are two poorly characterized protein families, the YscX family and the YscY family. In the plasmid-encoded Ysc-Yop type III secretion system of human pathogenic Yersinia species, YscX is a secreted substrate while YscY is its non-secreted cognate chaperone. Critically, neither an yscX nor yscY null mutant of Yersinia is capable of type III secretion. In this study, we show that the genetic equivalents of these proteins produced as components of other type III secretion systems of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PscX and PscY), Aeromonas species (AscX and AscY), Vibrio species (VscX and VscY), and Photorhabdus luminescens (SctX and SctY) all possess an ability to interact with its native cognate partner and also establish cross-reciprocal binding to non-cognate partners as judged by a yeast two-hybrid assay. Moreover, a yeast three-hybrid assay also revealed that these heterodimeric complexes could maintain an interaction with YscV family members, a core membrane component of all type III secretion systems. Despite maintaining these molecular interactions, only expression of the native yscX in the near full-length yscX deletion and native yscY in the near full-length yscY deletion were able to complement for their general substrate secretion defects. Hence, YscX and YscY must have co-evolved to confer an important function specifically critical for Yersinia type III secretion.