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In this article, arrestment of an aircraft by a hydraulic twister based system is modeled and reduced to simple design charts. We are primarily interested in performance parameters like maximum deceleration, run-out distance, and maximum tape force. We first present a simplified mechanical model for the system. Some analytical progress is possible with the governing nonlinear differential equation, yielding expressions for velocity and acceleration in terms of displacement. The system has only two nondimensional parameters. This allows us to present simple design charts for the performance parameters. The same approach is extended to secondary performance parameters namely maximum jerk and the time at which maximum deceleration occurs. We choose some practical parameter sets and demonstrate the use of our charts. These charts can be used for design calculations and quick performance prediction of an arresting gear design for different weight classes of aircraft and practical initial velocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Two or more autoantibodies against either insulin (IAA), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GADA), islet antigen-2 (IA-2A) or zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8A) denote stage 1 (normoglycemia) or stage 2 (dysglycemia) type 1 diabetes prior to stage 3 type 1 diabetes. Automated multiplex Antibody Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) assays in two laboratories were compared to single plex radiobinding assays (RBA) to define threshold levels for diagnostic specificity and sensitivity., Methods: IAA, GADA, IA-2A and ZnT8A were analysed in 1504 (54% females) population based controls (PBC), 456 (55% females) doctor's office controls (DOC) and 535 (41% females) blood donor controls (BDC) as well as in 2300 (48% females) patients newly diagnosed (1-10 years of age) with stage 3 type 1 diabetes. The thresholds for autoantibody positivity were computed in 100 10-fold cross-validations to separate patients from controls either by maximizing the χ 2 -statistics (chisq) or using the 98th percentile of specificity (Spec98). Mean and 95% CI for threshold, sensitivity and specificity are presented., Findings: The ADAP ROC curves of the four autoantibodies showed comparable AUC in the two ADAP laboratories and were higher than RBA. Detection of two or more autoantibodies using chisq showed 0.97 (0.95, 0.99) sensitivity and 0.94 (0.91, 0.97) specificity in ADAP compared to 0.90 (0.88, 0.95) sensitivity and 0.97 (0.94, 0.98) specificity in RBA. Using Spec98, ADAP showed 0.92 (0.89, 0.95) sensitivity and 0.99 (0.98, 1.00) specificity compared to 0.89 (0.77, 0.86) sensitivity and 1.00 (0.99, 1.00) specificity in the RBA. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were higher in PBC compared to DOC and BDC., Interpretation: ADAP was comparable in two laboratories, both comparable to or better than RBA, to define threshold levels for two or more autoantibodies to stage type 1 diabetes., Funding: Supported by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust (grant number 2009-04078), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Dnr IRC15-0067) and the Swedish Research Council, Strategic Research Area (Dnr 2009-1039). AL was supported by the DiaUnion collaborative study, co-financed by EU Interreg ÖKS, Capital Region of Denmark, Region Skåne and the Novo Nordisk Foundation., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests FJC, DG, DT, PVR, DS and CTT are employed by Enable Biosciences. FJC, DG, DT, PVR, DS and CTT are shareholders of Enable Biosciences. PVR and CTT are inventors of the ADAP patent licensed from University of California, Berkeley to Enable Biosciences. This does not alter our adherence to journal policies on sharing data and materials. All authors critically reviewed and approved the manuscript., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Achieving early diagnosis of pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes is critical to reduce potentially life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at symptom onset, link patients to FDA approved therapeutics that can delay disease progression and support novel interventional drugs development. The presence of two or more islet autoantibodies in pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes patients indicates high-risk of progression to clinical manifestation., Method: Herein, we characterized the capability of multiplex ADAP assay to predict type 1 diabetes progression. We obtained retrospective coded sera from a cohort of 48 progressors and 44 non-progressors from the NIDDK DPT-1 study., Result: The multiplex ADAP assay and radiobinding assays had positive predictive value (PPV)/negative predictive value (NPV) of 68%/92% and 67%/66% respectively. The improved NPV stemmed from 12 progressors tested positive for multiple islet autoantibodies by multiplex ADAP assay but not by RBA. Furthermore, 6 out of these 12 patients tested positive for multiple islet autoantibodies by RBA in subsequent sampling events with a median delay of 2.8 years compared to multiplex ADAP assay., Discussion: In summary, multiplex ADAP assay could be an ideal tool for type 1 diabetes risk testing due to its sample-sparing nature (4µL), non-radioactiveness, compatibility with widely available real-time qPCR instruments and favorable risk prediction capability., Competing Interests: DT, BH, FJC, PR, DS, and C-tT were employed by Enable Biosciences. FJC, DT, PR, DS, and C-tT are shareholders of Enable Biosciences. PR and C-tT are inventors of the ADAP patent licensed from University of California, Berkeley to Enable Biosciences. The ADAP assay used in this study is a product in development. This does not alter our adherence to journal policies on sharing data and materials., (Copyright © 2024 Tandel, Hinton, de Jesus Cortez, Seftel, Robinson and Tsai.)

The distinct disease progression patterns of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus clade 2 (SARS-CoV-2) indicate diverse host immune responses. SARS-CoV-2 severely impairs type I interferon (IFN) cell signaling, resulting in uncontrolled late-phase lung damage in patients. For better pharmacological properties, cytokine modifications may sometimes result in a loss of biological activity against the virus. Here, we employed the genetic code expansion and engineered IFN-β, a phase II clinical cytokine with 3-amino tyrosine (IFN-β-A) that reactivates STAT2 expression in virus-infected human cells through JAK/STAT cell signaling without affecting signal activation and serum half-life. This study identified that genetically encoded IFN-β-A might stabilize the protein-receptor complex and trigger JAK-STAT cell signaling, which is a promising modality for controlling SARS-CoV-2 infection., (© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Comorbidities such as diabetes worsen COVID-19 severity and recovery. Metformin, a first-line medication for type 2 diabetes, has antiviral properties and certain studies have also indicated its prognostic potential in COVID-19. Here, we report that metformin significantly inhibits SARS-CoV-2 growth in cell culture models. First, a steady increase in AMPK phosphorylation was detected as infection progressed, suggesting its important role during viral infection. Activation of AMPK in Calu3 and Caco2 cell lines using metformin revealed that metformin suppresses SARS-CoV-2 infectious titers up to 99%, in both naïve as well as infected cells. IC50 values from dose-variation studies in infected cells were found to be 0.4 and 1.43 mM in Calu3 and Caco2 cells, respectively. Role of AMPK in metformin's antiviral suppression was further confirmed using other pharmacological compounds, AICAR and Compound C. Collectively, our study demonstrates that metformin is effective in limiting the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture and thus possibly could offer double benefits as diabetic COVID-19 patients by lowering both blood glucose levels and viral load., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has caused more severe infections than its previous variants. We studied the host innate immune response to Delta, Alpha, and two earlier variants to map the evolution of the recent ones. Our biochemical and transcriptomic studies in human colon epithelial cell line Caco2 reveal that Alpha and Delta have progressively evolved over the ancestral variants by silencing the innate immune response, thereby limiting cytokine and chemokine production. Though Alpha silenced the retinoic acid-inducible gene (RIG)-I-like receptor (RLR) pathway just like Delta did, it failed to persistently silence the innate immune response, unlike Delta. Both Alpha and Delta have evolved to resist interferon (IFN) treatment, while they are still susceptible to RLR activation, further highlighting the importance of RLR-mediated, IFN-independent mechanisms in restricting SARS-CoV-2. Our studies reveal that SARS-CoV-2 Delta has integrated multiple mechanisms to silence the host innate immune response and evade the IFN response. We speculate that Delta's silent replication and sustained suppression of the host innate immune response, thereby resulting in delayed or reduced intervention by the adaptive immune response, could have potentially contributed to the severe symptoms and poor recovery index associated with it. It is likely that this altered association with the host would play an important role in the coevolution of SARS-CoV-2 with humans. IMPORTANCE Viruses generally learn to coexist with the host during the process of evolution. It is expected that SARS-CoV-2 would also evolve to coexist in humans by trading off its virulence for longer persistence, causing milder disease. Clinically, the fatality associated with COVID-19 has been declining due to vaccination and preinfections, but the Delta variant caused the most severe disease and fatality across several parts of the world. Our study identified an evolving trend of SARS-CoV-2 variants where the variants that emerged during early parts of the pandemic caused a more robust innate immune response, while the later emerging variant Delta showed features of suppression of the response. The features that Delta has acquired could have strongly influenced the distinct pathophysiology associated with its infection. How these changed associations with the host influence the long-term evolution of the virus and the disease outcome should be closely studied to understand the process of viral evolution.

To understand the transmission characteristics of severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) through air, samples from different locations occupied by coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients were analyzed. Three sampling strategies were used to understand the presence of virus in the air in different environmental conditions. In the first strategy, which involved hospital settings, air samples were collected from several areas of hospitals like COVID-intensive-care units (ICUs), nurse-stations, COVID-wards, corridors, non-COVID-wards, personal protective equipment (PPE) doffing areas, COVID rooms, out-patient (OP) corridors, mortuary, COVID casualty areas, non-COVID ICUs and doctors' rooms. Out of the 80 air samples collected from 6 hospitals from two Indian cities- Hyderabad and Mohali, 30 samples showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids. In the second sampling strategy, that involved indoor settings, one or more COVID-19 patients were asked to spend a short duration of time in a closed room. Out of 17 samples, 5 samples, including 4 samples collected after the departure of three symptomatic patients from the room, showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids. In the third strategy, involving indoor settings, air samples were collected from rooms of houses of home-quarantined COVID-19 patients and it was observed that SARS-CoV-2 RNA could be detected in the air in the rooms occupied by COVID-19 patients but not in the other rooms of the houses. Taken together, we observed that the air around COVID-19 patients frequently showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in both hospital and indoor residential settings and the positivity rate was higher when 2 or more COVID-19 patients occupied the room. In hospitals, SARS-CoV-2 RNA could be detected in ICUs as well as in non-ICUs, suggesting that the viral shedding happened irrespective of the severity of the infection. This study provides evidence for the viability of SARS-CoV-2 and its long-range transport through the air. Thus, airborne transmission could be a major mode of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 and appropriate precautions need to be followed to prevent the spread of infection through the air., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

An easily implementable serological assay to accurately detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) neutralizing antibodies is urgently needed to better track herd immunity, vaccine efficacy and vaccination rates. Herein, we report the Split-Oligonucleotide Neighboring Inhibition Assay (SONIA) which uses real-time qPCR to measure the ability of neutralizing antibodies to block binding between DNA-barcoded viral spike protein subunit 1 and the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor protein. The SONIA neutralizing antibody assay using finger-prick dried blood spots displays 91-97% sensitivity and 100% specificity in comparison to the live-virus neutralization assays using matched serum specimens for multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants-of-concern. The multiplex version of this neutralizing antibody assay, using easily collectable finger-prick dried blood spots, can be a valuable tool to help reveal the impact of age, pre-existing health conditions, waning immunity, different vaccination schemes and the emergence of new variants-of-concern., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Multiplex Antibody-Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) assay was compared to singleplex standard radiobinding assays (RBA) to detect autoantibodies against insulin (IAA), GAD65 (GADA), islet antigen-2 (IA-2A), ZnT8 (ZnT8A) and tissue transglutaminase (TGA). Serum samples from 273 (114F/158M), 15-73 years of age healthy controls and 227 (109F/118M) newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes children, 1-11 years of age, were analyzed in both assay systems.The original WHO standard 97/550 and in-house reference standards for RBA were compared to ADAP. The ADAP and RBA generated parallel reference standards in all assays except TGA. Lower detection limits were observed in the ADAP assay for GADA,IAA and ZnT8A, markedly for TGA, but not for IA-2A. The Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve AUC analyses for pairwise comparison of ADAP with RBA showed no difference for GADA (n.s.), ADAP greater AUC for IAA (p = 0.005), RBA greater AUC for IA-2A (p = 0.0004) and ZnT8A (p < 0.0001) while ADAP TGA had a greater AUC compared to both RBA TGA-IgG (p < 0.0001) and TGA-IgA (p < 0.0001). These data suggest that the ADAP and RBA assays are comparable with equal performance for GADA, better ADAP performance for IAA while the RBA showed better performance in both IA-2A and ZnT8A associated with greater heterogeneity in autoantibody levels. The simultaneous analysis of 5 different autoantibodies by ADAP in sample volume reduced to only 4 μL and at an increased lower detection limit in all assays except IA-2A makes the ADAP automated autoantibody assay a distinct advantage for high throughput screening., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Neutralizing antibody-based passive immunotherapy could be an important therapeutic option against COVID-19. Herein, we demonstrate that equines hyper-immunized with chemically inactivated SARS-CoV-2 elicited high antibody titers with a strong virus-neutralizing potential, and F(ab') 2 fragments purified from them displayed strong neutralization potential against five different SARS-CoV-2 variants. F(ab') 2 fragments purified from the plasma of hyperimmunized horses showed high antigen-specific affinity. Experiments in rabbits suggested that the F(ab') 2 displays a linear pharmacokinetics with approximate plasma half-life of 47 h. In vitro microneutralization assays using the purified F(ab') 2 displayed high neutralization titers against five different variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the Delta variant, demonstrating its potential efficacy against the emerging viral variants. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that F(ab') 2 generated against SARS-CoV-2 in equines have high neutralization titers and have broad target-range against the evolving variants, making passive immunotherapy a potential regimen against the existing and evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants in combating COVID-19., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Screening for islet autoantibody markers to identify individuals who are at high risk for developing type 1 diabetes (T1D), often years in advance of clinical symptoms, is both a challenge and a necessity. Identifying high-risk individuals not only reduces hospitalization and rates of life-threatening diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA), but also directs enrollment into prevention trials that require patients who are in the early stages of disease. Here we describe an automated high-throughput multiplex islet autoantibody assay that integrates antibody detection by agglutination-PCR (ADAP) chemistry on the Hamilton Microlab STAR liquid handling platform. The automated system features on-deck thermal cycling and plate sealing to minimize the level of human intervention. The automated multiplex ADAP T1D assay performed similarly to that of manual methods using two distinct cohorts of clinical specimens obtained from the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University and the 2018 Islet Autoantibody Standardization Program (IASP). Notably, the automated assay requires only 4 μL of serum sample for the simultaneous analysis of GAD, IA-2 and insulin autoantibodies. Up to 96 samples may be processed in as little as 3 hours, and the only user intervention required is to transfer a final sealed 96-well plate containing PCR amplicons onto a quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) instrument for quantification. The automated system is particularly well suited for large-scale analysis of islet autoantibodies in a reproducible, timely, and cost-effective manner., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Felipe de Jesus Cortez, David Gebhart, Devangkumar Tandel, Peter V. Robinson, David Seftel, and Cheng ting Tsai and are employees of Enable Biosciences, which sells ADAP reagent kit chemistries and analytical services related to T1D testing. Kevin W.P. Miller is employed of Hamilton Company, which manufactures and sells the Microlab ADAP STAR liquid handling platform., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Inactivated viral preparations are important resources in vaccine and antisera industry. Of the many vaccines that are being developed against COVID-19, inactivated whole-virus vaccines are also considered effective. β-propiolactone (BPL) is a widely used chemical inactivator of several viruses. Here, we analyze various concentrations of BPL to effectively inactivate SARS-CoV-2 and their effects on the biochemical properties of the virion particles. BPL at 1:2000 (v/v) concentrations effectively inactivated SARS-CoV-2. However, higher BPL concentrations resulted in the loss of both protein content as well as the antigenic integrity of the structural proteins. Higher concentrations also caused substantial aggregation of the virion particles possibly resulting in insufficient inactivation, and a loss in antigenic potential. We also identify that the viral RNA content in the culture supernatants can be a direct indicator of their antigenic content. Our findings may have important implications in the vaccine and antisera industry during COVID-19 pandemic., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

As of July 22, 2020, more than 14.7 million infections of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), have been confirmed globally. Serological assays are essential for community screening, assessing infection prevalence, aiding identification of infected patients, and enacting appropriate treatment and quarantine protocols in the battle against this rapidly expanding pandemic. Antibody detection by agglutination-PCR (ADAP) is a pure solution phase immunoassay that generates a PCR amplifiable signal when patient antibodies agglutinate DNA-barcoded antigen probes into a dense immune complex. Here, we present an ultrasensitive and high-throughput automated liquid biopsy assay based on the Hamilton Microlab ADAP STAR automated liquid-handling platform, which was developed and validated for the qualitative detection of total antibodies against spike protein 1 (S1) of SARS-CoV-2 that uses as little as 4 µL of serum. To assess the clinical performance of the ADAP assay, 57 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients and 223 control patients were tested. The assay showed a sensitivity of 98% (56/57) and a specificity of 99.55% (222/223). Notably, the SARS-CoV-2-negative control patients included individuals with other common coronaviral infections, such as CoV-NL63 and CoV-HKU, which did not cross-react. In addition to high performance, the hands-free automated workstation enabled high-throughput sample processing to reduce screening workload while helping to minimize analyst contact with biohazardous samples. Therefore, the ADAP STAR liquid-handling workstation can be used as a valuable tool to address the COVID-19 global pandemic.

A rapid and sensitive reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method using novel salting-out assisted liquid-liquid extraction technique has been developed for the quantitative determination of febuxostat (FEB), used for the treatment of gout, in rat plasma. The method was validated according to US FDA guideline. Separation was achieved using a Phenomenex Luna-C 18 (250 × 4.60 mm, 5 µm) column and mobile phase composed of potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate buffer 25 mM, adjusted to pH 6.8 with triethylamine:methanol in a ratio of 35:65 (v/v) showing retention time 5.56 and 8.86 min for FEB and internal standard, respectively. The optimal salting-out parameters; 1 mL of acetonitrile and 200 µL of 2 M ammonium acetate salt showed extraction recovery >90% for FEB from plasma. This extraction procedure afforded clear samples resulting in convenient and cost-saving procedure and showed good linear relationship (r > 0.9997) between peak area ratio and concentration from 0.3 to 20 µg/mL. The results of pharmacokinetic study showed that absorption profile of spherical agglomerate of FEB compared to marketed formulation was higher indicating greater systemic absorption. In conclusion, the developed SALLE-HPLC method with simple ultraviolet detection offered a number of advantages including good quantitative ability, wide linear range, high recovery, short analysis time as well as low cost., (© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Purpose: To study the effect of injection bevacizumab on iris neovascularization (NVI) and angle neovascularization (NVA) and compare its efficacy in terms of visual outcome, NVI, NVA, and intraocular pressure (IOP) control between intracameral, intravitreal, and combined use., Materials and Methods: This was a prospective study conducted at a tertiary center for patients of neovascular glaucoma (NVG), including 20 eyes of 20 patients. After thorough evaluation, patients were divided into three groups: Intracameral, intravitreal, or combined, according to the route of injection bevacizumab required., Results: About 30% of patients belonged to the age group 51 to 60 years of which 80% were female. In 50%, vein occlusion was the cause of NVG, and 50% needed intravitreal injection bevacizumab. After 4th week of injection 90% and after 12th week 60% were found to have absence of NVI. Patients who had IOP in the range of 11 to 20 mm Hg and 21 to 30 mm Hg showed lower IOP as compared to other groups. But no significant difference was noted in higher IOP groups. Only two patients required antiglaucoma surgery. There was no statistically significant difference in visual outcomes in any groups. In all routes, there were statistically significant changes in NVI and NVG in the 1st and 4th weeks., Conclusion: The effect of injection in all routes deteriorates after 8 weeks. Intracameral route of injection is found to be most effective in terms of control of IOP. There was no statistically significant difference in terms of improvement in best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) in any route. Injection bevacizumab is effective and statistically significant in reducing the need of antiglaucoma surgery for NVG patients. How to cite this article: Bhagat PR, Agrawal KU, Tandel D. Study of the Effect of Injection Bevacizumab through Various Routes in Neovascular Glaucoma. J Curr Glaucoma Pract 2016;10(2):39-48.