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A method for oxygenating and mixing suspensions of turbot Psetta maxima red blood cells (RBC) was tested in 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. In normoxia, the levels of inorganic phosphate (Pi) and nucleoside triphosphates (NTP) were stable up to 140 min and intracellular pH (pHi) was maintained and decreased oxygen partial pressure ( PO 2) from 30 to 15 and 600 Pa produced a significant fall in the intensity of NTP resonance, balanced by an increase in the Pi signal. Treatment of RBC with 0· 5 M isoproterenol during hypoxia exposure did not affect the pattern of changes in NTP or pHi induced by hypoxia and the effect was manifest only on Pi levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To study the percentage, suppressive function and plasticity of Treg in giant cell arteritis (GCA), and the effects of glucocorticoids and tocilizumab., Methods: Blood samples were obtained from 40 controls and 43 GCA patients at baseline and after treatment with glucocorticoids + IV tocilizumab ( n  = 20) or glucocorticoids ( n  = 23). Treg percentage and phenotype were assessed by flow cytometry. Suppressive function of Treg was assessed by measuring their ability to inhibit effector T-cell (Teff) proliferation and polarisation into Th1 and Th17 cells., Results: Treg (CD4 + CD25 high FoxP3 + ) frequency in total CD4 + T cells was decreased in active GCA patients when compared to controls (2.5% vs. 4.7%, P  < 0.001) and increased after treatment with tocilizumab but worsened after treatment with glucocorticoids alone. Treg lacking exon 2 of FoxP3 were increased in GCA patients when compared to controls (23% vs. 10% of total Treg, P  = 0.0096) and normalised after treatment with tocilizumab + glucocorticoids but not glucocorticoids alone. In GCA patients, Treg were unable to control Teff proliferation and induced ˜50% increase in the amount of IL-17 + Teff, which was improved after in vitro blockade of the IL-6 pathway by tocilizumab., Conclusion: This study reports quantitative and functional disruptions in the regulatory immune response of GCA patients and demonstrates that, unlike glucocorticoids, tocilizumab improves Treg immune response., Competing Interests: Maxime Samson has received travel fees and personnel fees for symposium and boards from Roche–Chugaï, and consulting fees from AbbVie. Bernard Bonnotte serves as a board member for Roche–Chugaï. Catherine CREUZOT‐GARCHER has received a grant from Horus and Bayer, honoraria from Novartis and Bayer and serves as a medical advisory board member for Novartis, Bayer, Thea, Horus, Alcon and Allergan. Pierre‐Henry Gabrielle has received travel expenses from Allergan, Bayer and Novartis, and honoraria from Novartis and Bayer., (© 2021 The Authors. Clinical & Translational Immunology published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology, Inc.)

The buffer action of certain wood species can intensely affect the curing and hardening of some thermosetting wood adhesives. The present article presents a quantification of such buffering effects, determined under controlled conditions, in various wood species. The buffer capacity of oak has been found to be rather extreme and is likely to affect quite heavily the ability of urea-formaldehyde (UF) and melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) wood panel adhesives in industrial operations. A variation of the buffer capacity of furnishes containing between 0% and 30% oak chips has been investigated. This was correlated with the internal bond (IB) strength of MUF bonded laboratory particleboards. The wood mixture buffering capacity increases with the oak content, while the panel IB strength decreases.

Most countries have developed information systems to report drug adverse effects. However, as in other domains where systematic reviews are needed, there is little guidance on how systematic documentation of drug adverse effects should be performed. The objective of the VigiTermes project is to develop a platform to improve documentation of pharmacovigilance case reports for the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory authorities. In order to improve systematic reviews of adverse drug reactions, we developed a prototype that first reproduces and standardizes search strategies, then extracts information from the Medline abstracts which were retrieved and annotates them. The platform aims at providing transparent access and analysis tools to pharmacovigilance experts investigating relevance of safety signals related to drugs. The platform's architecture consists in the integration of two vendor tools ITM and Luxid and one academic web service for knowledge extraction from medical literature. Whereas a manual search performed by a pharmacovigilance expert retrieved 578 publications, the system proposed a list of 229 publications thus decreasing time required for review by 60%. Recall was 70% and additional developments are required in order to improve exhaustivity.

1. A rapid method for the determination of AMP and IMP by HPLC is described. 2. Its application to the assay of AMP deaminase allows the specific determination of enzyme activities in crude extracts, eliminating any interference by other enzyme systems (5'-nucleotidase and adenosine deaminase). 3. The method was routinely used for the determination of the AMP deaminase activity in the muscles of marine animals.

1. AMP deaminase from thoroughbred horse muscle was purified to apparent homogeneity and its regulatory properties were determined at pH 6.5 and 7.4. 2. The results are discussed in relation to the potential role of muscle AMP deaminase during exercise and the existence of two molecular forms depending on the pH.

1. AMP-deaminases from fish heart and skeletal muscle have been isolated, and their kinetic and regulatory properties compared. 2. The results obtained indicate that the enzyme variants present in fish heart and skeletal muscle, in contrast to their mammalian counterparts, show very similar chromatographic, kinetic and regulatory characteristics. 3. The above may reflect evolutionary programmed differences in AMP-deaminase gene(s) organization.

Three isolation procedures were used to test the labilization of the lysosomes after adaptation of the animals to seawater, starvation or acute and chronic treatments with 2,4,5-T, an organochlorine pesticide. The lysosomes from gill and liver had different properties with respect to their resistance to osmotic and mechanical shocks, or treatments with digitonin. Starvation induced a significant labilization of the lysosomes in liver, but not in gill. Salinity changes were without effect on the stability of the gill lysosomes, but induced an increase of the specific activity of the lysosomal enzyme beta-acetylglucosaminidase. Acute treatments with 2,4,5-T increased lysosomal fragility in the gill but not in the liver, while chronic treatments with this herbicide increased lysosomal lability in the two tissues. Liver lysosomes were much more susceptible to in vitro treatments with 2,4,5-T than gill lysosomes. The results are discussed with respect to the different functions of gill and liver, their exposure to the environment, and the possible discrimination between different lysosomal populations.