BACKGROUND: Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) can restore commensal microbiomes and prevent infections. Arguably, nasal administrations of LAB may therefore be beneficial in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Previous studies have examined effects of topical/nasal LAB in children with secretory otitis media, but little is as yet known about their effects on the human nasal airway. The aim of this pilot study

TLR ligands are present on both commensal and pathogenic microbes. Intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) have been observed to be largely unresponsive to TLR ligands. This observation has partly been explained by the fact that TLR expression on IECs is sparse. The discovery of the Toll-like receptors finally identified the innate immune receptors that were responsible for many of the innate immune fu

Today we have different location based services available in a mobile phone or mobile station (MS). These services include: direction finding to nearby ATMs, locating favorite food restaurants, or finding any target destination. Similarly, we see different applications of the positioning and navigation systems in firefighting or other rescue operations. The common factor in almost all of the locat

Future mobile platforms will contain an increased amount of wireless technologies. As technologies mature it will be necessary to find synergies between them. This could be in the form of reusing hardware blocks and algorithms. By using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT/IFFT) and performing channel cancellation/equalization in frequency domain for wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) will pro

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a Buddhist meditation intervention on empathy, perceived stress, mindfulness, self-compassion, and of particular interest, the dispositional tendency to feel empathic concern rather than personal distress when perceiving another as in need, termed altruistic orientation. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n = 20

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT) is a potentially curative treatment option for eligible patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). However, it is known that cure of CLL is only possible if a graft-versus-leukemia effect is present. Between 1994 and 2007, 48 adults underwent allo-SCT for poor-risk CLL in Sweden. Of these, ten (21%) patients aged 24-53 years (med

In acute lymphoblastic leukemia, besides age and white cell count at diagnosis, the cytogenetic abnormalities t(9;22)/BCR-ABL and t(4;11)/MLL-AF4 are important prognostic markers and are often included in the treatment stratification of patients with adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Deletions in 9p are seen in about 9% of cases of adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but their prognostic impact

In diploid populations of size N, there will be 2 Nmu mutations per nucleotide (nt) site (or per locus) per generation (mu stands for mutation rate). If either the population or the coding genome double in size, one expects 4 Nmu mutations. What is important is not the population size per se but the number of genes (coding sites), the two being often interconverted. Here we compared the total phys

Thirty-six patients (pts.) with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) were treated between May 1990 and May 2003. There were 31 women and 5 men; the average age was 37 years. Twenty-five cases were idiopathic and 11 secondary (3 infection--related, 5 occurred during pregnancy and 3 were drug--associated). The mean lag period between the first symptoms and the diagnosis was 8.5 days (in 14 pts.

Cytogenetic analysis has proven to be a mandatory part of the diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) as well as a major indicator for predicting clinical course and outcome. Aside from the 5q-syndrome, no specific clinico-cytogenetic entity has been reported. To determine the incidence and clinical significance of acquired abnormalities of chromosome 17 in adult primary MDS, we reviewed the

A transformation of essential thrombocythemia to acute myelocytic leukemia (AML), myelodysplastic syndrome, or agnogenic myelocytic metaplasia is a relatively rare event. It occurs in 1%-4.5% of all patients with either treated or untreated essential thrombocythemia. Cytogenetic changes in the transformation to AML are common. We report the case of a patient treated for essential thrombocythemia w

We estimated the number of different human genes by relating the patterns of spontaneous mutation at the population and individual level. A geometric distribution model of mutation was used in which the average rates of nucleotide replacement (P) and mutation at a locus (p), obtained by experiment, were used to determine the estimate of the physical size of the coding genome (n) in man. The probab

A patient with a myelodysplastic syndrome ([MDS], i.e., refractory anemia with ring sideroblasts [RARS]) and a rapidly fatal clinical course is presented. A cytogenetic analysis showed an isochromosome 17q as a sole abnormality in all metaphases. An association between RARS and i(17q) has not been reported. Furthermore, a mutation of the remaining TP53 gene in exon 6 was evidenced by a single stra

A variety of normal human tissues have been reported to harbor small cell populations carrying potentially oncogenic gene rearrangements. This backdrop of mutant cells may be present in the majority of healthy individuals and is apparently weakly selected against. This may provide empirical support for the concept of global neutrality, or near-neutrality (very weak selection), of many somatic muta