ECG Round: A 40-year-old lady with palpitation

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ECG Round: Acute pericarditis

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ECG Round: A lady with dyspnoea for 2 days

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Effects of smoking on healing response to non-surgical periodontal therapy: A multilevel modelling analysis

Wan CP, Leung WK, Wong MCM, Wong RMS, Wan P, Lo ECM, Corbet EF. Effects of smoking on healing response to non-surgical periodontal therapy: a multilevel modelling analysis. J Clin Periodontol 2009; 36: 229-239. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-051X.2008.01371.x. Abstract Aim: To investigate the factors predicting non-surgical periodontal treatment responses using multilevel multiple regression. Material and Methods: Forty men (mean 45.6 years) were recruited; 20 were smokers. A 12-month reduction in probing pocket depth (PPD) and gain in probing attachment level (PAL) of 5814 sites were analysed, with 594 being initially diseased sites (initial PPD≥5 mm). Results: Variance Component models showed that site-level variations contributed about 70-90% of the total variance. About a 10% reduction of the total variations of PPD reduction in initially diseased sites was achieved with the inclusion of the 10 predictors in the multilevel multiple regression. Multilevel multiple regression showed that three predictors, subject level: non-smokers; tooth-level: anterior teeth; and site level: sites without plaque at baseline, were significantly associated with a greater reduction in PPD in initially diseased sites over the 12-month study period (p<0.05). No consistent predictor was found for PAL gain. Conclusion: Multilevel analysis was applied on periodontal treatment response data. Smokers showed less favourable PPD reduction at deep sites after non-surgical periodontal therapy. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons A/S.postprin

Identification of donor-derived dendritic cell progenitors in bone marrow of spontaneously tolerant liver allograft recipients

Multilineage donor-derived hematopoietic cell chimerism is a persistent feature of spontaneously tolerant mouse liver allograft recipients. We have shown previously that normal liver-derived precursors of “chimeric” dendritic cells (DC) propagated in vitro migrate in vivo to T-dependent areas of allogeneic lymphoid tissue, where they or their progeny appear to persist indefinitely. In this study, granu-locyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)+interleukin-4 (IL-4) were used to propagate DC progenitors from freshly isolated mouse bone marrow. The progenitor cells gave rise in 7-10 days to potent antigen-presenting cells (APC) that stimulated naive allogeneic T cells in primary mixed leukocyte cultures (MLC). The culture method, together with the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the detection of donor and recipient strain major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II mRNA was used to test whether donor-derived DC could be propagated from the bone marrow of unmodified, orthotopic liver allograft recipients. Freshly isolated bone marrow from these transplanted animals contained small numbers of donor cells and responded to GM-CSF+IL-4 stimulation. In addition to cells expressing recipient (BIO) phenotype (H-2Kb+; Iab+), a minor population of donor (BlO.BR)-derived cells (H-2Kk+; Iak) were also propagated from liver graft recipients euthanized two weeks posttransplant. DC sorted from these cultures exhibited stimulatory activity for recipient strain T cells consistent with a low level (<1%) of donor DC propagation. The immunologic role of donor-derived DC progenitors in liver allograft recipients and its relation to the induction and maintenance of donor-specific unresponsiveness remains to be determined. © 1995 by Williams & Wilkins

The mu problem and sneutrino inflation

We consider sneutrino inflation and post-inflation cosmology in the singlet extension of the MSSM with approximate Peccei-Quinn(PQ) symmetry, assuming that supersymmetry breaking is mediated by gauge interaction. The PQ symmetry is broken by the intermediate-scale VEVs of two flaton fields, which are determined by the interplay between radiative flaton soft masses and higher order terms. Then, from the flaton VEVs, we obtain the correct mu term and the right-handed(RH) neutrino masses for see-saw mechanism. We show that the RH sneutrino with non-minimal gravity coupling drives inflation, thanks to the same flaton coupling giving rise to the RH neutrino mass. After inflation, extra vector-like states, that are responsible for the radiative breaking of the PQ symmetry, results in thermal inflation with the flaton field, solving the gravitino problem caused by high reheating temperature. Our model predicts the spectral index to be n_s\simeq 0.96 due to the additional efoldings from thermal inflation. We show that a right dark matter abundance comes from the gravitino of 100 keV mass and a successful baryogenesis is possible via Affleck-Dine leptogenesis.Comment: 27 pages, no figures, To appear in JHE

Holographic models for undoped Weyl semimetals

We continue our recently proposed holographic description of single-particle correlation functions for four-dimensional chiral fermions with Lifshitz scaling at zero chemical potential, paying particular attention to the dynamical exponent z = 2. We present new results for the spectral densities and dispersion relations at non-zero momenta and temperature. In contrast to the relativistic case with z = 1, we find the existence of a quantum phase transition from a non-Fermi liquid into a Fermi liquid in which two Fermi surfaces spontaneously form, even at zero chemical potential. Our findings show that the boundary system behaves like an undoped Weyl semimetal.Comment: 64 pages, 19 figure