Adverse reactions to insulin

The prevalence of allergic reactions to insuline has decreased during the last few years. Probably this is due to the use of the newly-developed recombinant human insuline. At present, adverse reactions to insuline occur in 5-10% of patients on therapy with insuline. Adverse reactions may be local (more frequent) or systemic (rare). Insuline resistance consists in a different type of immunological reaction. Diagnosis of allergy to insuline is based on clinical history and cutaneous and serological tests. Treatment depends upon the severity of the reaction. When insuline is indispensable despite a previous allergic reaction, a desensitization protocol may be implemented.     

Free coating of pseudoplastic liquids onto a vertical surface

The coating of pseudoplastic liquids onto a vertical surface continuously withdrawn from the liquid bath is considered. The problem is treated in a two-dimensional nonlinear approach incorporating the inertial effects. The model gives a relationship between the dimensionless film thickness, T, and the Capillary number, Ca, as a function of the fluid physical properties and the parameteres of the power-law model. The comparison with the experimental data is satisfactory.     

Phosphatidylinositol-dependent membrane fusion induced by a putative fusogenic sequence of Ebola virus

The membrane-interacting abilities of three sequences representing the putative fusogenic subdomain of the Ebola virus transmembrane protein have been investigated. In the presence of calcium, the sequence EBO(GE) (GAAIGLAWIPYFGPAAE) efficiently fused unilamellar vesicles composed of phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, cholesterol, and phosphatidylinositol (molar ratio, 2:1:1:0.5), a mixture that roughly resembles the lipid composition of the hepatocyte plasma membrane. Analysis of the lipid dependence of the process demonstrated that the fusion activity of EBO(GE) was promoted by phosphatidylinositol but not by other acidic phospholipids. In comparison, EBO(EA) (EGAAIGLAWIPYFGPAA) and EBO(EE) (EGAAIGLAWIPYFGPAAE) sequences, which are similar to EBO(GE) except that they bear the negatively charged glutamate residue at the N terminus and at both the N and C termini, respectively, induced fusion to a lesser extent. As revealed by binding experiments, the glutamate residue at the N terminus severely impaired peptide-vesicle interaction. In addition, the fusion-competent EBO(GE) sequence did not associate significantly with vesicles lacking phosphatidylinositol. Tryptophan fluorescence quenching by vesicles containing brominated phospholipids indicated that the EBO(GE) peptide penetrated to the acyl chain level only when the membranes contained phosphatidylinositol. We conclude that binding and further penetration of the Ebola virus putative fusion peptide into membranes might be governed by the nature of the N-terminal residue and by the presence of phosphatidylinositol in the target membrane. Moreover, since insertion of such a peptide leads to membrane destabilization and fusion, the present data would be compatible with the involvement of this sequence in Ebola virus fusion.     

Stimulation of aryl metabolite production in the basidiomycete Bjerkandera sp. strain BOS55 with biosynthetic precursors and lignin degradation products

Aryl metabolites are known to have an important role in the ligninolytic system of white rot fungi. The addition of known precursors and aromatic acids representing lignin degradation products stimulated the production of aryl metabolites (veratryl alcohol, veratraldehyde, p-anisaldehyde, and 3-chloro-p-anisaldehyde) in the white rot fungus Bjerkandera sp. strain BOS55. The presence of manganese (Mn) is known to inhibit the biosynthesis of veratryl alcohol (T. Mester, E. de Jong, and J.A. Field, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 61:1881-1887, 1995). A new finding of this study was that the production of the other aryl metabolites, p-anisaldehyde and 3-chloro-p-anisaldehyde, was also inhibited by Mn. We attempted to bypass the Mn-inhibited step in the biosynthesis of aryl metabolites by the addition of known and suspected precursors. Most of these compounds were not able to bypass the inhibiting effect of Mn. Only the fully methylated precursors (veratrate, p-anisate, and 3-chloro-p-anisate) provided similar concentrations of aryl metabolites in the presence and absence of Mn, indicating that Mn does not influence the reduction of the benzylic acid group. The addition of deuterated benzoate and 4-hydroxybenzoate resulted in the formation of deuterated aryl metabolites, indicating that these aromatic acids entered into the biosynthetic pathway and were common intermediates to all aryl metabolites. Only deuterated chlorinated anisyl metabolites were produced when the cultures were supplemented with deuterated 3-chloro-4-hydroxybenzoate. This observation combined with the fact that 3-chloro-4-hydroxybenzoate is a natural product of Bjerkandera spp. (H. J. Swarts, F. J. M. Verhagen, J. A. Field, and J. B. P. A. Wijnberg, Phytochemistry 42:1699-1701, 1996) suggest that it is a possible intermediate in chlorinated anisyl metabolite biosynthesis.     

Solution of counter-current separation processes—IV. Application of the GPM method to solution of distillation problems

A new non-iterative method for a parametric study of a particular distillation column is devised. The technique takes use of the similarity between difference and differential equations. For solution of nonlinear boundary value problems for difference equations the GPM technique is used. The method is illustrated by calculated examples.     

Septo-optic dysplasia associated with bilateral complex microphthalmos

Examination of magnesium concentrations in the blood serum was carried out on a population of 246 patients 17-39 years old in pathologic/imminent abortion, imminent immature and premature labour and normal pregnancies as well as in first periods of parturition. In spite of considerable oscillations of magnesium concentrations in respective periods of normal and imminent pregnancies, the differences were statistically insignificant. A significant decrease of magnesium concentrations was found in the first period of parturition as compared with the imminent and normal pregnancies of the first and second trimester.