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Introduction: The German PID-NET registry was founded in 2009, serving as the first national registry of patients with primary immunodeficiencies (PID) in Germany. It is part of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID) registry. The primary purpose of the registry is to gather data on the epidemiology, diagnostic delay, diagnosis, and treatment of PIDs.
Methods: Clinical and laboratory data was collected from 2,453 patients from 36 German PID centres in an online registry. Data was analysed with the software Stata® and Excel.
Results: The minimum prevalence of PID in Germany is 2.72 per 100,000 inhabitants. Among patients aged 1–25, there was a clear predominance of males. The median age of living patients ranged between 7 and 40 years, depending on the respective PID. Predominantly antibody disorders were the most prevalent group with 57% of all 2,453 PID patients (including 728 CVID patients). A gene defect was identified in 36% of patients. Familial cases were observed in 21% of patients. The age of onset for presenting symptoms ranged from birth to late adulthood (range 0–88 years). Presenting symptoms comprised infections (74%) and immune dysregulation (22%). Ninety-three patients were diagnosed without prior clinical symptoms. Regarding the general and clinical diagnostic delay, no PID had undergone a slight decrease within the last decade. However, both, SCID and hyper IgE- syndrome showed a substantial improvement in shortening the time between onset of symptoms and genetic diagnosis. Regarding treatment, 49% of all patients received immunoglobulin G (IgG) substitution (70%—subcutaneous; 29%—intravenous; 1%—unknown). Three-hundred patients underwent at least one hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Five patients had gene therapy.
Conclusion: The German PID-NET registry is a precious tool for physicians, researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, politicians, and ultimately the patients, for whom the outcomes will eventually lead to a more timely diagnosis and better treatment.
Time resolved measurements of the biased disk effect at an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source
(1999)
First results are reported from time resolved measurements of ion currents extracted from the Frankfurt 14 GHz Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source with pulsed biased-disk voltage. It was found that the ion currents react promptly to changes of the bias. From the experimental results it is concluded that the biased disk effect is mainly due to improvements of the extraction conditions for the source and/or an enhanced transport of ions into the extraction area. By pulsing the disk voltage, short current pulses of highly charged ions can be generated with amplitudes significantly higher than the currents obtained in continuous mode.
A central motivation for the development of x-ray free-electron lasers has been the prospect of time-resolved single-molecule imaging with atomic resolution. Here, we show that x-ray photoelectron diffraction—where a photoelectron emitted after x-ray absorption illuminates the molecular structure from within—can be used to image the increase of the internuclear distance during the x-ray-induced fragmentation of an O2 molecule. By measuring the molecular-frame photoelectron emission patterns for a two-photon sequential K-shell ionization in coincidence with the fragment ions, and by sorting the data as a function of the measured kinetic energy release, we can resolve the elongation of the molecular bond by approximately 1.2 a.u. within the duration of the x-ray pulse. The experiment paves the road toward time-resolved pump-probe photoelectron diffraction imaging at high-repetition-rate x-ray free-electron lasers.
In dieser Arbeit wird die Elektronenemission aus langsamen He 2 HeStößen, d.h. bei Stoßenergien unterhalb von 25 keV/u, experimentell untersucht. Dabei wird auf den Vergleich der Einfachionisation (He 2 He ! He 2 He e \Gamma ) mit der Transferionisation (He 2 He ! He He 2 e \Gamma ) besonderes Gewicht gelegt. Die hier verwendete Meßtechnik ist von verschiedenen Arbeitsgruppen in den letzten Jahren entwickelt worden und unter dem Schlagwort COLTRIMS (Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy) [1, 2, 3] in der Literatur zu finden. Bei COLTRIMS werden die bei einer Reaktion in einem kalten Gastarget gebildeten Ionen in einem schwachen elektrischen Feld abgesaugt. Durch den ortsaufgelösten Nachweis und die Messung der Flugzeit von der Targetzone bis zum Detektor kann die Anfangsbedingung der Bewegung im Feld, d.h. der Vektor des auf das Targetatom übertragenen Impulses, berechnet werden. Diese Methode kommt ohne Blenden aus, so daß im relevanten Teil des Phasenraumes 4ß Raumwinkel erreicht werden. Der Nachweis des Elektrons erfolgt nach demselben Prinzip, jedoch stößt man dabei an die Grenzen der Flugzeitauflösung. Deshalb wurden in allen früheren Experimenten zu ähnlichen Reaktionen [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] nur zwei der drei Impulskomponenten des Elektrons bestimmt. Die Konzipierung eines Spektrometers, welches in der Lage ist, den relevanten Phasenraum lückenlos zu erfassen und dabei alle drei Impulskomponenten der Elektronen zu bestimmen, war der wesentliche Teil der apparativen Entwicklung. Das durchgeführte Experiment ist nicht nur kinematisch vollständig, sondern erlaubt durch Anwendung des Energieerhaltungssatzes auch die Bestimmung der Schale, in der das Elektron im Endzustand gebunden ist. Die beiden oben genannten Reaktionen können somit getrennt nach Ereignissen mit und ohne Anregung untersucht werden, d.h., es wurden gleichzeitig vier verschiedene Ionisationskanäle vermessen. Für den Ionisationsmechanismus bei Stößen mit einer Projektilgeschwindigkeit unterhalb der klassischen Bahngeschwindigkeit der Elektronen hat sich in den letzten Jahren der Begriff ''Sattelpunkt''Prozeß durchgesetzt [10]. Quantenmechanische Beschreibungen für Einelektronensysteme, wie das Stoßsystem p H, wurden u.a. mit der semiklassischen GekoppelteKanäleMethode [11] in einem speziellen Basissatz [12, 13] und der ''HiddenCrossings''Theorie [14, 15] gegeben. Beide Modelle beschreiben das System aus Projektil und Target als Quasimolekül. Si sind lediglich in der Lage, die groben Strukturen in den Spektren zu erklären. Das gewählte Stoßsystem He 2 He, welches zwei Elektronen besitzt, erlaubt die Untersuchung von Korrelationseffekten. Die Messungen haben ergeben, daß die Impulsverteilung des emittierten Elektrons stark davon abhängt, wo und in welchem Bindungszustand das zweite Elektron nachgewiesen wird. Die gleiche Kernladung von Projektil und Target bedingt, da alle Eigenzustände des gebildeten Quasimoleküls die Symmetrie des Hamiltonoperators gegenüber Raumspiegelung besitzen, und durch diese Spiegeloperation gehen die Endzustände der Transferionisation und der Einfachionisation ineinander über. Durch die gleichzeitige Messung der differentiellen Wirkungsquerschnitte der verschiedenen Reaktionskanäle und deren Vergleich erhält man Einblick in die zugrundeliegenden Prozesse.
Chirality is omnipresent in living nature. On the single molecule level, the response of a chiral species to a chiral probe depends on their respective handedness. A prominent example is the difference in the interaction of a chiral molecule with left or right circularly polarized light. In the present study, we show by Coulomb explosion imaging that circularly polarized light can also induce a chiral fragmentation of a planar and thus achiral molecule. The observed enantiomer strongly depends on the orientation of the molecule with respect to the light propagation direction and the helicity of the ionizing light. This finding might trigger new approaches to improve laser-driven enantioselective chemical synthesis.
Background: Eukaryotic gene expression is controlled by cis-regulatory elements (CREs), including promoters and enhancers, which are bound by transcription factors (TFs). Differential expression of TFs and their binding affinity at putative CREs determine tissue- and developmental-specific transcriptional activity. Consolidating genomic data sets can offer further insights into the accessibility of CREs, TF activity, and, thus, gene regulation. However, the integration and analysis of multi-modal data sets are hampered by considerable technical challenges. While methods for highlighting differential TF activity from combined chromatin state data (e.g., ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, or DNase-seq) and RNA-seq data exist, they do not offer convenient usability, have limited support for large-scale data processing, and provide only minimal functionality for visually interpreting results.
Results: We developed TF-Prioritizer, an automated pipeline that prioritizes condition-specific TFs from multi-modal data and generates an interactive web report. We demonstrated its potential by identifying known TFs along with their target genes, as well as previously unreported TFs active in lactating mouse mammary glands. Additionally, we studied a variety of ENCODE data sets for cell lines K562 and MCF-7, including twelve histone modification ChIP-seq as well as ATAC-seq and DNase-seq datasets, where we observe and discuss assay-specific differences.
Conclusion: TF-Prioritizer accepts ATAC-seq, DNase-seq, or ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data as input and identifies TFs with differential activity, thus offering an understanding of genome-wide gene regulation, potential pathogenesis, and therapeutic targets in biomedical research.
Background Eukaryotic gene expression is controlled by cis-regulatory elements (CREs) including promoters and enhancers which are bound by transcription factors (TFs). Differential expression of TFs and their putative binding sites on CREs cause tissue and developmental-specific transcriptional activity. Consolidating genomic data sets can offer further insights into the accessibility of CREs, TF activity, and thus gene regulation. However, the integration and analysis of multi-modal data sets are hampered by considerable technical challenges. While methods for highlighting differential TF activity from combined ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data exist, they do not offer good usability, have limited support for large-scale data processing, and provide only minimal functionality for visual result interpretation.
Results We developed TF-Prioritizer, an automated java pipeline to prioritize condition-specific TFs derived from multi-modal data. TF-Prioritizer creates an interactive, feature-rich, and user-friendly web report of its results. To showcase the potential of TF-Prioritizer, we identified known active TFs (e.g., Stat5, Elf5, Nfib, Esr1), their target genes (e.g., milk proteins and cell-cycle genes), and newly classified lactating mammary gland TFs (e.g., Creb1, Arnt).
Conclusion TF-Prioritizer accepts ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data, as input and suggests TFs with differential activity, thus offering an understanding of genome-wide gene regulation, potential pathogenesis, and therapeutic targets in biomedical research.
Purpose: The PELICAN trial evaluates for the first time efficacy and safety of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) versus capecitabine as first-line treatment of metastatic breast cancer (MBC).
Methods: This randomized, phase III, open-label, multicenter trial enrolled first-line MBC patients who were ineligible for endocrine or trastuzumab therapy. Cumulative adjuvant anthracyclines of 360 mg/m2 doxorubicin or equivalent were allowed. Left ventricular ejection fraction of >50 % was required. Patients received PLD 50 mg/m2 every 28 days or capecitabine 1250 mg/m2 twice daily for 14 days every 21 days. The primary endpoint was time-to-disease progression (TTP).
Results: 210 patients were randomized (n = 105, PLD and n = 105, capecitabine). Adjuvant anthracyclines were given to 37 % (PLD) and 36 % (capecitabine) of patients. No significant difference was observed in TTP [HR = 1.21 (95 % confidence interval, 0.838–1.750)]. Median TTP was 6.0 months for both PLD and capecitabine. Comparing patients with or without prior anthracyclines, no significant difference in TTP was observed in the PLD arm (log-rank P = 0.64). For PLD versus capecitabine, respectively, overall survival (median, 23.3 months vs. 26.8 months) and time-to-treatment failure (median, 4.6 months vs. 3.7 months) were not statistically significantly different. Compared to PLD, patients on capecitabine experienced more serious adverse events (P = 0.015) and more cardiac events among patients who had prior anthracycline exposure (18 vs. 8 %; P = 0.31).
Conclusion: Both PLD and capecitabine are effective first-line agents for MBC.