This study concerns an attempt to establish a new method for predicting antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) which are important to the immune system. Recently, researchers are interested in designing alternative drugs based on AMPs because they have found that a large number of bacterial strains have become resistant to available antibiotics. However, researchers have encountered obstacles in the AMPs designing process as experiments to extract AMPs from protein sequences are costly and require a long set-up time. Therefore, a computational tool for AMPs prediction is needed to resolve this problem. In this study, an integrated algorithm is newly introduced to predict AMPs by integrating sequence alignment and support vector machine- (SVM-) LZ complexity pairwise algorithm. It was observed that, when all sequences in the training set are used, the sensitivity of the proposed algorithm is 95.28% in jackknife test and 87.59% in independent test, while the sensitivity obtained for jackknife test and independent test is 88.74% and 78.70%, respectively, when only the sequences that has less than 70% similarity are used. Applying the proposed algorithm may allow researchers to effectively predict AMPs from unknown protein peptide sequences with higher sensitivity.
Both obesity and DENV infections are growing public health concerns that have far-ranging socioeconomic effects, especially in developing countries. Despite the increasing prevalence of these conditions, there is a scarcity of data investigating the potential relationships between these two entities. Our study aims to examine the influence of obesity on various clinical and laboratory parameters amongst patients with DENV infections. A total of 335 hospitalized patients aged >12 years who were DENV non-structural protein 1 (NS1) antigen-positive were enrolled in this study. Clinical and laboratory variables were compared between patients with and without obesity. Multivariate analysis showed that the following admission clinical findings and laboratory results were independently associated with obesity; chills and rigors (AOR:2.653, 95% CI: 1.286-5.474), higher temperature (AOR:1.485, 95% CI: 1.080-2.042), higher systolic BP (AOR:1.057, 95% CI:1.037-1.078), raised haematocrit (AOR: 1.953, 95% CI: 1.010-3.778), elevated creatinine (AOR:3.504, 95% CI:1.351-9.008) and elevated ALT (AOR: 4.146, 95% CI:1.878-9.154). Obesity was found to be significantly associated with hospitalization >3 days (AOR: 1.990, 95% CI: 1.134-3.494) and the presence of increasing haematocrit with decreasing platelets (AOR: 2.134, 95% CI = 1.235-3.688). Serial assessment of laboratory data revealed that peak haematocrit was significantly higher and nadir platelets levels were significantly lower in obese patients. Both peak and admission levels of leukocyte counts, AST, ALT and creatinine were significantly higher in the obese group. Conversely, both admission and nadir albumin levels were lower for the obese group, although only nadir albumin levels achieved statistical significance. These findings support closer clinical monitoring of obese patients who present with DENV infections, as this patient cohort may possess an increased tendency towards developing more severe clinical manifestations of DENV infections as compared to non-obese patients.
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has recently emerged as a potential valuable alternative to treat microbial infections. In PDT, singlet oxygen is generated in the presence of photosensitisers and oxygen under light irradiation of a specific wavelength, causing cytotoxic damage to bacteria. This review highlights different generations of photosensitisers and the common characteristics of ideal photosensitisers. It also focuses on the emergence of ruthenium and more specifically on Ru(II) polypyridyl complexes as metal-based photosensitisers used in antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT). Their photochemical and photophysical properties as well as structures are discussed while relating them to their phototoxicity. The use of Ru(II) complexes with recent advancements such as nanoformulations, combinatory therapy and photothermal therapy to improve on previous shortcomings of the complexes are outlined. Future perspectives of these complexes used in two-photon PDT, photoacoustic imaging and sonotherapy are also discussed. This review covers the literature published from 2017 to 2023.
Primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), a major cause of blindness worldwide, is a complex disease with a significant genetic contribution. We performed Exome Array (Illumina) analysis on 3504 POAG cases and 9746 controls with replication of the most significant findings in 9173 POAG cases and 26 780 controls across 18 collections of Asian, African and European descent. Apart from confirming strong evidence of association at CDKN2B-AS1 (rs2157719 [G], odds ratio [OR] = 0.71, P = 2.81 × 10(-33)), we observed one SNP showing significant association to POAG (CDC7-TGFBR3 rs1192415, ORG-allele = 1.13, Pmeta = 1.60 × 10(-8)). This particular SNP has previously been shown to be strongly associated with optic disc area and vertical cup-to-disc ratio, which are regarded as glaucoma-related quantitative traits. Our study now extends this by directly implicating it in POAG disease pathogenesis.
Primary angle closure glaucoma (PACG) is a major cause of blindness worldwide. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) followed by replication in a combined total of 10,503 PACG cases and 29,567 controls drawn from 24 countries across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. We observed significant evidence of disease association at five new genetic loci upon meta-analysis of all patient collections. These loci are at EPDR1 rs3816415 (odds ratio (OR) = 1.24, P = 5.94 × 10(-15)), CHAT rs1258267 (OR = 1.22, P = 2.85 × 10(-16)), GLIS3 rs736893 (OR = 1.18, P = 1.43 × 10(-14)), FERMT2 rs7494379 (OR = 1.14, P = 3.43 × 10(-11)), and DPM2-FAM102A rs3739821 (OR = 1.15, P = 8.32 × 10(-12)). We also confirmed significant association at three previously described loci (P < 5 × 10(-8) for each sentinel SNP at PLEKHA7, COL11A1, and PCMTD1-ST18), providing new insights into the biology of PACG.