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- Forssman, Linda, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Training basic visual attention leads to changes in responsiveness to social communication cues in 9-month-old infants
- 2018
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Ingår i: Child Development. - : Wiley. - 0009-3920 .- 1467-8624. ; 89:3, s. E199-E213
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigated transfer effects of gaze‐interactive attention training to more complex social and cognitive skills in infancy. Seventy 9‐month‐olds were assigned to a training group (n = 35) or an active control group (n = 35). Before, after, and at 6‐week follow‐up both groups completed an assessment battery assessing transfer to nontrained aspects of attention control, including table top tasks assessing social attention in seminaturalistic contexts. Transfer effects were found on nontrained screen‐based tasks but importantly also on a structured observation task assessing the infants’ likelihood to respond to an adult's social‐communication cues. The results causally link basic attention skills and more complex social‐communicative skills and provide a principle for studying causal mechanisms of early development.
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| 6. |
- Grankvist, A., et al.
(författare)
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Comparative Genomics of Clinical Isolates of the Emerging Tick-Borne Pathogen Neoehrlichia mikurensis
- 2021
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Ingår i: Microorganisms. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-2607. ; 9:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tick-borne 'Neoehrlichia (N.) mikurensis' is the cause of neoehrlichiosis, an infectious vasculitis of humans. This strict intracellular pathogen is a member of the family Anaplasmataceae and has been unculturable until recently. The only available genetic data on this new pathogen are six partially sequenced housekeeping genes. The aim of this study was to advance the knowledge regarding 'N. mikurensis' genomic relatedness with other Anaplasmataceae members, intra-species genotypic variability and potential virulence factors explaining its tropism for vascular endothelium. Here, we present the de novo whole-genome sequences of three 'N. mikurensis' strains derived from Swedish patients diagnosed with neoehrlichiosis. The genomes were obtained by extraction of DNA from patient plasma, library preparation using 10x Chromium technology, and sequencing by Illumina Hiseq-4500. 'N. mikurensis' was found to have the next smallest genome of the Anaplasmataceae family (1.1 Mbp with 27% GC contents) consisting of 845 protein-coding genes, every third of which with unknown function. Comparative genomic analyses revealed that 'N. mikurensis' was more closely related to Ehrlichia chaffeensis than to Ehrlichia ruminantium, the opposite of what 16SrRNA sequence-based phylogenetic analyses determined. The genetic variability of the three whole-genome-sequenced 'N. mikurensis' strains was extremely low, between 0.14 and 0.22 parts per thousand, a variation that was associated with geographic origin. No protein-coding genes exclusively shared by N. mikurensis and E. ruminantium were identified to explain their common tropism for vascular endothelium.
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| 7. |
- Höper, Linnea, et al.
(författare)
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Vasculitis due to Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis : a cohort study of 40 Swedish patients
- 2021
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Ingår i: Clinical Infectious Diseases. - : Oxford University Press. - 1058-4838 .- 1537-6591. ; 73:7, s. e2372-e2378
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Candidatus (Ca.) Neoehrlichia (N.) mikurensis is an emerging tick-borne pathogen of humans that is closely related to Ehrlichia and Anaplasma species. This strict intracellular bacterium escapes detection by routine microbiologic diagnostic methods such as blood culture leading to considerable under-diagnosis of the infectious disease it causes, neoehrlichiosis.METHODS: Here, we describe the vascular and thromboembolic events afflicting a series of 40 patients diagnosed with neoehrlichiosis in Sweden during a 10-year period (2009-2019).RESULTS: The majority of the patients (60%) developed vascular events ranging from repeated thrombophlebitis, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, transitory ischemic attacks to arteritis. Younger age was a risk factor for vascular complications. In contrast, there was no difference in the incidence of vascular events between immunosuppressed and immunocompetent patients. However, there were qualitative differences such that deep vein thrombosis exclusively afflicted the immunosuppressed patients whereas arteritis was restricted to the immunocompetent ones. We also present the case histories of two patients who developed vasculitis mimicking polyarteritis nodosa and giant cell arteritis. Both were cured by doxycycline treatment.CONCLUSIONS: Ca. N. mikurensis infection should be considered in patients living in tick-endemic areas of Europe and northern Asia who present with atypical vascular and/or thromboembolic events. Early diagnosis and antibiotics targeting this emerging infectious agent can eradicate the infection and prevent the development of new vascular events.
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- Leppänen, Jukka M, et al.
(författare)
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Widely applicable MATLAB routines for automated analysis of saccadic reaction times
- 2015
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Ingår i: Behavior Research Methods. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1554-351X .- 1554-3528. ; 47:2, s. 538-548
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Saccadic reaction time (SRT) is a widely used dependent variable in eye-tracking studies of human cognition and its disorders. SRTs are also frequently measured in studies with special populations, such as infants and young children, who are limited in their ability to follow verbal instructions and remain in a stable position over time. In this article, we describe a library of MATLAB routines (Mathworks, Natick, MA) that are designed to (1) enable completely automated implementation of SRT analysis for multiple data sets and (2) cope with the unique challenges of analyzing SRTs from eye-tracking data collected from poorly cooperating participants. The library includes preprocessing and SRT analysis routines. The preprocessing routines (i.e., moving median filter and interpolation) are designed to remove technical artifacts and missing samples from raw eye-tracking data. The SRTs are detected by a simple algorithm that identifies the last point of gaze in the area of interest, but, critically, the extracted SRTs are further subjected to a number of postanalysis verification checks to exclude values contaminated by artifacts. Example analyses of data from 5- to 11-month-old infants demonstrated that SRTs extracted with the proposed routines were in high agreement with SRTs obtained manually from video records, robust against potential sources of artifact, and exhibited moderate to high test-retest stability. We propose that the present library has wide utility in standardizing and automating SRT-based cognitive testing in various populations. The MATLAB routines are open source and can be downloaded from http://www.uta.fi/med/icl/methods.html .
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| 9. |
- Wass, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Cultivation of the causative agent of human neoehrlichiosis from clinical isolates identifies vascular endothelium as a target of infection.
- 2019
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Ingår i: Emerging microbes & infections. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2222-1751. ; 8:1, s. 413-425
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Candidatus (Ca.) Neoehrlichia mikurensis is the cause of neoehrlichiosis, an emerging tick-borne infectious disease characterized by fever and vascular events. The bacterium belongs to the Anaplasmataceae, a family of obligate intracellular pathogens, but has not previously been cultivated, and it is uncertain which cell types it infects. The goals of this study were to cultivate Ca. N. mikurensis in cell lines and to identify possible target cells for human infection. Blood components derived from infected patients were inoculated into cell lines of both tick and human origin. Bacterial growth in the cell cultures was monitored by real-time PCR and imaging flow cytometry. Ca. N. mikurensis was successfully propagated from the blood of immunocompromised neoehrlichiosis patients in two Ixodes spp. tick cell lines following incubation periods of 7-20 weeks. Human primary endothelial cells derived from skin microvasculature as well as pulmonary artery were also susceptible to infection with tick cell-derived bacteria. Finally, Ca. N. mikurensis was visualized within circulating endothelial cells of two neoehrlichiosis patients. To conclude, we report the first successful isolation and propagation of Ca. N. mikurensis from clinical isolates and identify human vascular endothelial cells as a target of infection.
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| 10. |
- Wass, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Cytokine responses of immunosuppressed and immunocompetent patients with Neoehrlichia mikurensis infection
- 2022
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Ingår i: Medical Microbiology and Immunology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0300-8584 .- 1432-1831. ; 211:2-3, s. 133-141
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose The tick-borne bacterium Neoehrlichia mikurensis causes the infectious disease neoehrlichiosis in humans. Vascular endothelium is one of the target cells of the infection. Neoehrlichiosis patients with compromised B cell immunity present with more severe inflammation than immunocompetent patients. The aim of this study was to compare the cytokine profiles of immunocompetent and immunosuppressed patients with neoehrlichiosis. Methods Blood samples from Swedish and Norwegian immunosuppressed (N = 30) and immunocompetent (N = 16) patients with neoehrlichiosis were analyzed for the levels of 30 cytokines, using a multiplex cytokine assay and ELISA. A gender-matched healthy control group (N = 14) was analyzed in parallel. Data were analyzed using the multivariate method OPLS-DA. Results The multiplex cytokine analyses generated more cytokine results than did the uniplex ELISA analyses. Multivariate analysis of the multiplex cytokine results established that increased levels of FGF2, GM-CSF, CXCL10, and IFN-gamma were associated with immunosuppressed patients, whereas increased levels of IL-15 and VEGF were associated with immunocompetent neoehrlichiosis patients. When multivariate analysis findings were confirmed with uniplex ELISA, it was found that both groups of patients had similarly elevated levels of VEGF, FGF2 and IFN-gamma. In contrast, the immunosuppressed patients had clearly elevated levels of CXCL10, CXCL13 and BAFF, whereas the immunocompetent patients had the same levels as healthy controls. Conclusion Pro-angiogenic and type 1 cytokines were produced as part of the host response of neoehrlichiosis independent of immune status, whereas immunosuppressed neoehrlichiosis patients produced cytokines required for B cell-mediated defense.
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