Study of aqueous humour inflammatory mediators' levels in a cohort of Egyptian patients with diabetic macular oedema.

BACKGROUND: The aim was to study aqueous humour inflammatory mediators' levels in a cohort of Egyptian patients with diabetic macular oedema (DMO). METHODS: This was a case-control prospective study conducted on 2 groups: 25 eyes of 22 (11 females) patients seeking treatment for DMO as patients group, and 10 eyes of 10 (4 females) cataract patients as a control group. Aqueous humour was aspirated before intravitreal injection (patients' group) or cataract surgery (control group). Inflammatory mediators in aqueous humour were measured using a multiplex bead immunoassay kit of 27 pre-mixed cytokines. RESULTS: Eotaxin, interferon gamma-induced protein 10 (IP-10), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1/CCL2) and interleukin-8 (IL-8/CXCL8) were found significantly higher in patients' group compared to control group (p = 0.043, 0.037, 0.001, 0.015 respectively). On the contrary, interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) were found significantly higher in control group than patients' group (p = 0.003, 0.019 respectively). Basic fibroblast growth factor (Basic-FGF/FGF-2) and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) were found higher (but not statistically significant) in controls (p = 0.100 and 0.070 respectively). Additionally, a negative and significant correlation was found between Eotaxin level in aqueous humour and central macular thickness. CONCLUSIONS: Some mediators might be implicated in the pathogenesis of DMO either augmenting or suppressing role. Eotaxin, IP-10, MCP-1 and IL-8 might have a role in cases not responding to standard anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy. IL-1ra might have a protective role; therefore, the effectiveness of intravitreal injection of IL-1ra homologue needs to be studied in future clinical trials.

Solid Organ Rejection following SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination or COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Solid organ rejection post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or COVID-19 infection is extremely rare but can occur. T-cell recognition of antigen is the primary and central event that leads to the cascade of events that result in rejection of a transplanted organ. OBJECTIVES: To describe the results of a systematic review for solid organ rejections following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or COVID-19 infection. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched Proquest, Medline, Embase, Pubmed, CINAHL, Wiley online library, Scopus and Nature through the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for studies on the incidence of solid organ rejection post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or COVID-19 infection, published from 1 December 2019 to 31 May 2022, with English language restriction. RESULTS: One hundred thirty-six cases from fifty-two articles were included in the qualitative synthesis of this systematic review (56 solid organs rejected post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and 40 solid organs rejected following COVID-19 infection). Cornea rejection (44 cases) was the most frequent organ observed post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and following COVID-19 infection, followed by kidney rejection (36 cases), liver rejection (12 cases), lung rejection (2 cases), heart rejection (1 case) and pancreas rejection (1 case). The median or mean patient age ranged from 23 to 94 years across the studies. The majority of the patients were male (n = 51, 53.1%) and were of White (Caucasian) (n = 51, 53.7%) and Hispanic (n = 15, 15.8%) ethnicity. A total of fifty-six solid organ rejections were reported post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination [Pfizer-BioNTech (n = 31), Moderna (n = 14), Oxford Uni-AstraZeneca (n = 10) and Sinovac-CoronaVac (n = 1)]. The median time from SARS-CoV-2 vaccination to organ rejection was 13.5 h (IQR, 3.2-17.2), while the median time from COVID-19 infection to organ rejection was 14 h (IQR, 5-21). Most patients were easily treated without any serious complications, recovered and did not require long-term allograft rejection therapy [graft success (n = 70, 85.4%), graft failure (n = 12, 14.6%), survived (n = 90, 95.7%) and died (n = 4, 4.3%)]. CONCLUSION: The reported evidence of solid organ rejections post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or COIVD-19 infection should not discourage vaccination against this worldwide pandemic. The number of reported cases is relatively small in relation to the hundreds of millions of vaccinations that have occurred, and the protective benefits offered by SARS-CoV-2 vaccination far outweigh the risks.

Coumarin pretreatment alleviates salinity stress in wheat seedlings.

The potentiality of COU to improve plant tolerance to salinity was investigated. Wheat grains were primed with COU (50 ppm) and then grown under different levels of NaCl (50, 100, 150 mM) for two weeks. COU pretreatment improved the growth of wheat seedling under salinity, relative to COU-untreated seedlings, due to the accumulation of osmolytes such as soluble sugars and proline. Moreover, COU treatment significantly improved K(+)/Na(+) ratio in the shoots of both salt stressed and un-stressed seedlings. However, in the roots, this ratio increased only under non-salinity. In consistent with phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL), phenolics and flavonoids were accumulated in COU-pretreated seedlings under the higher doses of salinity, relative to COU-untreated seedlings. COU primed seedlings showed higher content of the coumarin derivative, scopoletin, and salicylic, chlorogenic, syringic, vanillic, gallic and ferulic acids, under both salinity and non-salinity conditions. Salinity stress significantly improved the activity of peroxidase (POD) in COU-pretreated seedlings. However, the effect of COU on the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) was only obtained at the highest dose of NaCl (150 mM). The present results suggest that COU pretreatment could alleviate the adverse effect of salinity on the growth of wheat seedlings through enhancing, at least partly, the osmoregulation process and antioxidant defense system.