Usefulness in daily practice of the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index 2000 scale and the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Score index for assessing the activity of systemic lupus erythematosus.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease characterized by high heterogeneity of clinical manifestations and an uncertain prognosis. Although the mortality rate due to SLE has decreased significantly in recent decades, there is still a need to find good tools to measure disease activity for early detection of exacerbations and treatment planning. Over the decades, more than a dozen disease activity scales/indicators have been developed, with the SLE Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) being the most popular. More recently, the new SLE Disease Activity Score (SLE-DAS) has been introduced. This paper compares the two methods of assessing SLE activity, and presents the relevance of these scales in pregnant SLE patients and their use in formulating definitions of remission and low disease activity. The results show that the SLEDAI and the SLE-DAS are of comparable value in assessing SLE activity and complement each other.

Trace Elements Levels in Major Depressive Disorder-Evaluation of Potential Threats and Possible Therapeutic Approaches.

The multifactorial etiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) includes biological, environmental, genetic, and psychological aspects. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in metallomic studies in psychiatry, aiming to evaluate the role of chosen trace elements in the MDD etiology as well as the progression of symptoms. This narrative review aims to summarize the available literature on the relationship between the concentration of chosen elements in the serum of patients with MDD and the onset and progression of this psychiatric condition. The authors reviewed PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases searching for elements that had been investigated so far and further evaluated them in this paper. Ultimately, 15 elements were evaluated, namely, zinc, magnesium, selenium, iron, copper, aluminium, cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic, calcium, manganese, chromium, nickel, and phosphorus. The association between metallomic studies and psychiatry has been developing dynamically recently. According to the results of current research, metallomics might act as a potential screening tool for patients with MDD while at the same time providing an assessment of the severity of symptoms. Either deficiencies or excessive amounts of chosen elements might be associated with the progression of depressive symptoms or even the onset of the disease among people predisposed to MDD.

Nanopore sequencing of chloroplast genome of Scapania undulata (L.) Dumort., 1835 (Scapaniaceae, Jungermanniales).

We performed long-read sequencing of the Scapania undulata (L.) Dumort. chloroplast genome with Oxford Nanopore Technology using improved flow cells (10.3). S. undulata is a leafy liverwort living on rocks in or near water in mountains. The size of the complete plastome sequence is 117,651 bp long, the large single copy (LSC) region is 80,606 bp long, the small single copy (SSC) region is 19,401 bp long. The nanopore sequencing allowed for the distinction of inverted repeats A and B (IRA, IRB) which were not identical. Guanine cytosine (GC) ratio is 33.7% for the complete chloroplast genome, for LSC and SSC are 31.7% and 30.6%. The phylogeny reconstruction shows that Scapania undulata is the sister to S. ciliata and S. griffithii.