Pullulan: an exopolysaccharide and its various applications.

Pullulan is a non-ionic polysaccharide obtained from fermentation of black yeast like Aureobasidium pullulans and is currently exploited in food and pharmaceutical industries due to its unique characteristics. Due to its properties like non-toxic, non-immunogenic, non-carcinogenic, non-mutagenic, pullulan is being explored for various biomedical applications viz., gene delivery, targeted drug therapy, tissue engineering, wound healing, and also being used in diagnostic applications like, perfusion, receptor, and lymph node target specific imaging and vascular compartment imaging. The unique linkage of α (1→4) and α (1→6) in pullulan endows this polymer with distinctive physical traits, including adhesive property and the ability to form fibers. This review article presents an historical outline, overview of properties, production, derivatives of pullulan, its versatile applicability and recent advances of pullulan.

Cochrane systematic review: pegylated interferon plus ribavirin vs. interferon plus ribavirin for chronic hepatitis C.

BACKGROUND: About 170 million patients worldwide have chronic hepatitis C. Pegylated interferon plus ribavirin is currently the recommended therapy. AIM: To evaluate the beneficial and harmful effects of pegylated interferon plus ribavirin vs. interferon plus ribavirin for chronic hepatitis C infection. METHODS: We searched The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, Science Citation Index Expanded and contacted pharmaceutical companies and authors of trials (to March 2005). RESULTS: We included 18 randomized clinical trials with 4811 patients. Eleven trials (61%) had allocation bias risks and all had assessment bias risk because of lack of blinding. Compared with interferon plus ribavirin, pegylated interferon plus ribavirin had significant beneficial effects on sustained virological response [risk ratio (RR): 0.80; 95% CI: 0.74-0.88]. Data were insufficient to determine impact on long-term outcomes. Pegylated interferon plus ribavirin significantly increased dose reductions (RR: 1.44; 95% CI: 1.14-1.82) and adverse events including neutropenia (RR: 2.25; 95% CI: 1.58-3.21), thrombocytopenia (RR: 2.28; 95% CI: 1.14-4.54), arthralgia (RR: 1.19; 95% CI: 1.05-1.35), and injection-site reaction (RR: 2.56; 95% CI: 1.06-6.22). CONCLUSIONS: Pegylated interferon plus ribavirin compared with interferon plus ribavirin increased the proportion of patients with sustained virological response, but at the cost of more adverse events.

Syngeneic pregnancy induces overexpression of natural killer T cells in maternal liver.

Conditions such as stress, infection, autoimmune disease, etc. elevate the number and function of extrathymic T cells that are generated mainly in the liver. As primitive, self-reactive clones of T cells that coexpress receptors of the natural killer (NK) lineage, they mediate cytotoxicity against altered self, malignant and infected cells and have the unique potential to rapidly secrete large amount of T helper 1 (Th1) or Th2 cytokines. To elucidate whether some of these changes occur even during the syngeneic pregnancy, we made phenotypic and functional characterization of mononuclear lymphatic cells (MNLCs) isolated from the liver and spleen of pregnant C57BL/6 mice, testing their cytotoxicity against syngeneic thymocytes as well as against NK- and lymphokine-activated killer (LAK)-sensitive targets. The data have shown that on the sixteenth day of syngeneic pregnancy TCRint, NK1.1+ and IL-2Rbeta+ cells were accumulated in the liver, while the quantities of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and total number classical NK (NK1.1+CD3- or IL-2Rbeta+CD3-) cells were increased in the spleen. Pregnancy-activated hepatic and splenic MNLCs were more cytotoxic against syngeneic thymocytes, YAC-1 and P815 targets, suggesting that the maternal liver is a main producer of autoreactive NKT clones, which subsequently augment NK- and LAK cell-mediated cytotoxicity in the liver and spleen.