ABSTRACT
Background: To investigate the clinical characteristics of Addison's disease caused by adrenal tuberculosis in Tibet. After the anti-tuberculosis treatment, the clinical features between continuous glucocorticoid therapy and glucocorticoid withdrawal were analyzed. Methods: Clinical data of patients with Addison's disease caused by adrenal tuberculosis diagnosed in The People's Hospital of Tibet Autonomous Region from January 2015 to October 2021 were collected and analyzed. All patients were taking anti-tuberculosis and glucocorticoids replacement therapy, and the root cause of the disease was analyzed following prognosis observations. Results: There were 25 patients (24 Tibetan and 1 Han patient) with Addison's disease caused by adrenal tuberculosis, including 18 males and 7 females. A total of 21 cases were followed up successfully, of which 13 cases discontinued anti-tuberculosis drugs successfully, 6 cases discontinued glucocorticoid therapy among the rest, 6 cases continued anti-tuberculosis + glucocorticoid replacement therapy, and 2 cases died. Conclusion: Early diagnosis and proper anti-tuberculosis treatment can improve the prognosis of patients with adrenal tuberculosis. Moreover, screening and educating Tibetan people regarding the potential risk and adversities of adrenal tuberculosis is crucial for eradicating the disease.
ABSTRACT
Porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) is a diarrheal disease of swine caused by porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). It is characterized by acute watery diarrhea, dehydration and vomiting in swine of all ages and is especially fatal for neonatal and postweaning piglets. The spike protein of PEDV plays an important role in mediating virus attachment and fusion to target cells, and recent studies also reported that the neutralizing epitopes of the spike protein were mainly located in the S1 subunit, which makes it a candidate for vaccine development and clinical diagnosis. In this study, we successfully constructed an immune phage display single-domain antibody library with a library size of 3.4 × 106. A single-domain antibody, named S7, specific for the spike protein of PEDV was identified from the phage display single-domain antibody library. S7 could be expressed in a soluble form in E. coli, bound to the spike protein of PEDV in ELISA and stained the PEDV virus in Vero cells, but it showed no neutralization activity on PEDV. These results indicated the potent application of the S7 antibody as an imaging probe or as a candidate for the development of a diagnostic assay.
