Stroke in systemic lupus erythematosus and antiphospholipid syndrome: risk factors, clinical manifestations, neuroimaging, and treatment.

Neurologic disorders are among the most common and important clinical manifestations associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), mainly those that affect the central nervous system (CNS). Risk of cerebrovascular events in both conditions is increased, and stroke represents one of the most severe complications, with an incidence rate between 3% and 20%, especially in the first five years of diagnosis. This article updates the data regarding the risk factors, clinical manifestations, neuroimaging, and treatment of stroke in SLE and APS.

Induction of desiccation tolerance by osmotic treatment in Saccharomyces uvarum var. carlsbergensis.

Saccharomyces uvarum var. carlsbergensis is heat sensitive and when dried by usual procedures exhibits very poor survival. Our results demonstrate that these cells are capable of accumulating trehalose when submitted to an osmotic treatment using 20% solutions of either sorbitol or dextrin endowing them with the capacity of surviving posterior dehydration.

Effect of trehalose during stress in a heat-shock resistant mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Cells of a heat-shock resistant mutant were approximately 1000-times more resistant to lethal heat shock than those of the parental strain. We observed that exponentially growing cells of the mutant synthesized trehalose and showed increased osmotolerance, dehydration tolerance an ethanol tolerance, a fact not observed in wild type strains. The mutant synthesizes constitutively six proteins, among them two proteins of 56 and 63 kDa. Interestingly these molecular weights could correspond to the subunit of trehalose-6-phosphate synthase and to phosphoglucomutase II, respectively. Our results showed that glucose-growing cells of the hsr 1 mutant possessed high levels of activity of these enzymes when compared to the control strain.