[Environmental health relevance of airborne microorganisms in ambient and indoor air]. / Umweltmedizinische Relevanz von luftgetragenen Mikroorganismen im Außen- und Innenbereich.

Airborne microorganisms occur ubiquitously in the ambient air. Besides allergic and irritative-toxic effects, they can cause infections after inhalation. Occupational studies have shown that an increased incidence of respiratory diseases is found in adequately exposed workers. In addition to respiratory diseases, severe systemic infections can also occur in particular cases, such as in the case of a hantavirus infection that is recognized as an occupational disease. In studies from environmental medicine, respiratory diseases have also been observed in residents living in the vicinity of livestock facilities and evaporative cooling towers. In the latter case, an infection risk may be caused by inhalation of legionella-contaminated aerosol from the exhaust air of such systems.Currently, there are no health-related exposure limits for airborne microorganisms released from such facilities. Environmental risk assessment can be carried out on the basis of the guideline VDI 4250 part 1, which relies on an excess of natural background concentration by facility-specific emissions. For the approval practice, the LAI-Leitfaden Bioaerosole is a uniform, standardized method for the determination and assessment of bioaerosol exposure.In indoor spaces, only a few mold types, such as Aspergillus fumigatus are able to trigger infections by local or systemic infection of the human organism. In particular, persons with an immune deficiency or allergies must be informed about the risks of mold exposure in indoor air. In general, mold growth in indoor spaces is a hygienic problem and must not be accepted as a matter of principle.

NKT cells determine titer and subtype profile of virus-specific IgG antibodies during herpes simplex virus Infection.

Invariant NKT cells (iNKT cells) are innate lymphocytes that recognize lipid-derived Ags presented by the MHC class I-related protein CD1d. In this study, we analyzed the role of iNKT cells in the generation of Abs against HSV type 1 (HSV-1). In sera from healthy hman donors, we found a correlation between HSV-1-specific IgG titers and proportions of CD4(+) iNKT cells. In HSV-1-infected iNKT cell-deficient mice, the amount of specific IgM and IgG Abs were significantly reduced compared with wild-type mice. Moreover, iNKT cell-deficient mice were unable to upregulate CD1d on B cells and failed to establish an IFN-γ-driven subtype profile of HSV-1-specific IgG Abs. In spleens of HSV-1-infected wild-type mice, the percentage of iNKT cells expressing CCR6, a marker for inflammatory iNKT cells secreting IFN-γ, was significantly decreased at 6 mo postinfection, suggesting that these cells were released from the spleen to other tissues. Finally, in vitro experiments showed that in the absence of CD1d-restricted cells, HSV-1 induced markedly lower IFN-γ production in splenocytes from naive mice. Taken together, our results indicate that iNKT cells shape the Ab response to HSV-1 infection and provide a basis for rational development of antiviral vaccines.

Evaluating the coupling efficiency of phosphorylated amino acids for SPOT synthesis.

A high demand of interest concerning binding assays to study the consequences of posttranscriptional phosphorylation may be addressed by peptide array-based methods. A crucial factor for de novo chemical approaches to generate such arrays is the possibility to rationally permutate phosphorylation events along a huge number of sequences. The simple principle behind this advantage is the stepwise synthesis of peptides, which allows the incorporation of either phosphorylated or nonphosphorylated derivates at serine, threonine, and tyrosine positions. In spite of several reported applications of phosphopeptide arrays, there is, to our best knowledge, no reported analysis of the efficiency of the involved techniques. Here, we analyze different coupling conditions to introduce phosphoamino acids in standard SPOT synthesis. Our results clearly indicate that EEDQ is the preferable activator and can also be used in fully automated SPOT synthesis.