Hepatitis E in Canadian blood donors.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a virus of emerging importance to transfusion medicine as studies on blood donors and other populations demonstrate that the prevalence of endemic cases is higher than previously recognized and the risk to vulnerable transfusion recipients is not insignificant. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We carried out an HEV prevalence study on 13,993 Canadian blood donors with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing on all donors and antibody testing on a subset of 4102 donors. HEV antibody-positive and age- and sex-matched antibody-negative donors were invited to participate in a scripted telephone interview about risk factors. RESULTS: There were no PCR-positive samples found (95% confidence interval [CI], 0%-0.026%). The seroprevalence of HEV in our tested population was 5.9% (95% CI, 5.16%-6.59%). HEV antibody positivity was associated with male sex and increasing age. In case-control analysis history of living outside Canada (odds ratio [OR], 2.9; 95% CI, 1.56-5.32) and contact with farm animals (OR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.01-2.28) were associated with HEV seropositivity. CONCLUSION: This is the largest data set to date on HEV infection in Canada. Results suggest low lifetime exposure to HEV and that infectious donations are rare.

Longstanding and Refractory Anti-Muscle Specific Tyrosine Kinase Antibody-Associated Myasthenia Gravis (Anti-MuSK-MG) in a Child Successfully Treated with Rituximab.

Anti-muscle specific tyrosine kinase antibody-associated myasthenia gravis (MuSK-MG) is a rare subtype of MG characterized by more frequent relapses and a clinical course that is refractory to standard treatments. Rituximab, a monoclonal antibody targeting CD20+ B cells, has been used effectively in the adult population to achieve stable remission. We describe a pediatric patient with MuSK-MG who demonstrated an excellent response to rituximab after failing standard therapy.

Estrogen regulates luminal progenitor cell differentiation through H19 gene expression.

Although the role of estrogen signaling in breast cancer development has been extensively studied, the mechanisms that regulate the indispensable role of estrogen in normal mammary gland development have not been well studied. Because of the unavailability of culture system to maintain estrogen-receptor-positive (ERα(+)) cells in vitro, the molecular mechanisms that regulate estrogen/ERα signaling in the normal human breast are unknown. In the present study, we examined the effects of estrogen signaling on ERα(+) human luminal progenitors using a modified matrigel assay and found that estrogen signaling increased the expansion potential of these progenitors. Furthermore, we found that blocking ERα attenuated luminal progenitor expansion and decreased the luminal colony-forming potential of these progenitors. Additionally, blocking ERα decreased H19 expression in the luminal progenitors and led to the development of smaller luminal colonies. We further showed that knocking down the H19 gene in the luminal progenitors significantly decreased the colony-forming potential of the luminal progenitors, and this phenotype could not be rescued by the addition of estrogen. Lastly, we explored the clinical relevance of the estrogen-H19 signaling axis in breast tumors and found that ERα(+) tumors exhibited a higher expression of H19 as compared with ERα(-) tumors and that H19 expression showed a positive correlation with ERα expression in those tumors. Taken together, the present results indicate that the estrogen-ERα-H19 signaling axis plays a role in regulating the proliferation and differentiation potentials of the normal luminal progenitors and that this signaling network may also be important in the development of ER(+) breast cancer tumors.