The frequency of Johne's disease in cattle in south west England was estimated from data collected by telephone interviews with veterinarians and farmers. The response rate was 81.6 per cent. The disease frequency was expressed as the proportion of farms with clinical disease and the cumulative incidence in the infected herds. The proportion of farms affected was 1.0 per cent and the cumulative incidence on those farms was 1.9 per cent per year. Similar values were obtained when diagnosis by faecal examination, post mortem examination and histology was taken into consideration; 0.9 per cent of farms were affected and the cumulative incidence in the infected herds was 2.0 per cent per year. The survey was validated against three external reference points. There was good agreement between the use of vaccine and MAFF records, and the total number of holdings and census data. When the responses of the veterinarians were compared with those of farmers there was also good agreement on the use of vaccine (kappa = 77.8 per cent), the number of cases reported in the last year of diagnosis (r = 0.78) and the total number of cattle in the herds (r = 0.75). However, the results suggested that the total number of cattle holdings was overestimated and consequently the proportion of farms affected may have been underestimated.
A culture technique employing cold enrichment at 4 degrees C followed by selective enrichment and plating at higher temperatures (30 degrees C) was used to isolate Listeria monocytogenes from faecal samples. The samples were held at 4 degrees C for 15 weeks and cultured weekly to assess the sensitivity of the culture after cold storage for different lengths of time. No media, Listeria selective enrichment broth (LSEB), nutrient broth (NB) and saline were used as cold storage medium. Cold storage increased the frequency of Listeria positive samples. The sensitivity of the culture for Listeria spp. and L. monocytogenes was 72 and 94%, and 56 and 61% after third and seventh week of cold storage, respectively. When the results of third and seventh week of cold storage were combined, the sensitivity was 100% for Listeria spp. and 94% for L. monocytogenes. LSEB and NB as storage medium increased Listeria positive samples after the first week of cold storage but did not maintain the increase thereafter while saline had an adverse effect on the growth of the bacteria. However, samples held in no media in a pilot study involving monthly sampling of a herd revealed better results. Detection limit of the culture media was also investigated. The lowest concentration detected by culture media was 3.17 organisms/ml. This was seven organisms/g for known Listeria positive sample. The faecal samples spiked with 10-fold dilutions of L. monocytogenes and held at 4 degrees C revealed that the sample spiked with 3.17 x 10-1 cfu/ml organisms resulted in growth after the second week of cold storage. The results suggest that the culture technique employing cold enrichment followed by selective enrichment and plating is more sensitive, the storage of faecal samples in no media when compared with the samples in storage medium, LSEB, NB and saline, during cold enrichment is a better application and culture of faeces, immediately after collection, at third and seventh week of cold enrichment produce more satisfactory results.
In 81 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with antibodies to native type II collagen, the frequencies of each IgG subclass to native type II collagen were IgG1 (70%), IgG2 (12%), IgG3 (84%) and IgG4 (6%) and to denatured type II collagen were IgG1 (86%), IgG2 (23%), IgG3 (86%) and IgG4 (6%). Thus serum antibodies to type II collagen in patients with RA were predominantly of the complement fixing subclasses IgG1 and IgG3.
Summary A case of relapsing polychondritis (RPC) with strongly positive antibodies to both native and denatured type II collagen is reported. This is only the second report of the use of cyclosporin A in the treatment of RPC.
Using epitope scanning of 272 short, synthetic peptides representing the amino acid sequence of the CB-11 peptide of type II collagen, we have shown that five strains of rat, immunized with type II collagen, produce antibodies to a region 37-45 amino acids from the amino end of CB-11 peptide. Antibodies to this region always gave the highest binding values suggesting that it is an immunodominant region. Wistar rats immunized with a synthetic peptide representing this region, coupled to keyhole limpet haemocyanin, produced antibodies to this peptide which could still be detected at 1:4000 to 1:8000 dilution but none developed clinical arthritis. All sera also showed binding of antibodies to denatured bovine type II collagen but not to native type II collagen, keyhole limpet haemocyanin or to bovine serum albumin by ELISA. Sera from peptide-immunized rats were examined for antibody binding to the 272 short peptides of the CB-11 peptide and to the synthetic peptides representing shortened forms of the immunodominant region and forms of it with substituted amino acids. These results showed that the antibodies in the peptide-immunized rats were not identical to those produced to that peptide by rats immunized with type II collagen but may represent subpopulations of them. These findings suggest caution in interpreting the role of antibodies to individual peptides in arthritis induction without knowledge of their fine specificity.
The analysis of data in clinical records could be useful to epidemiologists in planning analytical studies and identifying new research initiatives. This paper describes the method used to develop a systematic, replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content categories on the basis of explicit rules of user-defined coding, and systematically sorting a large volume of records accurately and reliably. The method was used to categorise the reasons for retirement from racing in Hong Kong of 3727 thoroughbred racehorses between the 1992/93 and 2003/04 racing seasons into a user-defined dictionary. An automated process successfully categorised 95 per cent of the records. The other 5 per cent were assigned manually to one of the dictionary categories. The whole process from initial screening to the categorisation of all the records took approximately 100 man-hours to complete.
SUMMARY The binding sites for MoAbs to the 65-kD heat-shock protein (hsp65) of mycobacteria have been investigated by epitope scanning. Five hundred and twenty-six 8-mer peptides representing the complete sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis hsp65 were synthesised in duplicate using the Epitope Scanning Kit (CRB Ltd.). The epitopes of six MoAbs raised to the hsp65 of M. tuberculosis or M. leprae were investigated. We have identified the epitope of a new MoAb (DC 16); this epitope is continuous, hydrophilic in nature and 11 amino acids long. We have also confirmed the location of the epitopes of three MoAbs (IIH9, ML30 and IIC8). Thus the epitope scanning technique has proved suitable for the detection of continuous epitopes of hsp65.
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