Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

A decrease in the abundance and biodiversity of intestinal bacteria within the dominant phylum Firmicutes has been observed repeatedly in Crohn disease (CD) patients. In this study, we determined the composition of the mucosa-associated microbiota of CD patients at the time of surgical resection and 6 months later using FISH analysis. We found that a reduction of a major member of Firmicutes, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, is associated with a higher risk of postoperative recurrence of ileal CD. A lower proportion of F. prausnitzii on resected ileal Crohn mucosa also was associated with endoscopic recurrence at 6 months. To evaluate the immunomodulatory properties of F. prausnitzii we analyzed the anti-inflammatory effects of F. prausnitzii in both in vitro (cellular models) and in vivo [2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid (TNBS)-induced] colitis in mice. In Caco-2 cells transfected with a reporter gene for NF-kappaB activity, F. prausnitzii had no effect on IL-1beta-induced NF-kappaB activity, whereas the supernatant abolished it. In vitro peripheral blood mononuclear cell stimulation by F. prausnitzii led to significantly lower IL-12 and IFN-gamma production levels and higher secretion of IL-10. Oral administration of either live F. prausnitzii or its supernatant markedly reduced the severity of TNBS colitis and tended to correct the dysbiosis associated with TNBS colitis, as demonstrated by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis. F. prausnitzii exhibits anti-inflammatory effects on cellular and TNBS colitis models, partly due to secreted metabolites able to block NF-kappaB activation and IL-8 production. These results suggest that counterbalancing dysbiosis using F. prausnitzii as a probiotic is a promising strategy in CD treatment.

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Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is an anti-inflammatory commensal bacterium identified by gut microbiota analysis of Crohn disease patients

Clinical epidemiology of inflammatory bowel disease: incidence, prevalence, and environmental influences

Earnings Management and Investor Protection: An International Comparison

The received wisdom tells us that the rigidity and inflexibility of European job markets relative to that in the United States is the reason why Europe has high unemployment. This paper argues that this broad brush analysis is simply too vague to be useful. Indeed it is probably positively misleading. Many labor market institutions that conventionally come under the heading of rigidities have no observable impact on unemployment and may otherwise serve a useful purpose.

/pdf/unemployment-and-labor-market-rigidities-europe-versus-north-36wz94j1se.pdf

Unemployment and Labor Market Rigidities: Europe versus North America

Bacterial DNA within granulomas of patients with Crohn's disease--detection by laser capture microdissection and PCR.

Background and aims: The uncertainty surrounding the role of Mycobacterium avium subsp paratuberculosis (Map) in Crohn’s disease has been compounded by possible contamination from Map present in the lumen microflora. This study used laser capture microdissection (LCM) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect Map DNA in subepithelial granulomas, isolated from 15 surgically resected, formalin fixed specimens of granulomatous Crohn’s disease and from 12 granulomatous disease controls (10 bowel, 2 non-bowel).

Methods: The effect of amplicon size on reliability of PCR from formalin fixed samples was examined by amplifying 435 bp and 133 bp sequences of the human APC gene. After this, nested primers were designed to detect a small fragment (155 bp) of the Map specific IS900 gene in Crohn’s granulomas. LCM isolated granulomas from Map culture positive bovine intestine was used as positive control. PCR product specificity was confirmed by direct DNA sequencing.

Results: The smaller, but not the larger, fragment of the APC gene amplified reliably in all samples. Amplification of the 155 bp fragment of the IS900 gene detected Map DNA in microdissected Crohn’s granulomas in 6 of 15 cases, and in 0 of 12 disease control granulomas.

Conclusions: LCM can be used to detect Map DNA in granulomas in a proportion of patients with Crohn’s disease. However, formalin fixation requires that comparatively short DNA fragments of the Map specific IS900 gene be targeted, to permit consistent detection. Detection of Map DNA within granulomas might suggest an infectious aetiology in a subset of patients; alternatively, a transmissible agent may not be involved but mycobacterial DNA may influence pathogenesis by modifying the local cytokine responses.

https://gut.bmj.com/content/gutjnl/51/5/665.full.pdf

PCR detection of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis in Crohn’s disease granulomas isolated by laser capture microdissection

British apprenticeship, now dependent on the Modern Apprenticeship programme, is compared in this paper to both German apprenticeship and its national predecessor, Youth Training. Modern Apprenticeship shares many of the attributes of Youth Training, and shows some improvement in terms of skills produced. However, British apprenticeship performs poorly, in terms of rates of qualification and completion, as well as in breadth and depth of training, relative to its German counterpart, despite the provision by Modern Apprenticeship of substantial government financial support. The fact that MA resembles YT more than German apprenticeship reflects continuing institutional differences between the two countries, notably the limitations of the training quasi-market in which both YT and MA have operated. The prospects for MA to flourish, let alone perform the educational role that the government envisages for it, are bleak in the absence of institutional development along different lines.

Apprenticeship in the British 'Training Market'

The South Mayo Trough, a broad synclinorium containing a 10-km sequence of Early Ordovician turbidites passing up into shallow water sandstones, is interpreted as a forearc basin with an ophiolitic basement that formed a backstop to an accretionary prism on the northern edge of a north-facing arc. The arc collided with the Laurentian margin in Early Llanvirn times to deform the Dalradian Supergroup rifted margin clastic sequence. Prior to the late Llandovery, sinistral transcurrent faulting transposed the Connemara Dalradian terrane to its present position on the “outboard” ocean ward side of the South Mayo Trough. The South Mayo Trough was fed principally by arc and ophiolite-derived elastics during the Arenig with an increasing metamorphic component during the Llanvirn. The Late Ordovician transpressional “docking” of Connemara provided the southerly source for high-grade metamorphic clasts in the Deny veeny Formation.

The Ordovician evolution of the South Mayo Trough, western Ireland

edited by Marius Busemeyer and Christine Trampusch, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 389 pp., £60.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-959943-1 Switzerland in Europe: continuity and change in the Swi...

Paul Ryan

Papers

Bacterial DNA within granulomas of patients with Crohn's disease--detection by laser capture microdissection and PCR.

PCR detection of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis in Crohn’s disease granulomas isolated by laser capture microdissection

Apprenticeship in the British 'Training Market'

The Ordovician evolution of the South Mayo Trough, western Ireland

The political economy of collective skill formation