University of Duisburg-Essen

About: University of Duisburg-Essen is a education organization based out in Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 16072 authors who have published 39972 publications receiving 1109199 citations.

Collaborative Efforts Driving Progress in Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract: Diagnosis, treatment, response monitoring, and outcome of pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have made enormous progress during the past decades. Because AML is a rare type of childhood cancer, with an incidence of approximately seven occurrences per 1 million children annually, national and international collaborative efforts have evolved. This overview describes these efforts and includes a summary of the history and contributions of each of the main collaborative pediatric AML groups worldwide. The focus is on translational and clinical research, which includes past, current, and future clinical trials. Separate sections concern acute promyelocytic leukemia, myeloid leukemia of Down syndrome, and relapsed AML. A plethora of novel antileukemic agents that have emerged, including new classes of drugs, are summarized as well. Finally, an important aspect of the treatment of pediatric AML--supportive care--and late effects are discussed. The future is bright, with a wide range of emerging innovative therapies and with more and more international collaboration that ultimately aim to cure all children with AML, with fewer adverse effects and without late effects.

Abdominal pain in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: a review of putative psychological, neural and neuro-immune mechanisms.

Abstract: Chronic abdominal pain is a common symptom of great clinical significance in several areas of medicine. In many cases no organic cause can be established resulting in the classification as functional gastrointestinal disorder. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is the most common of these conditions and is considered an important public health problem because it can be disabling and constitutes a major social and economic burden given the lack of effective treatments. IBS aetiology is most likely multi-factorial involving biological, psychological and social factors. Visceral hyperalgesia (or hypersensitivity) and visceral hypervigilance, which could be mediated by peripheral, spinal, and/or central pathways, constitute key concepts in current research on pathophysiological mechanisms of visceral hyperalgesia. The role of central nervous system mechanisms along the “brain–gut axis” is increasingly appreciated, owing to accumulating evidence from brain imaging studies that neural processing of visceral stimuli is altered in IBS together with long-standing knowledge regarding the contribution of stress and negative emotions to symptom frequency and severity. At the same time, there is also growing evidence suggesting that peripheral immune mechanisms and disturbed neuro-immune communication could play a role in the pathophysiology of visceral hyperalgesia. This review presents recent advances in research on the pathophysiology of visceral hyperalgesia in IBS, with a focus on the role of stress and anxiety in central and peripheral response to visceral pain stimuli. Together, these findings support that in addition to lower pain thresholds displayed by a significant proportion of patients, the evaluation of pain appears to be altered in IBS. This may be attributable to affective disturbances, negative emotions in anticipation of or during visceral stimulation, and altered pain-related expectations and learning processes. Disturbed “top-down” emotional and cognitive pain modulation in IBS is reflected by functional and possibly structural brain changes involving prefrontal as well as cingulate regions. At the same time, there is growing evidence linking peripheral and mucosal immune changes and abdominal pain in IBS, supporting disturbed peripheral pain signalling. Findings in post-infectious IBS emphasize the interaction between centrally-mediated psychosocial risk factors and local inflammation in predicting long-term IBS symptoms. Investigating afferent immune-to-brain communication in visceral hyperalgesia as a component of the sickness response constitutes a promising future research goal.

Validation and Development of COI Metabarcoding Primers for Freshwater Macroinvertebrate Bioassessment

Abstract: A central challenge in the present era of biodiversity loss is to assess and manage human impacts on freshwater ecosystems Macroinvertebrates are an important group for bioassessment as many taxa show specific responses to environmental conditions However, generating accurate macroinvertebrate inventories based on larval morphology is difficult and error-prone Here, DNA metabarcoding provides new opportunities Its potential to accurately identify invertebrates in bulk samples to the species level, has been demonstrated in several case studies However, DNA based identification is often limited by primer bias, potentially leading to taxa in the sample remaining undetected Thus, the success of DNA metabarcoding as an emerging technique for bioassessment critically relies on carefully evaluating primers We used the R package PrimerMiner to obtain and process cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequence data for the 15 most globally relevant freshwater invertebrate groups for stream assessment Using these sequence alignments, we developed four primer combinations optimized for freshwater macrozoobenthos All primers were evaluated by sequencing ten mock community samples, each consisting of 52 freshwater invertebrate taxa Additionally, popular metabarcoding primers from the literature and the developed primers were tested in silico against the 15 relevant invertebrate groups The developed primers varied in amplification efficiency and the number of detected taxa, yet all detected more taxa than standard ‘Folmer’ barcoding primers Two new primer combinations showed more consistent amplification than a previously tested ribosomal marker (16S) and detected all 42 insect taxa present in the mock community samples In silico evaluation revealed critical design flaws in some commonly used primers from the literature We demonstrate a reliable strategy to develop optimized primers using the tool PrimerMiner The developed primers detected almost all taxa present in the mock samples, and we argue that high base degeneracy is necessary to decrease primer bias as confirmed by experimental results and in silico primer evaluation We further demonstrate that some primers currently used in metabarcoding studies may not be suitable for amplification of freshwater macroinvertebrates Therefore, careful primer evaluation and more region / ecosystem specific primers are needed before DNA metabarcoding can be used for routine bioassessment of freshwater ecosystems