Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

'The data showed that, compared to normal births, preterm births are associated with higher levels of proteins that attract white blood cells and promote inflammation, such as IL-6 and IL-1β. Vaginal fluids from individuals who went on to have an early preterm birth where the amniotic sac ruptured before labor, contained lower levels of proteins known as defensins, which defend the body from bacteria.'
#Immunology
https://elifesciences.org/articles/90943

'Heinrich von Kleist, the German writer, once said that looking at a seascape by Caspar David Friedrich was like having your eyelids cut off. You were staring directly at death, at the loneliest center of the loneliest void. What could be better than that?'

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-art-world/the-man-who-could-paint-loneliness

'For each of us personally, a lot will have unfolded. An 18-year-old who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010, and watched Cameron and Clegg standing in the Downing Street garden sunshine together six days later, is now 32. Aged 24, they witnessed the country take a lurch into the unknown, with a referendum result delivered largely by the over-50s. Johnson took over when they were 27, and less than a year later the country was staggering through lockdowns, with an overwhelmed NHS and an economy dependent on central bank financing of a Treasury-led income guarantee scheme. Aged 30, they will have witnessed, disbelieving, the Truss experiment, in many ways the most outlandish and implausible event of this era. Since then: stasis and drudgery, culminating in the image of Rishi Sunak in a rain-drenched suit, asking for it all to stop.'

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n13/william-davies/fever-dream

"Here, we identify dexamethasone treatment-induced cellular and molecular changes associated with improved survival in COVID-19 patients. We observed a reversal of transcriptional hallmark signatures in monocytes associated with severe COVID-19 and the induction of a monocyte substate characterized by the expression of glucocorticoid-response genes. These molecular responses to dexamethasone were detected in circulating and pulmonary monocytes, and they were directly linked to survival."
#Covid #Covid19
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00654-8

'Here we studied the endogenous TLR pathways in human and mouse macrophages. We provide evidence that myddosomes are dynamic and long-lived entities, numbering in the dozens within individual cells. We demonstrate that the complex cellular responses of the entire TLR pathway are coordinated and executed from within these structures.'
#Immunology #InnateImmunity
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07614-7

Today, in 'Denisovan or Stephen Miller?'

"The Tibetan cave had been a Buddhist sanctuary for centuries. In 1980, a monk who came there to pray noticed a part of a jaw on the ground (...) The jaw looked human but lacked some key features, like a prominent chin."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/science/denisovans-ice-age-hunting-tibet.html

He should have published it in J Exp Med!

'Mr. Towne also worked for years on the script for “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.” But he was so disappointed with the finished film, directed by Hugh Hudson and released in 1984, that he insisted on replacing his name in the credits with “P.H. Vazak,” shorthand for the name of his beloved Hungarian sheepdog, Pannonia’s Hira Vazak. His “Greystoke” screenplay was nevertheless nominated for an Oscar.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/movies/robert-towne-dead.html

'Dr. Jordan was in many ways an old-school researcher. He insisted that a drug should be investigated for all its potential applications, not just the ones that might make money or be the quickest to market. And he believed that scientists should be transparent about side effects, even if it meant reducing a drug’s appeal. He called his work “conversations with nature.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/science/v-craig-jordan-dead.html

'Here, we show that the conclusions of a microbiome research study are greatly dependent on the time of sample collection, and that experimental and control groups undergo a cycle of diverging and converging microbiome composition depending on the nature and timing of experimental interventions.'

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-024-01064-1