新自由主义危机的历史演变及其对美国应对新冠疫情的影响分析

新自由主义通过在全球制造经济危机、社会动荡等攫取财富和权力。作为当今世界最强势的力量,新自由主义及其意识形态霸权决定了美国政府应对本次新冠疫情的基本态度。极力维护金融垄断资本利益、医疗私有化以及行政机构陷入"选举游戏"是导致美国疫情失控的重要原因。

An overlap syndrome involving autoimmune hepatitis and systemic lupus erythematosus in childhood

We report a 12 years old female patient with an overlap syndrome involving autoimmune hepatitis （AIH） and systemic lupus erythematosus （SLE）. The patient presented with jaundice, hepatosplenomegaly, malaise, polyarthralgia, arthritis and butterfly rash on the face. Laboratory tests revealed severe liver dysfunction, Coombs positive hemolytic anemia and a positive ANA/ anti-dsDNA test. Renal biopsy showed class IIA kidney disease, while liver biopsy showed chronic hepatitis with severe inflammatory activity. The patient satisfied the international criteria for both SLE and AIH. Clinical symptoms and laboratory findings of SLE improved with high dose treatment with corticosteroids and azathioprine, however, remission of the liver disease could not be achieved. Repeat biopsy of the liver after three years of therapy revealed ongoing chronic hepatitis with high level of inflammatory activity. The present case indicates that children with liver dysfunction and SLE should be investigated for AIH. There is much diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma in patients with AIH-SLE overlap syndrome.

Prevalence of coeliac disease in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis in a Turkish population

AIM:To investigate the prevalence of coeliac disease in a series of Turkish patients with autoimmune thyroiditis.METHODS:Sera from 136 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed autoimmune thyroiditis and 119 healthy blood donors were tested for IgA tissue transglutaminase antibody with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.Endoscopic mucosal biopsy from the second part of duodenum was performed in patients with positive antibody test.RESULTS:Eight patients(5.9%)and one control subject(0.8%)were positive for IgA tissue transglutaminase antibody(OR:7.38,95% CI:0.91-59.85,P = 0.04).Six patients and one control agreed to take biopsies.Histopathological examination revealed changes classified as Marsh Ⅲa in one,Marsh Ⅱ in one,Marsh Ⅰ in two,and Marsh 0 in two patients with autoimmune throiditis,and MarshⅠin one blood donor.CONCLUSION:Turkish patients with autoimmune thyroiditis have an increased risk of coeliac disease and serological screening may be useful for early detection of coeliac disease in these patients.Our findings need to be confirmed in a larger series of patients.

A theoretical exploration of the origin and early evolution of a pandemic

A virus that can cause a global pandemic must be highly adaptive to human conditions.Such adaptation is not likely to have emerged suddenly but,instead,may have evolved step by step with each step favored by natural selection.It is thus necessary to develop a theory about the origin in order to guide the search.Here,we propose such a model whereby evolution occurs in both the virus and the hosts(where the evolution is somatic;i.e.,in the immune system).The hosts comprise three groups–the wild animal hosts,the nearby human population,and farther-away human populations.The theory suggests that the conditions under which the pandemic has initially evolved are:(i)an abundance of wild animals in the place of origin(PL_(0));(ii)a nearby human population of low density;(iii)frequent and long-term animal-human contacts to permit step-by-step evolution;and(iv)a level of herd immunity in the animal and human hosts.In this model,the evolving virus may have regularly spread out of PL_(0) although such invasions often fail,leaving sporadic cases of early infections.The place of the first epidemic(PL_(1)),where humans are immunologically naïve to the virus,is likely a distance away from PL_(0).Finally,this current model is only a first attempt and more theoretical models can be expected to guide the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

Identification of a combination of SNPs associated with Graves' disease using swarm intelligence

Graves' disease,the production of thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor-stimulating antibodies leading to hyperthyroidism,is one of the most common forms of human autoimmune disease.It is widely agreed that complex diseases are not controlled simply by an individual gene or DNA variation but by their combination.Single nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs),which are the most common form of DNA variation,have great potential as a medical diagnostic tool.In this paper,the P-value is used as a SNP pre-selection criterion,and a wrapper algorithm with binary particle swarm optimization is used to find the rule for discriminating between affected and control subjects.We analyzed the association between combinations of SNPs and Graves' disease by investigating 108 SNPs in 384 cases and 652 controls.We evaluated our method by differentiating between cases and controls in a five-fold cross validation test,and it achieved a 72.9% prediction accuracy with a combination of 17 SNPs.The experimental results showed that SNPs,even those with a high P-value,have a greater effect on Graves' disease when acting in a combination.

IL-18 maintains the homeostasis of mucosal immune system via inflammasome-independent but microbiota-dependent manner

Inflammasomes and their product interleukin 18(IL-18)play important roles in gut microbiota monitoring and homeostasis,and their loss of function could lead to microbiota dysbiosis and accelerate disease progression.However,the impacts of the resulting microbiota dysbiosis on the mucosal immune system are largely unknown.Here,we show that dysbiotic microbiota from Il18^(-/-)mice induced immune cell loss in the small intestine(SI)in an inflammasome-independent manner.Cohousing experiments revealed that the immunotoxic phenotype of these microbiota was transferable to wild type(WT)mice and induced immune cell death through the receptor-interacting protein kinase 3(RIP3)-mixed lineage kinase domain like pseudokinase(MLKL)pathway.Analysis of microbiota composition identified two types of bacteria at the genus level,Ureaplasma and Parasutterella,that accumulated in Il18^(-/-)mice and negatively mediated changes in immune cells in the SI.Furthermore,dysbiosis in Il18^(-/-)mice also contributed to increased susceptibility to Listeria infection.Collectively,our results demonstrate that IL-18 is essential to microbiota homeostasis and that dysbiotic microbiota could significantly shape the landscape of the immune system.