The article reviews a current bluetongue (BT) epidemiological situation in Europe, BT restricted zones and the role of wild ungulates as a reservoir for bluetongue virus (BTV) and its transmission. BT has been eradicated from central and northern Europe, however it is still circulating in some regions of southern and south-eastern Europe. According to the recent information of the Directoriate ...

Musk ambrette, musk ketone and musk xylene have a long history of use as fragrance ingredients, although musk ambrette is no longer used in fragrances. As part of the review of the safety of these uses, it is important to consider the systemic exposure that results from these uses. Since the primary route of exposure to fragrances is on the skin, dermal doses of carbon-14 labelled musk ambrette...

OBJECTIVES To compare the clinical and electrophysiological features of myasthenia gravis (MG) patients with (seropositive) or without (seronegative) antibodies to acetylcholine receptor. To investigate whether antibodies to muscle specific kinase (MuSK) and ryanodine receptor (RyR) are associated with particular features. METHODS Clinical profiles and single fibre electromyography (SFEMG) in...

OBJECTIVE To characterize B-cell subsets in patients with muscle-specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK) myasthenia gravis (MG). METHODS In accordance with Human Immunology Project Consortium guidelines, we performed polychromatic flow cytometry and ELISA assays in peripheral blood samples from 18 patients with MuSK MG and 9 healthy controls. To complement a B-cell phenotype assay that evaluated matu...

We assayed cryopreserved sera from 38 acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibody-negative patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) who were followed clinically for muscle-specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK) antibodies and analyzed and compared their clinical characteristics. None of 13 sera from patients with purely ocular MG were positive. Sera from 10 of 25 patients (40%) with generalized MG were positiv...

Muscle-specific receptor tyrosine kinase (MuSK) is required for the formation of the neuromuscular junction. Using direct gene transfer into single fibers, MuSK was expressed extrasynaptically in innervated rat muscle in vivo to identify its contribution to synapse formation. Spontaneous MuSK kinase activity leads, in the absence of its putative ligand neural agrin, to the appearance of epsilon...

The thermal characteristics of thar and their alpine habitat (including expanses of bare rock) were determined as a function of time throughout the night, by measurements from imagery acquired with a thermal video camera. Measurements were also made on thar in a farm environment, to determine the radiant temperature difference between their considerably hotter heads and cooler bodies. Thermal i...

Neuromuscular junction (NMJ) formation requires agrin, a factor released from motoneurons, and MuSK, a transmembrane tyrosine kinase that is activated by agrin. However, how signal is transduced from agrin to MuSK remains unclear. We report that LRP4, a low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR)-related protein, is expressed specifically in myotubes and binds to neuronal agrin. Its expression enab...