Several in vitro surrogates have been developed as convenient, user-friendly alternatives to mouse infectivity assays for determining the viability of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts. Such viability assays have been used increasingly to determine oocyst inactivation following treatment with chemical, physical, or environmental stresses. Defining the relationship between in vitro viability assays...

A reproducible, transcriptionally diverse common reference RNA is required for accurate comparisons of data generated from most spotted microarray experiments in different experiments. Several methods have been proposed to make such a reference RNA, such as pooling RNAs isolated from multiple cell lines or tissues, amplifying pooled RNAs, or synthesizing RNAs or DNAs complementary to microarray...

The neonatal immune response is impaired during the first weeks after birth. To obtain a better understanding of this immaturity, we investigated the development of T cell interactions with B cells in mice. For this purpose, we analyzed the immune response to three T-dependent antigens in vivo: (i) the polyclonal antibody response induced by vaccinia virus; (ii) the production of polyclonal and...

Therapies for heart disease are based largely on our understanding of the adult myocardium. The dramatic differences in action potential (AP) shape between neonatal and adult cardiac myocytes, however, indicate that a different set of molecular interactions in neonatal myocytes necessitates different treatment for newborns. Computational modeling is useful for synthesizing data to determine how...

BACKGROUND Testicular development is arrested in the hypogonadal (hpg) mouse due to a congenital deficiency in hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) synthesis. Chronic treatment of male hpg mice with estradiol induces FSH synthesis and secretion, and causes testicular maturation and qualitatively normal spermatogenesis. As estradiol negative feedback normally inhibits FSH productio...

UNLABELLED Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is the number one cause of bronchiolitis in infants, yet no vaccines are available because of a lack of knowledge of the infant immune system. Using a neonatal mouse model, we previously revealed that mice initially infected with RSV as neonates develop Th2-biased immunopathophysiologies during reinfection, and we demonstrated a role for en...

Newborns are more susceptible to severe disease from infection than adults, with maturation of immune responses implicated as a major factor. The type I interferon response delays mortality and limits viral replication in adult mice in a model of herpes simplex virus (HSV) encephalitis. We found that intact type I interferon signaling did not control HSV disease in the neonatal brain. However, ...

background: neonatal deaths mostly occur within the first one week and first 24 hours of life from a variety of conditions. objective: to examine the role of significant hypothermia and hypoglycaemia, in addition to some other factors, in neonatal mortality occurring within the first 24 hours of admission.methods: a prospective study of newborn infants hospitalized within the first 24 hours of ...

The B1-immunoreactive proteins (B1-IPs) are major secretory products of rat submandibular gland acinar-cell progenitors, and are also produced by neonatal and adult rat sublingual and parotid glands. In order to characterize the B1-IPs, we have previously isolated cDNA clones encoding rat parotid secretory protein (PSP; the predominant parotid B1-IP) and the related clone ZZ3, which is developm...