Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory autoimmune joint disease in which the complement system plays an important role. Of the several components of complement, current evidence points to C5 as the most important inducer of inflammation. Several groups generated Abs or small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) or small molecule inhibitors against C5 and C5aR1 (CD88) that have showed some efficacy i...

To the Editor: A 48‐year‐old female underwent C4/5 and C5/6 Bryan cervical disc arthroplasty 3 years earlier for right shoulder pain and right arm numbness and weakness. The symptoms resolved postoperatively, and the location of the implant was good 6 weeks after the surgery; however, the range of motion (ROM) of the C4/5 and C5/6 implant were only 1° and 4°, respectively. The patient complaine...

Complement acts as a danger-sensing system in the innate immune system, and its activation initiates a strong inflammatory response and cleavage of the proteins C3 and C5 by proteolytic enzymes, the convertases. These contain a non-catalytic substrate contacting subunit (C3b or C4b) in complex with a protease subunit (Bb or C2a). We determined the crystal structures of the C3b homologue cobra v...

Inhibiting complement anaphlytoxin C5a during sepsis may prevent sepsis mortality. Although human anti-C5 antibodies exist, their therapeutic use in microbial sepsis has been avoided because of the hypothesis that inhibiting C5b will prevent formation of the bactericidal membrane attack complex (MAC) and worsen clinical outcome. We wished to test the hypothesis that inhibition of C5 would impro...

Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) was shown to play important roles in biotic and abiotic stress signaling pathways in plants. PP2A is made of 3 subunits: a scaffolding subunit A, a regulatory subunit B, and a catalytic subunit C. It is believed that the B subunit recognizes specific substrates and the C subunit directly acts on the selected substrates, whereas the A subunit brings a B subunit and ...

BACKGROUND Severe blunt chest trauma is associated with high mortality. Sepsis represents a serious risk factor for mortality in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In septic patients with ARDS complement activation products were found to be elevated in the plasma. In single models like LPS or trauma complement has been studied to some degree, however in clinically highly relevant doubl...

PURPOSE We aim to perform a meta-analysis on incidence of C5 nerve root palsy (C5 palsy) for patients after cervical surgery. METHODS An extensive search of the literature was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane library, CNKI, and WANFANG databases on incidence of C5 palsy from January 2007 to January 2017. Prevalence of C5 palsy related to different surgery methods was calculat...

BACKGROUND The shoulder area is mainly innervated with the C5 and C6 nerve roots, and interscalene brachial plexus block (ISB) is widely used for postoperative analgesia after shoulder surgery. However, it is associated with adverse effects, such as numbness and weakness in the blocked arm due to an unwanted block of the lower brachial plexus (C7-T1). We hypothesized that the C5 approach during...

TNF induces hemorrhagic necrosis (HN) when injected into skin exposed to bacterial agents but not when injected into normal skin. In this paper, we present several lines of evidence suggesting that TNF requires the fifth component of complement (C5) to induce HN in skin exposed to bacteria. First, mouse strains that do not have C5 did not develop HN after injection of TNF and bacteria into skin...

We examined the uptake and intracellular transport of the fluorescent glucosylceramide analogue N-[5-(5,7-dimethyl BODIPYTM)-1-pentanoyl]-glucosyl sphingosine (C5-DMB-GlcCer) in human skin fibroblasts, and we compared its behavior to that of the corresponding fluorescent analogues of sphingomyelin, galactosylceramide, and lactosylceramide. All four fluorescent analogues were readily transferred...