Murine cytomegalovirus infection markedly reduces serum MCP-1 levels in MCP-1 transgenic mice.

Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is a pro-inflammatory chemokine believed to play a major role in atherogenesis. Injured endothelial cells express MCP-1, which attracts monocytes to the blood vessel wall and leads to the formation of atheromas. Cytomegalovirus infection may also play a role in atherogenesis and accelerates inflammation in tissues that overexpress MCP-1. To examine the relationship of cytomegalovirus infection and MCP-1, we infected MCP-1 transgenic mice with murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) and collected serum 6 days post-infection to evaluate TH1-related cytokine levels by ELISA. Serum levels of IL-10, IL-12 and IFN-gamma were increased in MCP-1 transgenic mice on day 6 following MCMV infection, while levels of IL-1beta and TNF-alpha were undetectable. However, MCP-1 serum levels were reduced >50% in MCP-1 transgenic mice following MCMV infection compared to uninfected transgenic mice. This effect was not as dramatic when an M33 null MCMV was administered to MCP-1 transgenic mice. The mechanism by which MCMV lowers serum MCP-1 levels is unknown, but this effect may enhance the survival of the virus and thus allow CMV to contribute to the chronic inflammation of atherogenesis.

Negotiation as relationship-building in healthcare organizations: a case study exercise.

A key skill needed by healthcare managers is an ability to simultaneously maintain and enhance relationships with multiple stakeholders, most notably clinical professionals, through the process of decision-making and negotiation. Additionally, healthcare managers need to be able to actively integrate various components of functional areas into their decision-making process. This article presents two exercises that serve the following purposes: (1) it can help raise students' awareness of the complexity involved in decision-making and negotiating, (2) it can create an understanding that decision-making and negotiations are embedded in a larger context involving multiple relationships between parties, and (3) it can be used as a means to measure the student's integrative ability within the traditional curriculum of an MHA program.

Of rats and women: fetal sexuality and hybrid agency.

This paper investigates the way in which the sexuality of women has been posited in relation to rats as experimental subjects, exploring the stakes of a scientific debate that takes the social world of female sexuality as its focus and as a political problem. Studies that purport to understand female sexuality by investigating rat behavior rely on problematic assumptions about sovereign agents motivating sexual behavior. Such studies also aim to do away with so-called deviant sexual behaviors and, as a consequence, gay people. Theories of agential realism and hybridity serve as counterforces to these inherently repressive perspectives by insisting on the multiple determinations of sexuality and subjectivity among women.