ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE WORK: The causes of sarcoidosis are unknown. Propionibacterium acnes is so far the only bacterium to be found in sarcoid lymph nodes. We attempted to detect P. acnes DNA in cells recovered by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) from patients with sarcoidosis. METHODS: BAL cells from 30 patients with histologically proven sarcoidosis and 30 controls with other lung diseases were examined by a nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for 16S rRNA of P. acnes. BAL cells from three recent sarcoid patients and two control patients were also examined by in situ PCR to locate P. acnes DNA. Clinical findings in sarcoid patients with and without positive results by PCR were compared. RESULTS: P. acnes DNA was detected in BAL cells from 21 (70%) sarcoid patients and 7 (23%) control patients. In situ signals of P. acnes DNA were detected in the cytoplasm of 0.2% to 2.8% of alveolar macrophages from sarcoid patients, but from no cells of the control patients. Gallium-67 uptake by lung parenchyma was found in about half of the sarcoid patients with P. acnes DNA, but in none of the other sarcoid patients. More of these patients with such DNA had lung parenchymal shadows in chest X-ray films and were in more advanced stages of the disease than the other sarcoid patients. CONCLUSIONS: Detection of P. acnes DNA in BAL cells was significantly more common in the patients with confirmed sarcoidosis. Detection was associated with some indices of disease activity in the lung.
Subject(s)
DNA, Bacterial/analysis , Propionibacterium acnes/genetics , Sarcoidosis/microbiology , Adult , Aged , Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid/cytology , Case-Control Studies , Female , Humans , Lung/pathology , Male , Middle Aged , Polymerase Chain Reaction , Propionibacterium acnes/pathogenicity , Radiography, Thoracic , Sarcoidosis/etiology , Severity of Illness IndexABSTRACT
The use of a modified ninhydrin reagent using ascorbic acid instead of potassium cyanide was investigated for the photometric determination of amino acids. It has been found possible to obtain an almost stoichiometric reaction for glutamic acid with a quantitative yield of "Ruhemann's purple", the end-product of the reaction, using ascorbic acid as a safe and economical reducing agent. The modified ninhydrin reagent was composed of 0.5 g of ninhydrin, and 15 mg of ascorbic acid in 60 ml of methyl cellosolve.
ABSTRACT
Lactobacillus brevis IFO-12005 showed good growth in rice shochu distillery lees (kome shochu kasu). Almost all of the free glutamic acid (10.50 mM) in shochu kasu was converted to gamma-amino-butyric acid (GABA) within 2 d of stationary culture at 30 degrees C. The amount of GABA in the kome shochu kasu medium finally reached 10.18 mM. After centrifugation of the broth culture, the supernatant fraction was treated with a flocculation agent to form a clear solution, then passed through a column containing a synthetic adsorbents, SP-207 to remove the yellow pigment and flavors which are unnecessary from a sensory perspective. An economical and simple production process for GABA was established.
