Treatment with IgM-enriched immunoglobulin in sepsis: a matched case-control analysis.

The therapeutic potential of IgM-enriched immunoglobulin preparations (IgGAM) in sepsis remains a field of debate. The use of polyclonal immunoglobulins as adjuvant therapy (Esen & Tugrul, 2009; Kaukonen et al., 2014; Molnár et al., 2013; Taccone et al., 2009) has been shown to improve clinical outcomes in terms of mortality. This study analyze the impact of IgM-enriched IgG (IgGM) as additional immunomodulation. Patients and methods: This is a retrospective registry of 1196 patients with severe sepsis and septic shock from nine Intensive Care Units in Colombia, from routine clinical practice; 220 patients treated with IgGAM were registered. Fully matched comparators for severity and type of infection selected among patients non-treated with IgGAM. Mortality after 28 days was 30.5% among IgGAM-treated patients and 40.5% among matched comparators. Results: Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed IgGAM treatment to be the only variable protective from death after 28 days (hazard ratio 0.62; 0.45-0.86; p: 0.004). Results reinforce the importance of IgGAM treatment for favorable outcome after septic shock and are in line with recent published meta-analyses. This study showed that treatment with IgGM in patients with sepsis was an independent modulator of the 28-day associated with a lower mortality.

The dual descriptor to measure local reactivity on Buckminster fullerenes: an analysis within the framework of conceptual DFT.

The Buckminster fullerene C60 molecule was analyzed from the point of view of global and local reactivity. In particular, the dual descriptor--a local reactivity descriptor derived from conceptual density functional theory--was used to describe local reactivity in this molecule. One of the main advantages of using such a descriptor is the simplicity of obtaining accurate information about the local reactivity required to form covalent bonds without needing to perform calculations at higher levels of theory. The descriptor was adapted to the correct symmetry of this molecule in equilibrium so that the isosurface belongs to the totally symmetrical irreducible representation of the respective group of symmetry. Unlike global and some other local reactivity descriptors, correlation effects and basis sets are not critically important when using the dual descriptor because local reactivity is conserved at a qualitative level.