Tear ATG5 as a Potential Novel Biomarker in the Diagnosis of Sjögren Syndrome.

Autophagy has been suggested to have an important role in the pathogenesis of Sjögren syndrome (SS). We previously identified that autophagy related 5 (ATG5) was elevated in the tear and conjunctival epithelial cells of SS dry eyes (DE) compared to non-SS DE. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of tear ATG5 as a potential biomarker in the diagnosis of SS. To confirm this hypothesis, we evaluated the tear ATG5 concentration, and other ocular tests (Schirmer I, tear breakup time (TBUT), ocular surface staining (OSS) score, ocular surface disease index (OSDI)) in SS and non-DE, and compared their diagnostic performance to discriminate SS from non-SS DE. Tear ATG5 showed the greatest area under the curve (AUC = 0.984; 95% CI, 0.930 to 0.999) among the tests, and a 94.6% sensitivity and 93.6% specificity at a cutoff value of >4.0 ng/mL/µg. Our data demonstrated that tear ATG5 may be helpful as an ocular biomarker to diagnose and assess SS. In the future, the diagnostic power of tear ATG for SS should be validated.

Discovery of Two New Talaromyces Species from Crop Field Soil in Korea.

Two new fungal species of the genus Talaromyces, Talaromyces purpurogenus and Talaromyces trachyspermus from the Trichocomaceae family, were recovered during an investigation of fungal communities in soil collected from the Gangwon-do and Jeollanam-do provinces of Korea. These two species have not been previously officially reported from Korea. In this study, detailed descriptions of internal transcribed spacer rDNA and beta-tubulin gene regions of these two fungi are presented. Morphological features of the two fungi in five agar media, potato dextrose, oatmeal, malt extract, czapek yeast extract, and yeast extract sucrose, are also reported. The species were identified on the basis of molecular and morphological analysis, and herein we present data with detailed descriptions and figures.

General unknown screening for pesticides in whole blood and Korean gastric contents by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

A method of simultaneously screening 215 types of pesticides has been established by liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry, quadrupole/time of flight mass spectrometry and triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. Samples of blood and gastric contents were prepared through the modified Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe (QuEChERS) method. A modified QuEChERS that uses dispersive solid phase extraction for a small amount of sample, mini-QuEChERS, was applied to blood and gastric contents for quick and convenient preparation of the sample and to reduce matrix effect. This method of simultaneous identification needs the upmost reliability because these results are employed by forensic toxicology and may lead to issues with the law. In this study, we incorporated the following two concepts to demonstrate its reliability: One concept is that two tandem mass spectrometers are applied for the confirmation and then a precise compound identification is conducted synchronously at the same retention time. The other concept for reliability adopts the approved criterion as identification points, defined by EU. Validation of the method was performed to assess selectivity, linearity, limit of quantification (LOQ), and recovery by standard addition procedure. The result of linearity was almost satisfactory, and the LOQ of pesticides detected in whole blood and Korean characteristic gastric contents was between 2.5-50 ng/mL. About 90 % of the pesticides had 80-120 % recovery in whole blood, and about 78 % of the pesticides had 80-120 % recovery in Korean gastric contents.