RESUMO
The aetiology of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory granulomatous multi-system disorder, is unclear. It is thought to be the product of an unknown exogenous antigenic stimulus and an endogenous genetic susceptibility. Toll-like receptors (TLR) are signal molecules essential for the cellular response to bacterial cell wall components. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), for example, binds to TLR 4. Two different polymorphisms for the TLR4 gene (Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile) have been described recently. This leads to a change in the extracellular matrix function of TLR4 and to impaired LPS signal transduction. We genotyped a total of 141 Caucasian patients with sarcoidosis and 141 healthy unrelated controls for the Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile polymorphisms in the TLR4 gene. The mutations were identified with polymerase chain reaction followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. Among sarcoidosis patients the prevalence for each Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile mutant allele was 15.6% (22/141). In the control group the prevalence was 5.67% (8/141) (P = 0.07). In the subgroup of patients with acute sarcoidosis there was no difference in the control group (P = 0.93), but there was a highly significant association between patients with a chronic course of sarcoidosis and TLR4 gene polymorphisms (P = 0.01).
Assuntos
Polimorfismo Genético , Sarcoidose/genética , Receptor 4 Toll-Like/genética , Doença Aguda , Adulto , Idoso , Doença Crônica , Feminino , Predisposição Genética para Doença , Genótipo , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Sarcoidose/imunologiaRESUMO
The universe of current adult day care center administrators (n = 36) and a stratified random sample of child day care center administrators (n = 300) in Virginia were surveyed to gather information about professionals' perceptions of the benefits and problems associated with providing regular intergenerational exchanges in day care settings. Findings of a qualitative analysis revealed that problems attributed to generational differences and organizational/service delivery issues were counterbalanced by sociocultural and organizational benefits.
