Plague Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Plague, including details on bubonic plague, yersinia pestis, infection, types, treatment.

An Update on Psychogenic Movement Disorders.

Ellenstein A, Kranick SM, Hallett M

Human Motor Control Section, Medical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Building 10, Room 7D42, 10 Center Drive, MSC 1428, Bethesda, MD, 20892-1428, USA, ellensteina@ninds.nih.gov.

Psychogenic movement disorders (PMD) and other conversion disorders (CD) with apparent neurologic signs (neurologic CD) plague patients and perplex physicians. Due to a lack of objective evidence of underlying brain lesions, CD were largely abandoned by neurologists and remained poorly understood psychiatric diagnoses throughout most of the 20th century. Modern neuroscience now supports increasingly comprehensive biological models for these complex disorders, definitively establishing their place in both neurology and psychiatry. Although it is often clinically useful to distinguish a movement disorder as either "organic" or "psychogenic," this dichotomy is difficult to defend scientifically. Here we describe the neuroimaging and neurophysiologic evidence for dysfunctional neural networks in PMD, explain the diagnostic potential of clinical neurophysiologic testing, discuss the promising if increasingly complex role of neuropsychiatric genetics, and review current treatment strategies.

Published 11 May 2011 in Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

Articles on Plague published 11 May 2011:

Genome Sequencing and Analysis of Yersina pestis KIM D27, an Avirulent Strain Exempt from Select Agent Regulation.   PLoS One, 6(4): e19054.

Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of the plague. Y. pestis KIM 10+ strain was passaged and selected for loss of the 102 kb pgm locus, resulting in an attenuated strain, KIM D27. In this study, whole genome sequencing was performed on KIM D27 in order to identify any additional differences. Initial assemblies of 454 data were highly fragmented, and various bioinformatic tools detected between 15 and 465 SNPs and INDELs when comparing both strains, the vast majority associated with A or T ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Differential Control of Yersinia pestis Biofilm Formation In Vitro and in the Flea Vector by Two c-di-GMP Diguanylate Cyclases.   PLoS One, 6(4): e19267.

Yersinia pestis forms a biofilm in the foregut of its flea vector that promotes transmission by flea bite. As in many bacteria, biofilm formation in Y. pestis is controlled by intracellular levels of the bacterial second messenger c-di-GMP. Two Y. pestis diguanylate cyclase (DGC) enzymes, encoded by hmsT and y3730, and one phosphodiesterase (PDE), encoded by hmsP, have been shown to control biofilm production in vitro via their opposing c-di-GMP synthesis and degradation activities, ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Histopathological Observation of Immunized Rhesus Macaques with Plague Vaccines after Subcutaneous Infection of Yersinia pestis.   PLoS One, 6(4): e19260.

In our previous study, complete protection was observed in Chinese-origin rhesus macaques immunized with SV1 (20 µg F1 and 10 µg rV270) and SV2 (200 µg F1 and 100 µg rV270) subunit vaccines and with EV76 live attenuated vaccine against subcutaneous challenge with 6×10(6) CFU of Y. pestis. In the present study, we investigated whether the vaccines can effectively protect immunized animals from any pathologic changes using histological and immunohistochemical techniques. In addition, the ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Plague published 9 May 2011:

2050: Ending the odyssey of the great white plague.   Pharmacol Res.

The United Nation's Millennium Development Goal of tuberculosis (TB) elimination by 2050 may be a realizable goal by concerting efforts of the numerous stakeholders involved in the development of novel antituberculous therapeutics. Improving pre-clinical models by the research community is one aspect of the drug development pipeline that will continue to require refinement. Better in vitro and animal models are needed to expand the chemical scaffolds of anti-TB agents. These constructs must be ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Plague published 4 May 2011:

Brief communication: Co-detection of Bartonella quintana and Yersinia pestis in an 11th-15th burial site in Bondy, France.   Am J Phys Anthropol.

Historical and anthropological data suggest that skeletons excavated from an 11th to 15th century mass grave in Bondy, France, may be those of victims of the Great Plague. Using high-throughput real-time PCR investigation of the dental pulp collected from 14 teeth from five such skeletons, we detected Bartonella quintana DNA in three individuals and Yersinia pestis DNA in two individuals. DNA from five other deadly pathogens was not found. Suicide PCR genotyping confirmed Y. pestis DNA ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Plague published 2 May 2011:

Factors Influencing University Students' Explicit and Implicit Sexual Double Standards.   J Sex Res.

Quantitative research has resulted in inconsistent evidence for the existence of a sexual double standard, leading Crawford and Popp (2003) to issue a call for methodological innovation. The Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is a measure that may provide a means to examine the double standard without the contamination of the demand characteristics and social desirability biases that plague self-report research (Marks & Fraley, 2005). The purpose of ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Molecular recognition of chymotrypsin by the serine protease inhibitor ecotin from Yersinia pestis.   J Biol Chem.

Resistance to antibiotics is a problem not only in terms of healthcare but also biodefence. Engineering of resistance into a human pathogen could create an untreatable biothreat pathogen. One such pathogen is Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague. Previously we have used a bioinformatic approach to identify proteins which may be suitable targets for antimicrobial therapy and in particular for the treatment of plague. The serine protease inhibitor ecotin was identified as one such ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Plague published 28 April 2011:

Characterization of an F1 Deletion Mutant of Yersinia pestis CO92, Pathogenic Role of F1 Antigen in Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague, and Evaluation of Sensitivity and Specificity of F1 Antigen Capture-Based Dipsticks.   J Clin Microbiol, 49(5): 1708-15.

We evaluated two commercial F1 antigen capture-based immunochromatographic dipsticks, Yersinia Pestis (F1) Smart II and Plague BioThreat Alert test strips, in detecting plague bacilli by using whole-blood samples from mice experimentally infected with Yersinia pestis CO92. To assess the specificities of these dipsticks, an in-frame F1-deficient mutant of CO92 (Δcaf) was generated by homologous recombination and used as a negative control. Based on genetic, antigenic/immunologic, and electron ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

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