Aquaporin-4 positive extracellular vesicles and cytokines in cerebrospinal fluid in schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and associations with peripheral cytokines.

Schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are complex neuropsychiatric disorders with emerging evidence implicating immune and neuroinflammatory mechanisms. This exploratory pilot study investigated aquaporin-4 positive (AQP4+) extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 11 treatment-resistant patients with schizophrenia (n = 5) or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD, n = 6) receiving an add-on, single-infusion rituximab (1000 mg) treatment, a B-cell depleting therapy. CSF samples were collected pre-treatment and, for a subset, again five months post-treatment.

Exploring the circulating metabolome of sepsis: metabolomic and lipidomic profiles sampled in the ambulance.

Background: Sepsis is defined as a dysfunctional host response to infection. The diverse clinical presentations of sepsis pose diagnostic challenges and there is a demand for enhanced diagnostic markers for sepsis as well as an understanding of the underlying pathological mechanisms involved in sepsis. From this perspective, metabolomics has emerged as a potentially valuable tool for aiding in the early identification of sepsis that could highlight key metabolic pathways and underlying pathological mechanisms.

Complex Polyploids: Origins, Genomic Composition, and Role of Introgressed Alleles.

Introgression allows polyploid species to acquire new genomic content from diploid progenitors or from other unrelated diploid or polyploid lineages, contributing to genetic diversity and facilitating adaptive allele discovery. In some cases, high levels of introgression elicit the replacement of large numbers of alleles inherited from the polyploid's ancestral species, profoundly reshaping the polyploid's genomic composition. In such complex polyploids, it is often difficult to determine which taxa were the progenitor species and which taxa provided additional introgressive blocks through subsequent hybridization.