Belmont College

Rationale: Rhinovirus (RV) is a major cause of pulmonary exacerbations of allergic asthma and COPD. Oxidative stress and activation of pro-inflammatory innate and adaptive immune responses play key roles in initiating and sustaining pulmonary exacerbations. Serpin B1 controls cellular activation and pro-inflammatory pathways but is inactivated by oxidation. We engineered an oxidation resistant form of recombinant mouse serpin B1 (OxR) and tested its role in ameliorating RV-induced airway inflammation and airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) in house dust mite (HDM) sensitized mice. Methods:OxR was produced in yeast (S. cerevisiae). Purified OxR was subject to extensive testing to ensure it was suitable for animal studies. 5 groups of 6 mice (BALB/c) each were sensitized to HDM. 8 hrs prior to challenge with RV 2 groups were treated with OxR (50ug) or human alpha 1antitrypsin (50ug, AAT) delivered intra-nasally (IN). Another group was injected intraperitoneally (IP) with OxR (500ug). The remaining groups served as untreated (+RV, -drug) and control animals (-RV, -drug). Three days post RV-challenge the following endpoints were assessed 1) AHR, 2) viral load (RT-qPCR), 3) Airway inflammation (eosinophils, neutrophils, macrophages, CD4+/CD8+ lymphocytes), 4) mucus expression, 5) Inflammatory cytokines/chemokines in BAL fluids and 6) Neutrophil extracellular trap (NETosis) formation. Results:Both OxR and AAT significantly reduced the number of neutrophils present in BAL fluid and lung tissue on day 3 compared to RV only treated animals. The most striking difference between OxR and AAT treated groups was in the number of macrophages and CD4+ cells present in the peribronchial lung tissue. OxR, but not AAT, treated animals had significantly lower levels of both cell types. Both AAT and OxR treated animals had reduced levels of inflammatory cytokines/chemokines in BAL fluids notably, IFNgamma, IL-5 and MIG. OxR treated animals did show reduced AHR unlike AAT treated animals which showed increased AHR. Neither result was significant compared with untreated allergic animals however, OxR and AAT treated groups were significantly different from each other. No RV or NETosis was detected in any group and no significant differences in lung mucus noted. Conclusions:OxR can ameliorate RV-induced airway inflammation in a mouse model of allergic asthma through specific effects on neutrophils, macrophages and CD4+ cells. These findings are consistent with published observations that serpin B1 helps coordinate cellular responses to help clear pathogens and resolve inflammation. This suggests a possible role for OxR in treating pulmonary exacerbations of allergic asthma and COPD.

DANIE BEAULIEU, PH.D: Eye Movement Integration Therapy: The Comprehensive Clinical Guide. Norwalk, CT: Crown House Publishing, 2003, 400 pp., $59.95. ISBN 1904424155 Dr. Beaulieu has written an excellent description of Eye Movement Integration (EMI) therapy, its rationale, how it is different from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and how one might use EMI for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions. The book is intended both as a primer for those who are interested in EMI training and a reference for those who have already completed training (p. 225). It is written clearly, and should be persuasive for clinicians open to EMFs differences from most cognitively oriented and traditional, verbally based psychotherapies. The author's enthusiasm for this form of treatment leads her to make claims which sometimes seem excessive to someone, such as myself, trained in psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, and also medically trained in neurobiology and neurophysiology. For example, in her introduction Dr. Beaulieu says of EMI that felt that this therapy to be every bit as important as the advent of penicillin (p.x). In the context of her introductory chapter, this claim refers to the well-known fact that penicillin was found to be effective long before its mechanism of action was worked out. The author believes that EMI is similarly effective for treating psychological trauma, even though we still lack a definitive scientific understanding of its mechanism of action. I was put off by the grand sweep of that particular analogy and so I delayed reading beyond the book's introduction for quite some time. However, my subsequent careful reading of the body of the text revealed a well-informed, serious and thoughtful presentation of the evidence and rationale for EMFs utilization. The author is clearly a skilled clinician and thoughtful professional. If one discounts the occasional hyperbole, the book offers many useful ideas and suggestions for clinicians interested in learning about this novel approach to the difficult task of helping traumatized individuals. The author explains that the fundamental difference between EMI and traditional verbal psychotherapies is based upon the pioneering clinical observations of the technique's originators, namely that asking patients to make certain eye movements seem to have therapeutic value for traumatized patients. EMDR utilizes specific eye movements which are different from those employed in EMI, but both types of eye movements reportedly have ameliorative effects on the processing of traumatic memories. Although the basic clinical utility of eye movements remains controversial in some professional circles, for those who accept the evidence for its therapeutic value, specialized techniques and training modalities have been developed, including those clearly described in this book. The reasonable, but still unproven, explanation for why inducing such eye movements might be useful therapeutically is bolstered by the author's excellent citations from the scientific literature about eye movement abnormalities found in schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. Recent neuroanatomical and brain imaging findings that emphasize the role of the amygdala and hippocampus in the processing of memories are also persuasively cited, although the fact that these findings are still more suggestive than conclusive in their implications for clinicians could have been, in my view, emphasized a bit more. …

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Infrared reflectance spectra of silica glass implanted with Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, and Bi to doses between 0.5 - 6 x 1016 cm-2 have been measured from 5000 cm-1 to 400 cm-1 at room temperature. The ion energy of the implantation was 160 KeV and the current was 10μA. Alterations in reflectance of bands at 1125 and 481 cm-1 in the spectrum of an unimplanted sample of the order of 20% are observed. A band attributed to non-bridging oxygen ions at -1015 cm-1 is observed to increase in intensity with increasing dose for all species. The band at 1125 cm-1 is observed to shift to lower wavenumber with implantation. Bands due to implanted ion-oxygen vibrations were not detected. The magnitudes of the effects on the existing bands were ion specific. This ion specificity is attributed to the differing chemical states of the implanted ions after implantation.

Raman spectra have been recorded for glasses in the binary systems CeO 2 ‐P 2 O 5 and Pr 2 O 3 ‐P 2 O 5 . The cerium phosphate glasses were prepared having different concentrations of CeO 2 and the praseodymium phosphate glasses with different ratios of Pr 3+ to Pr 4+ . The spectra indicate that both cerium and praseodymium enter the glass in modifying sites. We see no changes in the Raman spectra with Pr 3+ /Pr 4+ ratio. Measurements of the density and glass transition temperature are also reported.

In "Interpolations in 1 Cor" ( CBQ 48:81-94) Murphy-O'Connor rejected the egalitarian interpretation of 1 Cor 14:33b-36 argued by Odell-Scott in "Let the Women Speak In Church" (BTB 13:3) and re-asserted that the text is a post-Pauline interpolation. Odell-Scott argues that (1) Murphy-O'Connor's arguments that the text is an interpolation do not hold up under critical scrutiny, and that (2) the critical problems which the interpolation hypothesis attempts to solve are better resolved by the egalitarian interpretation.