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Background— Inflammation has a pathogenetic role in acute myocardial infarction (MI). Pentraxin-3 (PTX3), a long pentraxin produced in response to inflammatory stimuli and highly expressed in the heart, was shown to peak in plasma ≈7 hours after MI. The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of PTX3 in MI compared with the best-known and clinically relevant biological markers. Methods and Results— In 724 patients with MI and ST elevation, PTX3, C-reactive protein (CRP), creatine kinase (CK), troponin T (TnT), and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) were assayed at entry, a median of 3 hours, and the following morning, a median of 22 hours from symptom onset. With respect to outcome events occurring over 3 months after the index event, median PTX3 values were 7.08 ng/mL in event-free patients, 16.12 ng/mL in patients who died, 9.12 ng/mL in patients with nonfatal heart failure, and 6.88 ng/mL in patients with nonfatal residual ischemia (overall P 1 at entry (OR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.14 to 4.25), and PTX3 (>10.73 ng/mL) (OR, 3.55; 95% CI, 1.43 to 8.83) independently predicted 3-month mortality. Biomarkers predicting the combined end point of death and heart failure in survivors were the highest tertile of PTX3 and of NT-proBNP and a CK ratio >6. Conclusions— In a representative contemporary sample of patients with MI with ST elevation, the acute-phase protein PTX3 but not the liver-derived short pentraxin CRP or other cardiac biomarkers (NT-proBNP, TnT, CK) predicted 3-month mortality after adjustment for major risk factors and other acute-phase prognostic markers.

The nucleocapsid (N) protein of the Toscana (TOS) virus was expressed in Escherichia coli by using a pET15b vector. The recombinant protein was purified by affinity chromatography and was characterized by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, immunoblotting, and enzyme immunoassay (EIA). The recombinant antigen was reactive with positive human sera, and the reactivity correlated very well ( r = 0.9) with that of a whole-virus antigen when tested by EIA with 30 TOS virus-positive and 30 TOS virus-negative serum samples. The results demonstrate that the recombinant N protein can be easily produced in a procaryotic system and used for diagnostic assays for TOS virus immunity.

Telomerase activity plays an important role in the two complementary processes of cellular immortalization and senescence. This enzyme is active in almost all tumors, but also in inflammatory and many normal proliferating cells. Therefore, the main limits of molecular determinations, such as telomeric repeat amplification protocol assay is that they are not able to discriminate between the enzymatic activity of tumor and normal cells. The most appropriate technique for this would be immunohistochemical determination using monoclonal antibodies. Very few monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) directed against the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) are commercially available and in the present study, we developed a new Mab directed against this protein (TERT-3 36-10) to investigate the possibility of detecting immunoreactivity to this Mab by immunohistochemical and flow cytometric approaches. Immunohistochemical determination showed a lack of reactivity to the Mab in highly differentiated striated muscle tissue, a variable reactivity in dysplastic cervical epithelial tissue and similar and widespread immunoreactivity in cell lines and clinical tumors. Furthermore, we demonstrated the ability of this Mab to inhibit enzyme activity in cell extract from MCR bladder tumor cell line.

A recombinant enzyme immunoassay (rEIA) to detect serum immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG to Toscana virus (TOSV) was developed with the aim of establishing a simple and easily available assay for diagnosing acute and/or previous infections. The rEIA, based on the recombinant nucleoprotein of TOSV expressed in Escherichia coli , was evaluated with 97 serum samples collected in an area where TOSV is endemic and compared to an analogous assay based on cell-derived TOSV. Discordant results were resolved by immunoblotting (IB). Twenty-two of these samples, obtained from subjects hospitalized during the summer season with meningitis of suspected TOSV etiology, were further characterized by indirect immunofluorescence and IB, and detection of specific TOSV RNA sequences in the cerebrospinal fluid of these patients was attempted by nested PCR. The results indicated that rEIA was able to diagnose acute TOSV infection by detection of specific serum IgM in all of the subjects with TOSV meningitis confirmed by nested PCR or serology. The overall sensitivity and specificity of rEIA were both 100% for IgM detection and 100 and 96.6%, respectively, for IgG detection. Thus, rEIA appears to be a simple and reliable laboratory test for the diagnosis of acute TOSV infection and for the assessment of immune status.