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Abstract

AbstractImmunodepletion, urine analysis and diabetic nephropathypp. 603–612Diabetes mellitus is a principal cause of severe kidney disease (diabetic nephropathy (DN)) that ultimately requires an organ transplant. DN biomarkers are abundant in urine but are difficult to validate due to the presence of multiple, low abundance proteins and an excessive amount of water. Currently, 2‐D DIGE is both the most and the least reliable test for kidney disease. It produces as many as 1400 spots that must be matched, and making it the most complex. Fisher et al. add other dimensions to this analysis: chromatofocusing, electrospray, capillary electrophoresis, reversed phase liquid chromatography, and MALDI/MS. magnified imagePreternatural immunity: Just hanging aroundpp. 613–623If you are so lucky as to live where malaria is active all year round, you may eventually (over a period of years) develop a humoral resistance to malaria. This is a bargain variety of natural immunization that does protect against severe disease or death, but not against infection by the malaria. In fact, despite years of study, it is still not clear what the natural target is. Nnedu et al. used protein microarrays to dissect 483 targets further. They found 57 antigens in the year round neighborhood, ten of which had been protective in earlier studies. T‐cell counts (CD4+) did not count. However, there may be other hints to be teased out in the other micro‐targets. magnified imageSeveral flew over the cuckoo's nestpp. 644–649Believe it or not, electroshock therapy (or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)) was not banned after release of the film “One flew over the cuckoo's nest”, starring Jack Nicholson. It is now a respectable therapy when used in conjunction with a pretreatment of an anesthesia and a muscle relaxant. Stelzhammer et al. pointed out a deficit in most recent proteomic studies of the effect – no data on the effects of the pretreatment alone. Running multiplex control immunoassays on 142 analytes before and after anesthetic and relaxant application identified 26 samples as showing significant changes. The most significant change was glutathione‐S‐transferase α at >16‐fold followed by insulin and prolactin. magnified image