Interleukin-10 might play a crucial role in the pathogenesis and perpetuation of MG.

The decrease in NK cell cytotoxicity after DFP and the decline of AChR antibody titer were observed in good responders indicating that this could benefit patients with MG.

To investigate the direct impact of membrane plasmapheresis on the distribution of lymphocyte subsets, paired blood specimens from 18 healthy volunteers were studied before and immediately after a single session of double-filtration plasmapheresis (DFP). After a single session of DFP treatment, the number of helper T cells had increased by 2.34% (P = .0142), whereas the suppressor T cells decreased by 2.22% (P = .0095), with consequent increases in the T-helper/T-suppressor (Th/Ts) ratio (P < .0001). The number of B cells was also significantly increased (P = .0012) after DFP treatment; however, total T and natural killer cells did not differ after treatment. Older volunteers ( > 40 years) had significantly higher percentages of B (P = .0002) and helper T (P = .0432) cells after treatment. In contrast, younger subjects had a lower percentage of suppressor T cells (P = .0174). However, the Th/Ts ratio increased significantly irrespective of age group (P = .0016) and sex (P = .0016). A single session of membrane plasmapheresis seemed to activate the cellular immune system in our sample of 18 healthy volunteers, increasing the number of B cells and the Th/Ts ratio.

No abstract

Song familiarity has been systematically found to have a strong effect on music cognition, especially in aspects of emotion and memory; however, whether it would also influence the semantic processing of song lyrics is unclear. To address this, we asked subjects to listen to familiar and unfamiliar pop song excerpts, which were followed by visual target words semantically related or unrelated to the lyrics-final word, and to judge the concreteness of the targets. The ERP results revealed that larger N400 was elicited by unrelated visual targets compared with related ones, indicating that the subjects processed the meaning of the preceding lyrics even though that was not part of the required task. More importantly, the N400 relatedness effect did not vary with subjects' familiarity with the songs, suggesting that the subjects kept processing the meaning of the lyrics even though they had listened to the songs multiple times. The fact that repetition—the essential characteristic of familiar songs—did not diminish the meaning processing of lyrics suggests that lyrics and speech may differ at a higher communicative level