We evaluated the effectiveness of the newly developed WAKOTM ƒÀ-glucan test which measures plasma (1•¨3)-ƒÀ-D-glucan concentrations in the diagnosis of Candida deep mycosis. This test was compared to the Cand-Tec test. The WAKOTM ƒÀ-glucan test and Cand-Tec test were performed on 212 plasma specimens which were taken at 212 instances from 62 immunocompromised patients with serious diseases ;.e. hematopoietic malignancy, solid malignant tumor, etc. The sensitivities and specificities for the WAKOTM ƒÀ-glucan test were 84.8 and 85.9%, respectively, and 60.9 and 80.0% for the Cand-Tec test.

Low-temperature atmospheric-pressure plasma jets are generally considered a safe medical technology with no significant long-term side effects in clinical studies reported to date. However, there are studies emerging that show plasma jets can cause significant side effects in the form of skin burns under certain conditions. Therefore, with a view of developing safer plasma treatment approaches, in this study we have set out to provide new insights into the cause of these skin burns and how to tailor plasma treatments to mitigate these effects. We discovered that joule heating by the plasma bullet currents is responsible for creating skin burns during helium plasma jet treatment of live mice. These burns can be mitigated by treating the mice at a further distance so that the visible plasma plume does not contact the skin. Under these treatment conditions we also show that the plasma jet treatment still retains its medically beneficial property of producing reactive oxygen species in vivo. Therefore, treatment distance is an important parameter for consideration when assessing the safety of medical plasma treatments.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract