Summary Background Combination antiretroviral therapy has led to significant increases in survival and quality of life, but at a population-level the effect on life expectancy is not well understood. Our objective was to compare changes in mortality and life expectancy among HIV-positive individuals on combination antiretroviral therapy. Methods The Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration is a multinational collaboration of HIV cohort studies in Europe and North America. Patients were included in this analysis if they were aged 16 years or over and antiretroviral-naive when initiating combination therapy. We constructed abridged life tables to estimate life expectancies for individuals on combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996–99, 2000–02, and 2003–05, stratified by sex, baseline CD4 cell count, and history of injecting drug use. The average number of years remaining to be lived by those treated with combination antiretroviral therapy at 20 and 35 years of age was estimated. Potential years of life lost from 20 to 64 years of age and crude death rates were also calculated. Findings 18 587, 13 914, and 10 854 eligible patients initiated combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996–99, 2000–02, and 2003–05, respectively. 2056 (4·7%) deaths were observed during the study period, with crude death rates decreasing from 16·3 deaths per 1000 person-years in 1996–99 to 10·0 deaths per 1000 person-years in 2003–05. Potential years of life lost per 1000 person-years also decreased over the same time, from 366 to 189 years. Life expectancy at age 20 years increased from 36·1 (SE 0·6) years to 49·4 (0·5) years. Women had higher life expectancies than men. Patients with presumed transmission via injecting drug use had lower life expectancies than those from other transmission groups (32·6 [1·1] years vs 44·7 [0·3] years in 2003–05). Life expectancy was lower in patients with lower baseline CD4 counts than in those with higher baseline counts (32·4 [1·1] years for CD4 cell counts below 100 cells per μL vs 50·4 [0·4] years for counts of 200 cells per μL or more). Interpretation Life expectancy in HIV-infected patients treated with combination antiretroviral therapy increased between 1996 and 2005, although there is considerable variability in subgroups of patients. However, the average number of years remaining to be lived at age 20 years was about two-thirds of that in the general population in these countries.

Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal-dominant disorder that results from >or=36 CAG repeats in the HD gene (HTT). Approximately 10% of patients inherit a chromosome that underwent CAG expansion from an unaffected parent with <36 CAG repeats. This study is a comprehensive analysis of genetic diversity in HTT and reveals that HD patients of European origin (n = 65) have a significant enrichment (95%) of a specific set of 22 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that constitute a single haplogroup. The disease association of many SNPs is much stronger than any previously reported polymorphism and was confirmed in a replication cohort (n = 203). Importantly, the same haplogroup is also significantly enriched (83%) in individuals with 27-35 CAG repeats (intermediate alleles, n = 66), who are unaffected by the disease, but have increased CAG tract sizes relative to the general population (n = 116). These data support a stepwise model for CAG expansion into the affected range (>or=36 CAG) and identifies specific haplogroup variants in the general population associated with this instability. The specific variants at risk for CAG expansion are not present in the general population in China, Japan, and Nigeria where the prevalence of HD is much lower. The current data argue that cis-elements have a major predisposing influence on CAG instability in HTT. The strong association between specific SNP alleles and CAG expansion also provides an opportunity of personalized therapeutics in HD where the clinical development of only a small number of allele-specific targets may be sufficient to treat up to 88% of the HD patient population.

Most knowledge of hemophagocytic syndromes (HPSs) including hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is derived from pediatric studies; literature on adult HPS/HLH predominantly consists of small retrospective studies with clinical and methodological heterogeneity. The aims of this systematic scoping review were to provide an overview of existing literature on adult HPS/HLH, describe current practices in diagnosis and treatment, and propose priorities for future research. Articles from Ovid Medline, Embase and Pubmed (1975-2015) describing 10 or more unique adults (age>15years) with HPS/HLH were included. 82 publications were eligible: 10 were prospective and 72 were retrospective. Of the six distinct diagnostic criteria, the HLH-2004 criteria were by far the most commonly used. A minority of studies tested for genetic abnormalities (12), soluble interleukin-2 receptor (11), and/or NK function (11) in a subset of patients. Most centers used steroids and either etoposide-based (HLH-94/HLH-2004) or doxorubicin-based (CHOP) initial therapy regimens. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell therapy for treatment of adult HLH has rarely been reported. Mortality in larger treatment focused studies ranged from 20 to 88%. Developing adult-specific diagnostic criteria based on widely evaluable features of secondary HPS/HLH and establishing standard initial therapies are priorities for future research.

Huntington disease (HD) results from CAG expansion in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Although HD occurs worldwide, there are large geographic differences in its prevalence. The prevalence in populations derived from Europe is 10-100 times greater than in East Asia. The European general population chromosomes can be grouped into three major haplogroups (group of similar haplotypes): A, B and C. The majority of HD chromosomes in Europe are found on haplogroup A. However, in the East-Asian populations of China and Japan, we find the majority of HD chromosomes are associated with haplogroup C. The highest risk HD haplotypes (A1 and A2), are absent from the general and HD populations of China and Japan, and therefore provide an explanation for why HD prevalence is low in East Asia. Interestingly, both East-Asian and European populations share a similar low level of HD on haplogroup C. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that different HTT haplotypes have different mutation rates, and geographic differences in HTT haplotypes explain the difference in HD prevalence. Further, the bias for expansion on haplogroup C in the East-Asian population cannot be explained by a higher average CAG size, as haplogroup C has a lower average CAG size in the general East-Asian population compared with other haplogroups. This finding suggests that CAG-tract size is not the only factor important for CAG instability. Instead, the expansion bias may be because of genetic cis-elements within the haplotype that influence CAG instability in HTT, possibly through different mutational mechanisms for the different haplogroups.

Key Points• The optimal cutoff for soluble interleukin-2 receptor in this study was 2515 U/mL (sensitivity, 100%; specificity, 72.5%).• sIL-2r #2400 U/mL is helpful for ruling out HLH (sensitivity, 100%) and .10 000 U/mL is helpful for ruling it in (specificity, 93%). ferritin. The optimal threshold for sIL-2r was 2515 U/mL (sensitivity, 100%; specificity, 72.5%). Although there was a large indeterminate range for sIL-2r, a level of 2400 U/mL or less was helpful for ruling out HLH (sensitivity, 100%), and more than 10 000 U/mL was helpful for ruling in HLH (specificity, 93%). Higher mean sIL-2r levels were seen in malignancy-associated HLH (20 241 U/mL) compared with infection-associated HLH and macrophage activation syndrome (9720 and 5008 U/mL, respectively; P , .05). Levels above 10 000 U/mL were not associated with worse prognosis in patients with HLH.

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The serum-soluble interleukin-2 receptor (sIL-2r) level is considered an important diagnostic test and disease marker in hemophagocytic syndromes/hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HPS/HLH). However, this cytokine receptor is rarely measured in clinical practice and has been excluded from recent diagnostic/classification criteria such as the HScore and macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) 16. We performed a systematic scoping review of 64 articles (1975-2016) examining the clinical utility of sIL-2r in HPS/HLH. Twenty-two articles describe sIL-2r as a sensitive diagnostic marker for HLH, but only three distinct datasets actually address sensitivity. The original HLH-2004 Guidelines reported sensitivity of 93% and specificity of 100% for sIL-2r ≥ 2400, based on a pediatric dataset (n = 152) which is published for the first time in this review. Two pediatric studies reported sensitivity of 89% for sIL-2r ≥ 2400 in diagnosis of MAS complicating juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) (n = 27) and 88% for secondary HLH in acute liver failure (n = 9). Twenty articles described sIL-2r as a dynamic marker of disease activity that falls with response to treatment, and 15 described high initial sIL-2r levels >10,000 U/mL as a poor prognostic marker. The ability of sIL-2r to distinguish between subtypes of HPS/HLH was inconsistent. This review confirms the importance of soluble IL-2r as a diagnostic and disease marker in HPS/HLH, but also reveals the need for more primary data about its performance characteristics, particularly in adults. More emphasis should be made in including this simple, inexpensive test in clinical practice and studies of HPS/HLH.

Background-Extrahepatic tissues have long been considered critical contributors of cholesterol to nascent HDL particles in the reverse cholesterol transport pathway, in which ABCA1 plays the crucial role. Recent studies, however, including both overexpression and deletion of ABCA1 selectively in the liver, have highlighted the primary role of the liver in the maintenance of HDL levels in vivo. Methods and Results-The availability of mice with complete deletion of ABCA1 (total knockout [TKO]) and with liver-specific deletion of ABCA1 (LSKO) has enabled us to dissect the discrete roles of hepatic relative to extrahepatic ABCA1 in HDL biogenesis. Delivery of adenoviral ABCA1 resulted in selective expression of physiological levels of ABCA1 in the livers of both LSKO and TKO mice, resulting in increased HDL cholesterol (HDL-C). Expression of ABCA1 in the liver of LSKO mice resulted in plasma HDL-C levels that were similar to those in wild-type mice and significantly above those seen in similarly treated TKO mice. HDL particles from ABCA1-expressing LSKO mice were larger and contained significantly increased cholesterol compared with TKO mice. Infusion of human apolipoprotein A-I/phospholipid reconstituted HDL particles normalized plasma HDL-C levels in LSKO mice but had no effect on HDL-C levels in TKO mice. Conclusions-Although hepatic ABCA1 appears crucial for phospholipid transport, extrahepatic tissues play an important role in cholesterol transfer to nascent HDL particles. These data highlight the discrete and specific roles of both liver and extrahepatic ABCA1 in HDL biogenesis in vivo and indicate that ABCA1 shows lipid cargo selectivity depending on its site of expression.