We have reported previously the presence of

anti-M3R antibodies that recognized the second extracellular loop in SS patients but not in patients with RA or SLE, suggesting that anti-M3R antibodies could be used potentially as diagnostic markers for SS [4]. However, Kovacs et al.[14] reported the detection of anti-M3R Y-27632 cell line antibodies in 35% of their RA patients and 32% of SLE. These conflicting results emphasize the need to examine the precise prevalence of anti-M3R antibodies in other autoimmune diseases using our modified ELISA system. The correlation between anti-M3R antibodies and clinical features is still unclear. The previous study reported leukopenia was more common in anti-M3R antibody-positive than in -negative patients with primary SS [14]. Our observations in the present study showed that positivity for anti-SS-A antibody and IgG values in serum was more prevalent and higher in anti-M3R antibody-positive SS patients than -negative SS patients. The disease duration of SS was shorter among anti-M3R antibody-positive SS than -negative SS; however, there was no difference in other clinical and histological features between anti-M3R antibody-positive and -negative SS patients.

We could not detect any significant relationship between each B cell epitope and clinical characteristics such as saliva secretion. In conclusion, these findings support the notion of presence of several B cell epitopes on M3R in SS patients,

and that some SS patients are reactive this website to several extracellular domains of the M3R. It is possible that some anti-M3R antibodies alter salivary secretion in SS via M3R, and Acyl CoA dehydrogenase in particular antibodies against the second extracellular loop of the M3R could suppress the increase in (Ca2+)i induced by M3R agonists, resulting in reduction of salivary secretion. Therefore, anti-M3R antibodies might play pathogenic roles in salivary secretion abnormalities characteristic of patients with SS. None of the authors has any conflict of interest with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. “
“Antimicrobial resistance was studied in 100 Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains selected randomly from sputum cultures of newly diagnosed tuberculosis patients. Resistance of the isolates to rifampicin, isoniazid, and ethambutol was tested by both drug susceptibility testing (DST) and allele-specific PCR (AS-PCR). A total of 19 (19%) isolates were found resistant to at least one of the antituberculosis drugs investigated by PCR compared with 14 (14%) resistant isolates detected by DST. Eleven mutations were detected by AS-PCR in the rpoB gene (codons 516, 526, and 531), associated with rifampicin resistance, a marker of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), 14 mutations in the katG gene codon 315 that confers resistance to isoniazid, and nine mutations in the embB gene codon 306 that confers resistance to ethambutol.