Three patients who received visceral-organ transplants from one donor on the same day died of febrile illness 4 to 6 weeks after transplantation. When all available techniques had not indicated whether an infectious agent was the cause, the investigators turned to unbiased high-throughput gene sequencing. Analysis of deduced protein sequences led to identification of a new donor-derived arenavirus as the culprit.

Variants of the genes CYP2C9 and VKORC1 contribute to differences in the anticoagulant effect of warfarin among patients. The relative roles of these variants were studied in a cohort of 297 patients starting warfarin therapy. Although both genes influenced the response to warfarin over time, only the VKORC1 haplotype had a significant effect on the initial response.

In this case series of 23 adults in Latvia who were injection users of methcathinone (a drug manufactured by users from readily available pharmaceutical agents such as pseudoephedrine), patients had an extrapyramidal syndrome, elevated serum manganese levels, and MRI abnormalities in the basal ganglia. These findings suggest that methcathinone use can result in neurologic toxic effects from manganese contained in the methcathinone solution.

The autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS-1) is a multiorgan autoimmune disorder caused by mutations in AIRE, the autoimmune-regulator gene. The authors identified reactivity to the NACHT leucine-rich-repeat protein 5 (NALP5) by immunoscreening a human parathyroid complementary DNA library, using serum samples from patients with APS-1 and hypoparathyroidism. The findings suggest that NALP5 is a tissue-specific autoantigen involved in hypoparathyroidism in patients with APS-1.