Vacutainer tubes with clot activator and gel

Blood samples were collected in BD Vacutainer tubes with clot activator and gel (BD Diagnostics, Plymouth, UK) from piglets and submitted to the Animal Diseases Diagnostic Center of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. All piglets were divided into two groups, the MLV and E2 groups. Piglets in the MLV group were born from sows vaccinated with the CSFV MLV vaccine at 4 weeks post-farrowing, whereas piglets in the E2 group were born from sows vaccinated with the CSFV E2 subunit vaccine (Bayovac^® CSF-E2, Bayer Animal Health) at 4–5 weeks pre-farrowing. The blood samples were centrifuged at 2150× g for 15 min with a Himac CF 9RX (Hitachi Koki, Tokyo, Japan), and then the sera were carefully transferred into 1.5 mL centrifuge tubes. The stock serum was kept at −80 °C until needed.

In this case and control study, forty-three male
participants including 28 patients and 15 ageand
gender-matched healthy controls were included in
the study. Patients were selected from a group of veterans who had been simultaneously exposed to
high doses of SM during a gas attack in February
1986. The control group comprised of volunteers
with no history of SM exposure. Exclusion criteria
of both groups were smoking and any history of
chronic diseases of lung. Written informed consents
were obtained from all participants. This
study was approved by the Ethical Committee
of Janbazan Medical and Engineering Research
Center (JMERC).
Since COPD is one of the late toxic consequences
of SM exposure, the Global Initiative for
Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) procedure
was used to evaluate the severity of pulmonary
lesions in these patients. Eight ml of peripheral
blood was collected into BD Vacutainer tubes
with clot activator and gel (BD, Plymouth, UK).
To minimize the inhibitory effects of proteins in
serum samples, participants were asked to fast for
over 10 hours before sample collection. The serum
was harvested by a 20-minutes centrifugation at
2500 g, then aliquoted into RNase-free tubes and
stored at −80˚C until use.