1,721,075 research outputs found
[Personal experiences of immunotherapy using the transfer factor].
Six subjects, four suffering from chronic mucocutaneous candidosis, one from ataxiatelangiectasia and one from partial combined immunological deficiency with ongoing pulmonary tuberculosis, were treated with transfer factor. The deficient immunological situation normalized in all subjects after treatment. Clinically, all showed improvement excepting one candidosis case
Circulating immune complexes in normal pregnant women and in some conditions complicating pregnancy
The polyethylene-glycol (PEG) precipitation assay was used to examine the sera of sixty-nine pregnant women, thirty with normal pregnancies, ten with toxaemia of pregnancy, eleven with pregnancy complicated by diabetes and eighteen with case histories of recurrent abortions in order to find evidence of eventual circulating immune complexes (CIC). CIC were not seen in normal pregnancies, but were found in two of the toxaemic group, in two of those with recurrent abortions and in two of those with diabetes. After delivery, these six positive cases were all negative. The presence of CIC may have a determining role in the pathogenesis of some of the cases of the above conditions
PRIMARY IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROMES IN ITALY: A REPORT OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS
The Italian Register for Immune Deficiencies was organized in 1977. Seven hundred ninety-seven cases of primary immunodeficiencies, diagnosed according to the World Health Organization criteria, have been registered up to April 1982. In this paper we report the percentages of the different forms of primary immunodeficiencies and the incidence of neoplastic and autoimmune diseases. A prevalence of humoral defects and selective IgA deficiency was found, followed by T-cell disorders. Two and thirty-eight hundredths percent of the patients developed cancer, and 5.89% developed autoimmune diseases. A comparison among the Italian, Swedish, and Japanese Registers showed a higher incidence of IgA defects in the Italian Register while nonspecific phagocyte defects were more frequent in the Swedish Register. The incidence of cancer and autoimmune disorders is similar to that observed in other registers
Peripheral T-cell subset imbalance in patients with vitiligo and in their apparently healthy first-degree relatives
Twenty-two patients with vitiligo had lesions stable for at least 1 year and 23 subsequently healthy first-degree relatives were studied for T-cell subpopulations using monoclonal antibody technique. High levels of CD4+ lymphocytes and high CD4/CD8 ratios were found in both patients and their relatives, as compared with normal age-matched and sex-matched controls. This immunologic abnormality, together with the presence of autoantibodies previously reported in the apparently normal relatives, seems to be the hallmark of the disease. Further support of this interpretation comes from the observation that two out of the 23 apparently healthy relatives went on to develop vitiligo in a 2-year follow-up
Neutrophil chemotaxis defect in IgA deficiency evaluated by migration agarose method
The chemotactic and random mobility functions of twelve selectively IgA-deficient patients were evaluated by a method using agarose gel. A severe polymorphonuclear cellular chemotactic defect was found in ten out of twelve patients, but only five of them also showed a marked associated impairment of random locomotory function. Futhermore, in one subject, levamisole therapy resulted in a dramatic improvement of both chemotactic and random mobility functions. These results are discussed in the paper with respect to the possible pathogenetic implications
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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