UNLABELLED BACKGROUND In the direct pathway, T cells recognize intact donor major histocompatability complexes and allogeneic peptide on the surface of donor antigen presenting cells (APCs). Indirect allorecognition results from the recognition of processed alloantigen by self MHC complexes on self APCs. In this study, we wished to evaluate the relative contribution of different intragraft c...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE One of the most important potential advantages in the use of human umbilical cord blood (HUCB) for hematopoietic reconstitution after myeloablative therapy seems to be the lower occurrence of acute graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD) in recipients after allogeneic transplantation. Since mature T cells play an important role in GvHD pathogenesis, we tried to verify whether ...

BACKGROUND Granulysin produced by cytolytic T cells directly contributes to immune defense against tuberculosis (TB). We investigated granulysin as a candidate immune marker for childhood and adolescent TB. METHODS Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from children and adolescents (1-17 years) with active TB, latent TB infection (LTBI), nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infection and fro...

OBJECTIVES To examine the immunohistological features in the involved skin of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PA) (n = 15), compared with those in involved skin from patients with psoriasis but no arthritis (n = 5), and with a group with normal skin (n = 4), to identify markers for arthritis in psoriasis. METHODS Skin was obtained from patients by 6 mm punch biopsy and normal skin was prov...

The aim of this study was to determine whether active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is associated with recruitment of resting CD45RA+ T cells or reactivation of CD45RO+ memory T cells. Three-colour immunofluorescence was used to determine CD45 isoform expression by CD4+ T cells from 28 patients with SLE. Newly recruited and highly differentiated primed T cells were distinguished by their C...

The expansion of activated T cells, characterized by the expression of CD45RO as well as HLA-DR antigens, is a central feature in acute infectious mononucleosis (IM) induced by primary infection of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). However, the fate of these activated T cells in this disease is not clearly understood. We found that, on simple culture, a large proportion of T cells isolated from acute I...

The origin of the increased numbers of CD8+ atypical lymphocytes, expressing activated markers such as HLA-DR or CD45RO, in the peripheral blood of patients with infectious mononucleosis (IM) has been debated. Using a recently developed assay to detect intracellular accumulation of IFN-gamma in EBV-reactive T cells by FACS, we have demonstrated that 34-54% of HLA-DR+/CD8+ and 34-60% of CD45RO+/...

Interleukin-15 (IL-15), a product of monocytes and other cells, has biological activities similar to those of IL-2, including growth stimulation of activated T cells, induction of cytolytic effector cells, and B-cell costimulation for proliferation and lg production. We report that IL-15 at optimal concentrations rapidly induced memory (CD45RO+) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and naive (CD45RO-) CD8+ T ...

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were treated with a cellular vaccine, which consisted of autologous collagen-reactive T-cells. This study showed that antigen-specific proliferative activity of the peripheral blood mononuclear cells was significantly downregulated after T-cell vaccination in RA patients. T-cell vaccination resulted in a statistically significant decrease in plasma IFNγ l...