Kawasaki disease may be a systemic inflammatory with predominantly intrinsic immune disorder due to exposure of genetically susceptible individuals various infections and/or environmental triggers. The is prevalent in patients autoimmune diseases or childhood, men dyslipidemia, hypertension, who are chronic smokers, and can triggered by abnormalities emotional agitation. Clinicians need have be...

The reliability of five commercially produced immunological pregnancy diagnosis methods has been investigated. The tests used were Pregnosticon (a tube test) and four slide tests, Hyland, Pregslide, Gravindex, and Planotest. In the series described, Planotest gave 0.5% false positives, Gravindex had 2.1%, Pregnosticon 2.6%, and Pregslide 4.7%, Hyland A (sensitivity 4,500 iu/l.) gave 3.6% and Hy...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous virus whose sole host is humans. Since HCMV can contagion from person to person through numerous ways, vast populations of humans are infected. HCMV infections can potentially have a range from asymptomatic infection in immuno-competent hosts to life-threatening diseases in organ recipients and patients with AIDS. The present article reviews the occu...

During the past few years technological advance have been allowed the developing of techniques that help to the diagnosis of multiple diseases. In the case of the autoimmune diseases, immunological techniques are helpful since they allow the detection of multiple autoantibodies at the same time with small volumes of sample. Together with the development of the new techniques, sensitivity and sp...

There are several types of immunological tests available for the diagnosis and management of Helicobacter pylori infection. Most commercially available serological kits use the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test format. Originally the kits used crude antigen preparations although many of the newer kits use a more purified antigen preparation, with often increased specificity but low...

Cestode infections in animals are important because several species are zoonotic, causing cysticercosis and hydatidosis in man, and because of the economic losses incurred due to infections in livestock. Information on immunological diagnosis of and vaccination against cestode infection is restricted almost exclusively to the taeniid cestodes in which two groups of mammalian hosts are concerned...

NK cells use surface NK receptors to discriminate self from non-self. The NK receptor ligand-binding domain (NKD) has been considered the sole regulator of ligand binding. Using a prototypic murine NK receptor, Ly49A, we show that the membrane proximal nonligand binding ecto-domain (the stalk region) is critical to ligand binding and signaling. The stalk region is required for receptor binding ...

In human toxocariasis, there are few approaches using immunological markers for diagnosis and therapeutic assessment. An immunoblot (IB) assay using excretory-secretory Toxocara canis antigen was standardized for monitoring IgG, IgE and IgA antibodies in 27 children with toxocariasis (23 visceral, three mixed visceral and ocular, and one ocular form) for 22-116 months after chemotherapy. IB sen...

Tuberculosis remains a serious social and public health problem, affecting millions of people annually. The bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, used prophylactically, does not impede the progression of the disease, which usually manifests as decreased cellular immunity. Early diagnosis, together with polychemotherapy, can control the dissemination of the tuberculosis infection. The current d...

mycophenolate mofetil (mmf) has been registered for use in australia since 1997 for prophylaxis of solid organ allograft rejection. mmf is now increasingly used for indications outside solid organ allograft rejection, often with limited supporting efficacy data. the purpose of this audit was to examine the patterns of use, reported side effects and cost impact of the drug in the clinical and im...