An association between the complement system and immune complex glomerular disease in humans has long been recognized. In fact, much of our early understanding of the immunochemistry of complement activation developed with the study of acute and chronic glomerulonephritis (1). This manuscript will examine associations between glomerulonephritis and the three complement components encoded within...

The disruption and loss of myelin in the white matter are some of the major changes that occur in the brain with age. In vitro studies suggest a role of the complement system in the catabolic breakdown of myelin membranes. This study presents findings on activation of the early components of complement cascade in the brains of both young and aged rhesus monkeys with evidence of increased comple...

The complement system is a group of proteins that when activated lead to target cell lysis and facilitates phagocytosis through opsonisation. Individual complement components can be quantified however this does not provide any information as to the activity of the pathway. The CH50 is a screening assay for the activation of the classical complement pathway (Fig 1) and it is sensitive to the red...

As a result of an unidentified red cell defect, erythrocytes from patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria 1 are susceptible to hemolysis in acidified fresh serum (1). This acid hemolysis reaction is augmented by commercial bovine thrombin (2). The role of serum complement in these PNH hemolytic reactions has not been entirely clear (3). Previous studies from this laboratory, utilizing...

BACKGROUNDS Cryptococcal meningitis (CM) has been known to lead to significant morbidity and mortality. The relative contribution of the complement system in protection and pathogenesis during CM remains largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the baseline complement component profiles in human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma from non-HIV patients with CM, and therefore ...

patients with organic acidemia are prone to different infections, which lead to acidosis episodes. some studies have evaluated the status of immune system in acidotic phase in these patients, but to the best of our knowledge no study has evaluated the immune system in non-acidotic phase of the disease. in this study, thirty-one patients with organic acidemia were enrolled. for evaluation of hum...

We demonstrate in vitro expression of complement components, i.e. C3, factor H (FH), factor B (FB), C4, C1-inhibitor (C1-inh), C1q, C5, C6, C7 and C9, by four human neuroblastoma cell lines IMR32, SKNSH, SH-SY5Y and KELLY. Activating proteins C4, C9 and C1q, and regulatory proteins FH and C1-inh were produced constitutively by the four cell lines. C3, C6 and FB were mainly produced by SKNSH and...

Awareness that advancing cancer is often accompanied by defective imnmnologic responses, and accumulating evidence that immune reactions may influenee the course of cancer, has stimulated the study of various meehanisms of immunologic reaction in patients with cancer. As part of such a program we have determined the serum level of the second component of complement in a group of cancer patients...

The titer of late-acting complement components in sera from male mice is 8-10 times higher than the titer of sera from female mice. Using assays developed to measure the serum content of two of the late-acting components, we have shown that this difference is due to the effect of androgen and estrogen on these two late-acting complement components. These two components have been tentatively ide...