When considering the writing of this paper I was troubled by the fact that one series of papers in this symposium was included under the heading of 'persistent infections' and another, of which this is one, under the heading of 'latent infections'. On reflection I could not see why some subjects included in persistent infections could not have been classed as latent infections and vice versa. C...

IgM-FTA tests have been carried out on 209 sera from 169 patients with treated or untreated syphilis at various stages and on 128 sera from 109 patients, born in areas where yaws is or was prevalent, with treated or untreated latent treponemal disease. IgM anti-treponemal antibody was found in virtually all cases of untreated early or early latent syphilis but in only 23 per cent. of sera from ...

BACKGROUND Expatriates are a distinct population at unique risk for health problems related to their travel exposure. METHODS We analyzed GeoSentinel data comparing ill returned expatriates with other travelers for demographics, travel characteristics, and proportionate morbidity (PM) for travel-related illness. RESULTS Our study included 2,883 expatriates and 11,910 non-expatriates who vis...

Upper respiratory tract infections are still a serious problem in breeding and racing horses. The most common virological factors are EHV1 and EHV4, which are both a major cause of secondary infections. High EHV4 seroprevalence in Polish horses indicates a high transmission rate of this pathogen among horses and increases the need for proper diagnostics. The aim of this study was to develop a r...

Adult patients with disseminated nontuberculous mycobacterial (dNTM) infections usually have severe immune system defects. Recently, several studies have shown that anti-IFN-γ autoantibodies may play an important role in the pathogenicity of dNTM infections. A considerable proportion of reported cases of anti-IFN-γ autoantibodies show either clinical or laboratory evidence of autoimmune disease...

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology offers many benefits to the study of infectious disease, but its use must be restrained by the limits of interpretation of the data generated. Wilborn et al' recently described the results of a PCR-based prospective study of human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) infections in bone marrow transplant (BMT) recipients. Their basic conclusions were that HHV6 inf...

Toxoplasma infection in pregnant women may cause congenital toxoplasmosis. Diagnosis of infection is based on serological tests aimed at detecting IgM and IgG antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii. However, IgM antibodies are not an accurate marker for discriminating between acute and latent infection. Detection of residual or persistent IgM may occur months or even years after primary infection...

conclusions the frequency of nis in this hospital was lower in comparison with other worldwide studies. however, low incidence of health care-associated infections in our study may be due to under diagnosis and underreporting of such infections by health care staff. results the incidence of nis was low (i.e. < 2%). among 16936 admitted patients in this hospital, 174 patients (79 males and 95 fe...

In attempts to reactivate latent herpes simplex virus, we instilled Diplococcus pneumoniae intratracheally into mice harboring latent infections in sacrosciatic spinal ganglia. All mice developed a severe pneumonia within 24 h and were given penicillin therapy. Representative mice that survived the penumonia were sacrificed at daily intervals, and appropriate tissues were examined for evidence ...

Numerous viruses cause latent infections in humans, and reactivation often results in pain and suffering. While vaccines for several of these viruses are available or currently being studied in clinical trials, and antiviral therapies have been successful in preventing or treating active infection, therapy to eradicate latent infection has lagged behind. A new study reported in this issue of th...