background: black seed (bs) is used in traditional medicine as a therapy for a variety of diseases including allergic asthma. materials and methods: in the present study, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects of bs on cytokine gene expression, lung airway eosinophilia and goblet cell hyperplasia were examined in a mouse mice model of allergic asthma. groups of 6-week-old female balb/c ...

UNLABELLED The liver is a tolerogenic environment exploited by persistent infections, such as hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) viruses. In a murine model of intravenous hepatotropic adenovirus infection, liver-primed antiviral CD8(+) T cells fail to produce proinflammatory cytokines and do not display cytolytic activity characteristic of effector CD8(+) T cells generated by infection at an extrahe...

Mucin glycoproteins play a key role in the regular function of the epithelium of the gastrointestinal tract, and in this study, the ontogenesis and development of mucin producing cells was examined in the broiler. Mucin-producing cells were observed in the small intestine from 3 d before hatch, and at this time contained only acidic mucin. After hatch and until Day 7 posthatch, the proximal, mi...

Cytokine production by innate immunity is critical for shaping the adaptive immunity through regulation of T cell differentiation. In this report, we studied T cell immunoglobulin mucin domain protein 3 (Tim-3) expression on monocytes and its regulatory effect on interleukin-12 (IL-12)/IL-23 production by CD14(+) monocytes, as well as IL-17 production by CD4(+) T cells in individuals with chron...

Phenotypic expression of tumor cells was investigated in 33 early gastric carcinomas by mucin histochemistry using paradoxical concanavalin A staining. This staining method had been developed to differentiate 3 classes of mucins located at various sites of the alimentary tract. Twenty-five (76%) tumors contained mixtures of neutral or acid class II mucin and class III mucin, suggesting the orig...

Mucins are among the best described human tumor-associated antigens. At least 73 tumor-reactive anti-mucin antibodies have been described; in addition, we have previously demonstrated the existence of tumor-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte epitopes on the mucin produced by breast and pancreatic tumors. To determine whether the appearance of tumor-associated mucin epitopes can be explained by alt...

Reactions to pathogens are usually tuned to effect immunity and limit tissue damage. Several host counterinflammatory mechanisms inhibit tissue damage but these may also act to constrain the effectiveness of immunity to acute infections, as we demonstrate in mice acutely infected with influenza A virus (IAV). We show that compared with wild type (WT), galectin-9 knockout (G9KO) mice mounted a m...

To clarify the biochemical differences between pediatric and adult middle ear effusions (MEEs) in secretory otitis media with effusion (OME), we analyzed the protein components from MEEs of 3 children and 3 adults by electrophoresis. High molecular protein components (280 and 265 kDa proteins), which contained in sera in the concentrations less than 2.5%, were not detected in MEEs even in trace...