BACKGROUND T cells of intraepithelial phenotype have previously been detected in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid in a range of lung diseases; these cells express the adhesion molecule alpha(E)beta(7) integrin, CD103, the ligand for epithelial cell E-cadherin. In subjects with asthma CD4+ lymphocytes are the predominant T cell subtype found in bronchial biopsy specimens and in BAL fluid, wher...

Using a newly established HTLV-1 positive T cell line as an immunogen, a new monoclonal antibody, Ber-ACT8, was produced. It reacts with in vitro activated T cells and a small subset of normal resting T cells, but not with resting B cells or any of the 29 established human permanent cell lines tested. Immunohistological analysis of a wide spectrum of human tissues showed that Ber-ACT8 reactivit...

Celiac disease (CD) is an inflammatory disease, triggered by an immunologic response to gluten in wheat, which manifests itself by symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain and malabsorption. CD results in an inflamed small intestine with varying degree of villous atrophy, crypt hyperplasia, increased intraepithelial lymphocytes and increased paracellular permeability of the intestinal epithel...

BACKGROUND Dendritic, antigen-presenting cells (DCs) determine not only whether lymphocytes produce different types of immune response but also tissue-homing profiles of lymphocytes they stimulate. For example, in health, mucosal DC stimulate T cells focused to home to the mucosa; DC/T-cell circuitry thus targets immune responses to specific tissue locations. Therapies being introduced for infl...

T cell mediated immune responses in the gut can produce enteropathy and malabsorption. We have investigated the relevance of mucosal mast cells (MMC) to the mechanisms of this enteropathy by using graft-versus-host reaction (GvHR) in the rat as a model of mucosal delayed type hypersensitivity. Measurements of mucosal architecture, intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) and MMC counts were performed ...

It is widely believed that the gut, and particularly the lamina propria (LP) of the gut, contains most of the lymphocytes in humans. The strong depletion of CD4(+) T cells from the gut LP of HIV-infected patients was, therefore, suggested to be such a large, irreversible insult that it could explain HIV disease progression. However, reviewing data from different mammalian species, we found that...