BACKGROUND Prevalence of celiac disease in developed countries is assessed about 1:100-1:150. The real prevalence is unknown because mass screenings are expensive and difficult to organize. Moreover celiac disease can affect people at every age and studies on asymptomatic subjects at different ages are not comparable. In this study we wanted to know the real prevalence of celiac disease in chil...

BACKGROUND IgA deficiency causes false-negative IgA-based celiac serology results in patients with celiac disease. Using a case-finding strategy, we examined the prevalence of IgA deficiency, physician evaluation, and management of IgA deficiency during serological testing for celiac disease. METHODS We reviewed consecutive IgA-endomysial antibody (EMA) and serum IgA results from the laborato...

BACKGROUND Celiac disease (CD) is an immune-mediated enteropathic condition triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by the ingestion of gluten. Although common in Europe, CD is thought to be rare in the United States, where there are no large epidemiologic studies of its prevalence. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of CD in at-risk and not-at-risk groups in the Uni...

Coeliac Disease (CD) is an immune-mediated systemic disorder elicited by the ingestion of gluten. Small-bowel biopsies and histology has been the gold standard for diagnosing CD. The modified ESPGHAN guidelines recommend that in symptomatic children with anti-tissue-Transglutaminase (tTG) titre of > 10 times Upper-Limit-of-Normal (ULN), diagnosis of CD can be made without small-bowel biopsies. ...

background: the clinical significance of antiphospholipid antibodies in patients with chronic hepatitis c virus (hcv) and some other viral infections is controversial. objective: to study the prevalence of anticardiolipin antibody (acla) and antibeta2glycoproteini antibody (antibeta2gpi antibody) in hcv and hepatitis b virus (hbv) infected patients and its association with liver clinical parame...

Immunoglobulin A (IgA) deficiency occurs more frequently in patients with celiac disease (CD) than in the general population and can lead to false-negative results in the best serologic test for CD, endomysial IgA (EMA). To evaluate the impact of IgA deficiency on serologic detection of CD in a reference laboratory setting, IgA levels were measured in 510 consecutive serum specimens submitted f...

We recently demonstrated that, in human atria, endomysial fibrosis causes conduction disturbances during atrial fibrillation (AF), while overall connective tissue content (over-all fibrosis) has no effect. Etiological and molecular determinants of are largely unknown. To study transcriptional changes associated with increased fibrosis. quantified over-all using staining WGA left (LAA, n=95) rig...

OBJECTIVE To study the contractile properties, metabolism and morphological characteristics of muscles submitted to prenatal and postnatal protein malnutrition. METHODS Animals were distributed into two groups: Control, normoprotein diet (CG; n = 15; 5/5/5), and Malnourished, hypoprotein diet (MG; n = 15; 5/5/5), and examined on the 7th, 14th, and 28th days of the experiment. Total body mass,...

INTRODUCTION Pustular palmoplantar psoriasis (PPP) is a rare type of psoriasis affecting mainly distal parts of the limbs. Despite numerous theories about etiology of PPP, the pathogenesis still remains unclear. Recent data indicate that interleukin (IL)-15, IL-17 and IL-22 enhance a proinflammatory response in certain skin inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. There is...

OBJECTIVE The early phase following heart transplantation (HTx) is characterized by the development of right ventricular myocardial fibrosis (MF) and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy (CH). The question is if there are differences in development of MF and CH between patients with complicated versus patients with uncomplicated postoperative course. METHODS Endomyocardial biopsies were taken from 58 do...