BACKGROUND Recurrent acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) are common, debilitating, costly and often difficult to prevent. METHODS We reviewed records of patients who had COPD and immunoglobulin (Ig) treatment as adjunctive preventative treatment for AECOPD, and documented all AECOPD episodes for one year before and after initiation of Ig treatment. We graded ...

We investigated the suppressive effects of immunoglobulin (Ig) on effector T cells in autoimmune myocarditis. Treatment with Ig reduced production of the so-called T-helper type 1 (Th1) cytokines stimulated by concanavalin A or cardiac myosin in cultured lymph node (LN) cells from rats with myocarditis. The cytotoxic activities of LN cells from rats immunized with myosin and treated with Ig wer...

Administration of high-dose intact human immunoglobulin (IH-Ig) has been applied to treat a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, and is expected to have beneficial effects on human fecundity. In the present study, we investigated whether Ig had anti-resorption effects using polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid sodium salt [poly (I:C)]-induced enhancement of fetal resorption in the mating...

Abstrad Cross-linking of B-cell membrane immunoglobulin (Ig) receptors induces growth arrest at G1-S, leading to apoptosis and cell death in the immature lymphomas WEHI-231 and CH31, but not in the CH12 B-cell line. In this system, which has been used as a model for Bcell tolerance, we have established that these lymphomas produce adive transforming growth fador (TGF8) when treated with anti-Ig...

Allotype suppressor T-cell (Ts) populations that persist for the life of the animal arise in (BALB/c x SJL)F(1) hybrids exposed perinatally to antibody to the paternal (Ig-1b) allotype on IgG(2a)-isotype immunoglobulin H chains. These Ts suppress Ig-lb production by depleting the supply of allotype- specific helper T cells (Th) required, in addition to carrier-specific Th, for the latter stages...

Using a pCRI plasmid containing an enzymatically synthesized, full-length DNA transcript of immunoglobulin lambda chain mRNA as the hybridization probe in the Southern gel blotting experiments (Southern, 1975), we identified three DNA fragments of 8.6, 4.8 and 3.5 kb in Eco RI-digested total DNA from BALB/c mouse embryos. A fourth fragment of 7.4 kb was found in addition to these three fragment...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Activation-induced cytidine deaminase is essential for somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination of the immunoglobulin genes in B cells. It has been proposed that aberrant targeting of the somatic hypermutation machinery is instrumental in initiation and progression of B-cell non Hodgkin's lymphomas. In this study, we investigated the B-cell receptor and the...

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) glycoprotein E2 is the major target of neutralizing antibodies and is therefore highly relevant for vaccine design. Its structure features a central immunoglobulin (Ig)-like β-sandwich that contributes to the binding site for the cellular receptor CD81. We show that a synthetic peptide corresponding to a β-strand of this Ig-like domain forms an α-helix in complex wit...

Somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination cause genetic alterations in immunoglobulin (Ig) genes, which underlie the generation of the secondary antibody repertoire in B lymphocytes. Both processes require activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), whose mechanism of action in not yet known in detail, but which mediates the accumulation of point mutations in the Ig locus. This high...

The chromosome breakpoints of a translocation, t(2;14), from an Epstein-Barr virus-transformed human B lymphoblastoid cell line were isolated and analyzed. This unusual translocation arose as a result of the fusion of two immunoglobulin (Ig) variable (V) genes, one from the heavy chain cluster on chromosome 14, the other from the light chain (k) cluster on chromosome 2. The chromosome breaks oc...