Rotaviruses are the major cause of severe diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide. Due to their restricted site of replication, i.e., mature enterocytes, local intestinal antibodies have been proposed to play a major role in protective immunity. Whether secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies alone can provide protection against rotavirus diarrhea has not been fully established. To...

Delivery of secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) to mucosal surfaces as a passive immunotherapy agent is a promising strategy to prevent infectious diseases. Recombinant sIgA production in plants requires the co-expression of four transcriptional units encoding the light chain (LC), heavy chain (HC), joining chain (JC) and secretory component (SC). As a way to optimize sIgA production in plants, w...

Within T cell-rich areas of secondary lymphoid organs, interdigitating dendritic cells recruit antigen-specific T cells that then induce B cells to secrete Igs. This study investigates the possible role(s) of dendritic cells in the regulation of human B cell responses. In the absence of exogenous cytokines, in vitro generated dendritic cells (referred to as Dendritic Langerhans cells, D-Lc) ind...

few biomarkers that can predict the clinical response to allergen immunotherapy (ait) have been identified. the aim of the present study was to investigate parameters that could be used “in predicting the clinical response to ait” in children with asthma caused by house dust mites. we evaluated 107 children with mild persistent asthma who were sensitised only to mite aeroallergens. the study gr...

the clinical behavior of asthma varies with age at onset. this study was undertaken to identify associated markers of adult-onset allergic asthma (age ≥20 years).this cross-sectional study compared two groups: 58 patients with asthma onset at <20 years and 66 with onset at ≥20 years. they were compared depending on results of clinical history, and body mass index (bmi), aeroallergen sensitizati...

introduction: most b-cell malignancies are diagnosed based on morphologic and immunohistochemical criteria. some cases, however, still present a challenge for the pathologist to discriminate between reactive hyperplasia and neoplastic disorders. molecular techniques can be used as a helpful diagnostic tool in these cases. in this study, we assessed the value of polymerase chain reaction (pcr) t...

background: there are varieties of purification techniques for separation of human plasma proteins such as salting out, ion exchange chromatography, and ethanol fractionation. there are limitations for each method, for example in salting out method, the salt has to be removed in an additional step. ion exchange chromatography is difficult for scaling up, and plasma fractionation is a time consu...

x-linked agamaglobulinemia (xla) or bruton’s disease is a genetic disease resulting from a mutation in the bruton’s tyrosine kinase (btk) gene. this mutation leads to b cell arrest during differentiation (1). this disease was first described by ogden bruton in 1952 (2). approximately 85% of the affected subjects are male (3). this disorder is inherited as an x-linked recessive trait. carrier fe...