Recent progress in the understanding of psoriasis has shown that the regulation of local and systemic cytokines plays an important role in its pathogenesis. The most often used psoriasis score is the psoriasis area and severity index (PASI). A simple laboratory test from a blood sample would be an attractive, patient-independent, and observer-independent marker of disease severity. To this end,...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of an intradermal injection of oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) containing unmethylated CpG motifs on concanavalin A (Con A)-induced hepatitis, an experimental model of immune-mediated hepatitis. METHODS Con A was injected intravenously into Balb/c mice. Twelve hours after Con A challenge, blood and liver samples were obtained. CpG ODN was injected intradermal...

Although described some time ago, gamma-butyrobetaine esters and related compounds have not gained much attention from researchers, and their physiological function remains obscure. Formerly we detected GBB-esterase enzymatic activity in rat blood serum using phenylated gamma-butyrobetaine as an artificial substrate of the enzyme and HPLC. The aim of the present work was to develop an assay tha...

BACKGROUND The increased consumption of n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) has been shown to coincide with the increased prevalence of atopic diseases. We aimed to investigate whether maternal diet and atopic status influence the PUFA composition of breast milk and the serum lipid fatty acids of infants. METHODS Maternal diet was assessed by a food questionnaire. The PUFA composition of b...

Introduction:To evaluate the role of allergic-type and infectious-type cytokines in children with chronic otitis media with effusion (OME) Materials and Methods:We investigated serum levels of interleukins (IL)-4, IL-5, and IL-13, along with interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 35 children with OME and 28 healthy contr...

The adjuvant effects of various lipopeptides and recombinant chicken interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) on the humoral immune response of laying hens was investigated in four immunization studies. We used the lipopeptide Pam3Cys-Ser-(Lys)4 (PCSL), the conjugate P-Th1 consisting of the lipopeptide P3CS and the T-helper epitope Th1 (FISEAIIHVLHSRHPG), and the conjugate P-Th2 of the lipopeptide P3CSS an...

Discriminant function analysis was used to determine the optimum combination of haematological and biochemical tests which gave the best discrimination between hospital patients with high and low alcohol intakes. We studied 265 patients with alcohol-related disease, 133 gastroenterology outpatients drinking less than 20 g of alcohol per day, and 104 patients with a variety of non-alcoholic live...

The role of Abs in protection against respiratory infection with the intracellular bacterium Francisella tularensis is not clear. To investigate the ability of Abs to clear bacteria from the lungs and prevent systemic spread, immune serum was passively administered i.p. to naive mice before intranasal F. tularensis live vaccine strain infection. It was found that immune serum treatment provided...

BACKGROUND We previously reported early tissue injury, increased serum and tissue inflammatory cytokines and decreased grip in young rats performing a moderate demand repetitive task. The tissue cytokine response was transient, the serum response and decreased grip were still evident by 8 weeks. Thus, here, we examined their levels at 12 weeks in young rats. Since aging is known to enhance seru...

Forty-six patients with venous immunosickness” variety. The heterophile antibody logically mediated or lymphoproliferative was composed of a mixture of gamma G diseases received goat antihuman thymoand gamma M antibodies and was partially cyte antisera globulin (ATG) therapy. absorbed by ATG. Serum sickness did not Heterophile antibody production occurred occur in any of these patients, in spit...