Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) is an immunologic condition that results from an allergic immune response to Aspergillus fumigatus, most often occurring in a patient with bronchial asthma or cystic fibrosis. ABPA is diagnosed by constellation of clinical, laboratory, and radiographic criteria. In the absence of typical presentation, ABPA can be misdiagnosed. Our patient presented...

Schizophyllum commune, a basidiomycetous fungus, rarely causes disease in humans. We report a rare case of allergic fungal sinusitis caused by S. commune in a 14-yr-old girl. The patient presented with nasal obstruction and a purulent nasal discharge. Materials obtained during endoscopic surgery of the frontal recess revealed allergic mucin and a few fungal hyphae. A potato dextrose agar (PDA) ...

Plastic bronchitis is a rare, underdiagnosed and potentially fatal condition. It characterised by the formation expectoration of branching gelatinous plugs that assume shape airways. These airway differ from allergic mucin characterises bronchopulmonary aspergillosis mucoid impaction bronchi. most often encountered in paediatric population following corrective cardiac surgery, such as Fontan pr...

Allergic asthma is associated with airway epithelial cell mucous metaplasia and mucin hypersecretion, but the consequences of mucin hypersecretion on airway function are unclear. Recently, a peptide derived from the myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate protein NH(2)-terminal sequence (MANS) was shown to inhibit methacholine (MCh)-induced mucin secretion from airway mucous cells by >90%...

Interleukin (IL)-9 has recently been shown to play an important role in allergic disease because its expression is strongly associated with the degree of airway responsiveness and the asthmatic-like phenotype. IL-9 is a pleiotropic cytokine that is active on many cell types involved in the allergic immune response. Mucus hypersecretion is a clinical feature of chronic airway diseases; however, ...

Rhinorrhea is a prominent symptom of the common cold. Although increases in vascular permeability and serous cell secretion have been demonstrated in human nasal mucus during active rhinovirus infections, changes in mucin constituents have not been quantified. Nonallergic ( n= 48) and asymptomatic allergic rhinitis ( n = 32) subjects were inoculated with rhinovirus type hanks before the spring ...

BACKGROUND There is no uniform consensus on how to grow fungi from sinus aspirates in the Canadian setting. Protocols vary between institutions, and the positivity rate for fungal cultures ranges between 10 and 20% even when endoscopically obvious allergic mucin is being sent to the laboratory. The aim of this study was to compare the occurrence of positive fungal cultures obtained by our insti...

Sinonasal polyposis is considered to be the end-result of a chronic inflammatory process in the sinonasal mucosa. Its underlying mechanisms are still unclear, but the involvement of fungi has been suggested for many years. In the present study, we retrospectively evaluated the clinical and mycological profile of 161 patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and nasal polyps who were undergoing...