*Corresponding author: Mailing address: Kobe Institute of Health, 4-6 Minatojima-nakamachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0046, Japan. Tel: +81-78-302-6252, Fax: +81-78-302-0894, E-mail: kyoshi @mrg.biglobe.ne.jp Measles became widely prevalent in Japan in the spring of 2007 after an interval of 6 years (1). The reported number of measles cases started to increase in Kobe City at the beginning of May. The ...

The overall frequency of WT1 gene alterations in Wilms tumor is still unclear in Taiwan. Here we conducted molecular genetic analysis of the WT1 gene in Taiwanese patients with Wilms tumor. Polymerase chain reaction and direct sequencing were performed on DNA samples from blood and paraffin-embedded tumor specimens. A constitutional mutation in the WT1 gene was found in one DNA sample from peri...

Centrifugal elutriation was used to separate human acute leukemia cells into proliferative and quiescent subpopulations. Ten bone marrow specimens and 5 peripheral blood specimens were subjected to centrifugal elutriations. From each patient, leukemic cell subpopulations were obtained for which the [3H]thymidine labeling index differed by 10- to 30-fold. In 6 of the marrow specimens and in 2 of...

Tumor contamination of hematopoietic stem cell grafts may influence the outcome of breast cancer patients treated with high-dose chemotherapy. The goals of this study were: (a) to evaluate the prevalence of tumor contamination of bone marrow (BM) harvests in patients responding to systemic chemotherapy; (b) to evaluate reduction of BM tumor contamination by ex vivo purging with 4-hydroperoxycyc...

AIM To analyse haemopoietic regrowth and residual disease in bone marrow trephine biopsy specimens after treatment for acute leukaemia, using immunohistochemical staining. METHODS Biopsy specimens before and after treatment were studied from patients diagnosed as having acute myeloid or lymphoblastic leukaemia. Specimens after treatment encompassed periods from two to 56 weeks from the start ...

background: recognition of helminth-derived pathogen associated molecular patterns (pamps) by pattern recognition receptors (prrs), including toll like recep­tors (tlrs) is the first step towards initiating anti–helminth immune re­sponses. methods : using somatic antigens of ostertagia occidentalis, an important abomasal parasite of ruminants, the expression of ovine tlr2 and tlr4 in peripheral...

background: parasitological methods for the diagnosis of visceral leishmania-sis (vl) require invasive procedures, so serological and molecular approaches have been developed but are not generally applicable in the field. we evaluated a loop mediated isothermal amplification (lamp) assay using blood from vl pa-tients and compared it to nested pcr. methods: forty-seven subjects with clinical fea...

the cytotoxic activity of natural killer cells is usually tested by radioactive assay csi cr release assay), which detects the release of cytoplasmic contents after plasma membrane disintegration of dying cells. in contrast to this indirect evaluation of cytotoxicity, the assessment of cell damage by flow cytometry aims to provide a more exact characterization of the death pathway via detection...

The accuracy of two screening tests, one utilizing serum and the other utilizing whole blood, was compared with the accuracy of the conventional macrotitration method for the detection of antistreptolysin O antibodies. Of the 569 specimens tested with the serum screening procedure and the macrotitration method, 235 and 282, respectively, were positive for antistreptolysin O antibodies. Comparat...