It is unknown if high prolactin levels during pregnancy contribute to the development of gestational diabetes. We hypothesized that higher prolactin levels are associated with reduced glucose tolerance, as determined by higher 2-h glucose level from an oral glucose tolerance test in pregnancy. The 75-g oral glucose tolerance test was carried out at 28 weeks of gestation in 69 participants. A mu...

We herein describe the case of a 68-year-old man who developed overt diabetes mellitus following the topical administration of dexamethasone 0.1%-containing ointment over a five-month period to treat oral lichen planus. The topical dexamethasone therapy was discontinued gradually, and the patient was subsequently treated with insulin for one month without clinical signs of overt adrenal insuffi...

Metals used in the oral cavity have been reported to cause various allergic diseases of the skin and mucosa. Skin manifestations due to dental restorations appear not only in the oral cavity, but also on the hands, feet or the whole body, as in the cases of pustulosis palmoplantaris and lichen planus. These phenomena implicate different pathogeneses from that of conventional skin sensitization ...

Interest in oral tolerance has been renewed in the last few years as a possibility of intervention in human autoimmune diseases. An obstacle in this direction is that, although easily induced in animals virgin of contact with the antigen, oral tolerance becomes hard to induce in previously immunized animals. The present results show that there is an early period after primary immunization in wh...

Recent literature indicates that mice deficient in the chemokine receptor CCR9 (CCR9(-/-) mice) are unable to generate oral tolerance. The present report describes how such inability can be overcome by increasing the dose of oral antigen. Pharmacological inhibition of CCR9 did not affect the generation of oral tolerance, regardless of antigen dose. These results highlight the inadequacy of gene...

Purpose Severing corneal nerves during corneal transplantation does not affect first corneal transplants, but abolishes immune privilege of subsequent corneal allografts. This abrogation of immune privilege is attributable to the disabling of T regulatory cells (T regs) induced by corneal transplantation. The goal of this study was to determine if severing corneal nerves induces the development...

Oral tolerance is the result of a complex immunoregulatory strategy used by the gut and its associated lymphoid tissues to render the peripheral immune system unresponsive to nonpathogenic proteins, such as food or commensal bacteria. The mechanism of oral tolerance induction and maintenance is not well understood. We have previously shown that the chemokine, CC chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2), is im...

BACKGROUND The Canadian and American Diabetes Associations recommend the use of an oral glucose tolerance test to screen for abnormal glucose tolerance among women with polycystic ovary syndrome when their fasting plasma glucose level is 5.7 mmol/L or more (Canadian guideline) and 5.6 mmol/L or more (American). Our objective was to determine the predictive value of 5.6 mmol/L as a fasting plasm...

Background Allergy is a critical problem of public health in developed countries. Anaphylaxis is a rapid allergic response with symptoms such as urticarial, itching, diarrhea, and even death. Since allergy is caused by the failure of tolerance induction to exogenous antigens, its establishment of tolerance is a fundamental therapy for allergic diseases. Oral tolerance is a physiological way to ...