Thyroid antibodies are frequently observed in urticaria patients, but their roles in urticaria are not clearly elucidated. We investigated the role of serum specific IgE to thyroid peroxidase (TPO) in patients with aspirin intolerant acute urticaria (AIAU) and aspirin intolerant chronic urticaria (AICU). We recruited 59 AIAU and 96 AICU patients with 69 normal controls (NC). Serum specific IgE ...

During early gestation, a considerable increase in different leukocyte subsets can be observed in the decidualized endometrium concomitantly to the invasion of cytotrophoblast cells (CTB). To date, it is still in question which factors induce this accumulation of immune cells and whether it is evoked by an in situ proliferation or by a migratory process. Studies on hepatoblastoma cells identifi...

Megakaryocyte (MK) progenitors, CD34+CD41+ cells, were isolated from human bone marrow with a purity greater than 98% and a viability of 95%, using affinity techniques with magnetic beads followed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. These cells were incubated in synthetic media containing the cytokines thrombopoietin (TPO), interleukin-3 (IL-3), stem cell factor (SCF), and IL-6, obviating t...

A total of 30 patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) thrombocytopenia (TP) and 20 healthy controls were studied. Both groups were subjected to complete medical history, clinical examination in addition to assessment of hepatitis markers: level of thrombopoietin (Tpo), Geimsa-stained bone marrow smears, and in vitro short-term megakaryocytic progenitors culture (CFU-MK). Serum Tpo level was sig...

karyocyte colony formation. These data indicate that the IgG autoantibodies can specifically neutralize the in vitro biologic activity of TPO. The effectiveness of cyA in improving thrombocytopenia strongly suggests an immune-mediated pathogenetic mechanism in the patient. Although it is unclear that anti-TPO autoantibody is the sole cause of the thrombocytopenia, the recovery of serum TPO leve...

Thrombopoietin (TPO), the major growth factor for cells of the megakaryocytic lineage, is removed from circulation by binding to c-mpl receptors present on platelets and megakaryocytes. We studied patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) and used TPO-induced c-fos protein up-regulation as a marker of c-mpl functionality and observed that c-mpl-presen...

Thrombopoietin (TPO) has been established as the major regulator of megakaryocyte and platelet production. In vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated that TPO affects both megakaryocyte proliferation and maturation. In vitro, TPO has been reported to be essential for full development of megakaryocytes and platelets. These studies are in contrast to results observed in vivo in mice deficient...

Thrombopoietin (TPO) is a lineage-dominant hematopoietic cytokine that regulates megakaryopoiesis and platelet production. The major site of TPO biosynthesis is the liver. Despite easily detectable levels of liver TPO mRNA, the circulating TPO serum levels are very low. We have observed that translation of TPO mRNA is inhibited by the presence of inhibitory elements in the 5'-untranslated regio...

Thrombopoietin (TPO), the specific cytokine that regulates platelet production, is expressed in human bone marrow (BM), kidney, and liver. There appears to be no regulation of TPO in the kidney and liver, but TPO messenger RNA (mRNA) expression can be modulated in the stromal cells of the BM. In this study, we used primary human BM stromal cells as a model to study the regulation of TPO mRNA ex...