Several reports describe regulatory interactions between NK cells and CTLs. We addressed the issue of NK participation in the early anti-tumor defense by inoculating α-ASGM-1 treated mice with BW-Sp3 T lymphoma. Rejection of BW-Sp3 ...
Somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR) take place in B cells of the germinal center (GC) and are associated with DNA double-strand breaks (DNA-DSBs). Transcription favors the generation of DNA-DSBs in the V-regions ...
Transgenic mice expressing the E7 protein of HPV16 from the keratin 14 promoter demonstrate increasing thymic hypertrophy with age. This hypertrophy is associated with increased absolute numbers of all thymocyte types, and with increased ...
Numerous studies have shown the pathological influence anti-phospholipid antibodies (APLA) have on the physiology of the single neuron as well as the function of the entire human nervous system. The influence is well demonstrated in the antiphospholipid ...
Elevated levels of circulating immune complexes (CIC), containing IgG, IgM or IgA antibodies were detected in the sera of patients with autoimmune diseases. This might indicate a different biological meaning of the three isotypes of immunoglobulin ...
The increased incidence of allergic asthma in the human population worldwide has stimulated many explanatory theories. A concomitant decrease in air quality leads to epidemiological and laboratory-based studies to demonstrate a link between ...
Genetic and environmental factors have been widely suggested to contribute to the pathogenesis of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology leading to destruction of small bile ducts. Interestingly, epidemiologic ...
Background: As one of the natural perturbants, infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) is believed to play a role in the development of Type I diabetes. Using the DP-BB rat model for autoimmune diabetes, we here report about possible mechanisms ...
Autoimmunity-prone BB rats demonstrate a T lymphocytopenia and abnormal T cell subset distribution. To test whether the life span of all T cells or only of certain subsets is reduced in BB rats, we thymectomised 8-week-old BB and PVG rats ...
Background: Viral infections are thought to play a role in the development of autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. In this study we investigated the effect of Rat Cytomegalovirus (RCMV) infection on cellular immunity in a well-defined ...
Alpha interferon (αIFN) therapy is known to induce thyroid autoimmunity in up to 40% of patients. The mechanism is unknown, but Th1 switching has been hypothesized. The aim of our study was to examine whether αIFN accelerated ...
The elderly are characterized by mucosal immunosenescence and high rates of morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases of the intestinal tract. Little is known about how the differentiation of immunoglobulin A (IgA) plasma ...
Background and aims: Antimitochondrial antibodies (AMA) which recognize pyruvate acetyltransferase (PDC-E2) represent a highly diagnostic feature of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). The analysis of immunofluorescence (IF)-AMA-positive sera ...
Relatively little is known for the differentiation and maturation process of human B cells to plasma cells. This is particularly important in reconstitution work involving transfer of autoantibodies. To address this issue, we transplanted ...
We recently reported [J. Lipid Res. 42 (2001), 697; 43 (2002), 1486; 44 (2003), 716] that β[2] -glycoprotein I (β[2] GPI) forms complexes with oxidized LDL (oxLDL) and autoantibodies against these complexes are present in ...
In this investigation we have explored the relationship between the weak allogenicity of cardiac myocytes and their capacity to present allo-antigens by examining the ability of a human cardiac myocyte cell line (W-1) to process and present ...
The incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) shows a worrying tendency for a steady increase in Western countries. Along the line of the hygiene hypothesis, evidence accumulates to suggest that this increase is explained by the decrease of infections due ...
The pathogenesis of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), the two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), is still unclear, but both autoimmune and immune-mediated phenomena are involved. Autoimmune ...
Our understanding of biliary epithelial cells (BEC) in physiobiology and immunology has steadily expanded. BEC transports IgA as well as IgM into bile, synthesizes and secretes various chemokines, cytokines, and expresses ...
The thymus is considered to play an important role in the pathogenesis of Myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease characterized by antibody-mediated skeletal muscle weakness. However, its role is yet to be defined. The studies described ...
C-reactive protein (CRP) is a blood component comprised of five identical subunits with a combined molecular mass of 110 kDa; in the presence of Ca[++] it binds phosphocholine (PC) with high affinity. Ligand-bound ...
The best therapeutic strategy in virus-induced vasculitides should take into account the etiology of the disease and be adapted to the pathogenesis. The combination of antiviral treatments and plasma exchanges has ...
Abstract Keratinocytes were shown to induce the activation of plasminogen activator resulting in the formation of plasmin and the initiation of proteolysis in vitro. Activation of surface bound plasminogen may localize protease activity in ...
Purpose: Elucidating the potential contribution of specific autoantibodies (Ab's) to the etiology and/or pathology of some human epilepsies. Methods: Six epilepsy patients with Rasmussen's encephalitis (RE) and 71 ...
Several different cytokines trigger the development of determined cell subsets in BALT of growing Wistar rats. Early appearance (4 days post partum) of γδT cells in BALT has been shown, as well as its role ...