BACKGROUND In postoperative sepsis, mortality is increased due to the surgically induced immune dysfunction. Further causes of this traumatic effect on the immune system include burn injuries and polytrauma, as well as endogenous traumata like stroke. Several animal models have been defined to analyse the characteristics of trauma-induced immune suppression. This article will correlate our resu...

introduction antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (anca)-associated glomerulonephritis (gn) is characterized by necrotizing and crescentic gn with paucity of immunoglobulin (ig) and complement deposition, which is also known as pauci-immune crescentic gn. membranous nephropathy (mn) is characterized by the formation of subepithelial immune deposit with resultant changes in glomerular basement ...

Secondary pulmonary infections by encapsulated bacteria including Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus following influenza represent a common and challenging clinical problem. The reasons for this polymicrobial synergy are still not completely understood, hampering development of effective prophylactic and therapeutic interventions. Although it has been commonly thought that viral...

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent, chronic, proinflammatory disease prevalent in 10% of women of reproductive age worldwide. Characterized by the growth of endometrium-like tissue in aberrant locations outside of the uterus, it is responsible for symptoms including chronic pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, and subfertility that degrade quality of life of women significantly. In Canada, direct and...

Although macrophages (Mphis) mediate tumor cytotoxicity, display tumor-associated antigens, and stimulate antitumor lymphocytes, cancer cells routinely circumvent these host-mediated immune activities, rendering the host incapable of mounting a successful antitumor immune response. Evidence supporting a direct causal relationship between cancer and immune dysfunction suggests that the presence ...

Alcoholics suffer from immune dysfunction that can impede vaccine efficacy. If ethanol (EtOH)-induced immune impairment is in part a result of direct exposure of immune cells to EtOH, then reduced levels of exposure could result in less immune dysfunction. As alcohol ingestion results in lower alcohol levels in skin than blood, we hypothesized that the skin immune network may be relatively pres...

We analyzed immune disturbances caused by the influence of spaceflight factors and proposed approaches for their correction. First, we determined the significant resistance of humoral immunity to the action of spaceflight factors, for example, B cell and immunoglobulin content, B cell reactivity to lipopolysaccharide, and distribution of B cell clones to trinitrophenyl (TNP group). A brief reve...

Prolonged survival in HIV infection is accompanied by an increased frequency of non-HIV-related comorbidities. It is suggested that cardiovascular diseases (CVD) occur earlier among HIV-positive patients compared with HIV-negative patients, and at a higher rate. Several factors have been proposed which can be categorized into traditional and nontraditional risk factors. Immune dysfunction is a ...

Previous concepts of immune-privileged sites obscured the role of peripheral immune cells in neurological disorders and excluded the consideration of the potential benefits of immunotherapy. Recently, however, numerous studies have demonstrated that the blood-brain barrier in the central nervous system is an educational barrier rather than an absolute barrier to peripheral immune cells. Emergin...

Exosomes, small (30-150nm) extracellular vesicles of endocytic origin, are present in all body fluids of cancer patients. Tumor-derived exosomes, TEX, emerge as potentially promising non-invasive biomarkers of tumor progression and of immune cell dysfunction in cancer. Exosomes isolated from plasma by size exclusion chromatography can be fractionated into TEX and non-TEX by immune capture on be...