Introduction. The combination of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging offers a major breakthrough in detecting, characterizing and monitoring disease. This work introduces a novel contrast agent, detected by both modalities, which employs a self-inserting chelator with linker peptide derived from melittin (a host defense peptide in honeybee venom). Based on a lipid-encaps...

Borrelia burgdorferi has demonstrated a capacity to resist the in vitro effects of powerful eukaryotic and prokaryotic metabolic inhibitors. However, treatment of laboratory cultures on Barbour-Stoenner-Kelly medium with melittin, a 26-amino acid peptide contained in honeybee venom, showed immediate and profound inhibitory effects when they were monitored by dark-field microscopy, field emissio...

Allergen-specific immunotherapy is the only curative treatment of honeybee venom (HBV) allergy, which is able to protect against further anaphylactic sting reactions. Recent analyses on a molecular level have demonstrated that HBV represents a complex allergen source that contains more relevant major allergens than formerly anticipated. Moreover, allergic patients show very diverse sensitizatio...

Oocyst formation is a critical stage in the development of the malaria parasite in the mosquito. We have discovered that the phospholipase A(2) (PLA2) from the venom of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) inhibits oocyst formation when added to infected chicken blood and fed to mosquitoes. A similar transmission-blocking activity was demonstrated for PLA2s from the venom o...

Honeybee, a small -although powerful- creature moves from one place to another to make an elixir, which cures different diseases. To make one kilogram of honey the small creature has to carry 150000 pieces of pollen and suck the sap of ten million flowers. Both honey and the honeybee poison have been used in treating diseases for thousands of years. The product made by such tiny creatures has b...

Results Adrenaline auto-injector was prescribed in 258 children (66% boys and 34% girls). In 120 of them adrenaline auto-injector was prescribed de novo. 2% of them were babies, 31% 1 to 5 years old, 52% 6 to 14 years old and 15% 15 to 18 years old. In 66% adrenaline auto-injector was prescribed because of anaphylaxis, in 27% because of urticaria or/and angioedema and in 7% because of other rea...