Thymoglobulin (ATG) is a polyclonal rabbit antibody against human thymocytes used as a T cell-depleting agent in organ transplantation. Its polyclonal character suggests that its effect may go far beyond just T cell depletion. The aim of this study was to further elucidate possible mechanisms underlying the suppressive activity of ATG. For in vitro studies, human peripheral blood mononuclear ce...

Recurrent aphthous ulcerations (RAU) represent a common oral mucosal disease with altered humoral and cellular immunities. In our institution, an immunomodulating agent, levamisole, is used to treat RAU with satisfactory therapeutic effect. Tien-Hsien liquid (THL) is an extract of Chinese medicinal herbs with immunomodulating effects. To test whether THL has immunomodulating effects on antigen-...

Human thioredoxin (Trx) is the major 12-kd cellular disulfide-reductase that on secretion acts as a cocytokine with several interleukins. Truncated Trx with the 80 N-terminal residues (Trx80), also present in plasma, was by itself a mitogenic cytokine for human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). This study investigated which cells in PBMC are targets of recombinant Trx80. Purified human...

Caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients endure chronic stress associated with a decline of immune function. To assess the psychological and immunological changes of caregivers, we compared depressive symptoms, PBMC composition, in vitro activation-induced proliferation and cytokine production, and telomere length and telomerase activity of 82 individuals (41 caregivers and 41 age- and gender...

Hypnophilin and panepoxydone, terpenoids isolated from Lentinus strigosus, have significant inhibitory activity on Trypanosoma cruzi trypanothione reductase (TR). Although they have similar TR inhibitory activity at 10 μg/mL (40.3 μM and 47.6 μM for hypnophilin and panepoxydone, respectively; ~100%), hypnophilin has a slightly greater inhibitory activity (~71%) on T. cruzi amastigote (AMA) grow...

the relation between microchimerism and allograft tolerance is still a mystery. in this study we determined the presence of peripheral blood microchimerism (pbmc) in female renal transplant recipients from living male donors with second round polymerase chain reaction (pcr). second round pcr was used to find y chromocome products. the degree of pbmc in renal transplant recipinents must be below...

background and aim: in most infections and diseases, to cure and decrease the effect of disease, induction and increasing power of immuno system are necessary. nigella sativa is a plant that has been used for treatment of many diseases. in this survey, the effect of nigella sativa is surveyed in strengthening of monocyte phagocytosis so that the use and mechanism of this plant for strengthening...

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) proviral integration status was examined by Southern blot analysis in peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) DNA from patients presenting a tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP) and serological evidence of HTLV-I infection. Surface phenotype and morphological aspects of PBMC were also studied. A polyclonal HTLV-I proviral integration was found in t...

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune neurological disorder typified by skeletal muscle fatigue and most often production of autoantibodies against the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR). The present study was undertaken to assess the extent of AChR-peptide recognition in MG patients using co-culturing (DC:TC) of autologous monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDCs) and highly enriched CD4...

Successful embryo implantation and placentation depend on appropriate trophoblast invasion into the maternal endometrial stroma. Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is one of the earliest embryo-derived secreted signals in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) that abundantly expresses hCG receptors. The aims of this study were to estimate the effect of human embryo-secreted hCG on PBMC ...