The observation that ABO agglutinins are present in a wide variety of pollens (Denborough, 1964) and so must commonly be inhaled, and the knowledge that plant agglutinins are antigenic (Mikela, 1957), prompted us to study secretor status in allergic disease of the respiratory tract, namely in asthma and hay fever. The opportunity has been taken to measure the amount of isoagglutinins present in...

inflamed mucosa with no parasites. Sections from the mucosa of ileum and caecum and the rectal biopsy specimen, trypsinised and stained with antisera to immunoglobulins, kappa and lambda chains, and IgA secretor piece, using the immunoperoxidase method, showed similar numbers and distributions of positive lymphocytes to those in normal controls. Peripheral lymphocyte subpopulations showed norma...

Serum and salivary protein and immunoglobulin concentrations have been measured in people of different ABO blood groups and secretor status. The results have confirmed that salivary protein concentrations vary markedly according to an individual's blood group tending to be particularly high in people of group A, but have failed to show any parallel variation in serum protein concentrations. No ...

Comparative study of the oligosaccharide profiles of individual human milk revealed the presence of three different patterns. Four oligosaccharides containing the Fucalpha1-2Gal group were missing in the milk of non-secretor, and three oligosaccharides containing the Fucalpha1-4GlcNAc group were missing in the milk of Lewis negative individuals. Disappearance of some major oligosaccharides in t...

Dendritic cells (DC) are key regulators of adaptive immunity with the potential to induce T cell activation/immunity or T cell suppression/tolerance. DC are themselves induced by "maturation" signals such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We demonstrate here that LPS can stimulate DC to display similar maturation phenotypes but to differentiate toward an interleukin (IL)-10(high)- or IL-12...

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infection is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in infants. The major risk factor for GBS disease is maternal and subsequent infant colonisation. It is unknown whether human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) protect against GBS colonisation. HMO production is genetically determined and linked to the Lewis antigen system. We aimed to investigate the association betwe...

An unexpected finding in a survey of a random sample of men from the Rhondda Fach valley in South Wales suggested an association between blood group A and coal-workers' pneumoconiosis. A further and larger sample of 1,250 miners and ex-miners from the same area, covering the same age range of 35 to 64 years, was chosen at random from the population in order to verify this finding. Each man was ...

We investigated the use of genotype-interpreted measurements of the tumor marker Ca 19-9 in the urine of bladder cancer patients as a marker of the extent of urothelial disease. Ca 19-9 in urine (sialyl-Le(a)/creatinine ratio) was measured in 81 bladder cancer patients and correlated to T-category, histologic grade, and presence of urothelial dysplasia. As reference group, Ca 19-9 ratio was mea...