Since the brain is separated from the blood immune system by a tight barrier, the brain-resident complement system may represent a central player in the immune defense of this compartment against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Chronic complement activation, however, may participate in HIV-associated neurodegeneration. Since the level of complement factors in the cerebrospinal fluid is know...

Elevated propionyl C3 carnitine is the most common abnormality seen in tandem mass spectrometry newborn screening profiles, with an incidence of 0.15% seen in our South Australian newborn screening programme. The most common cause for this result in our population is vitamin B12 deficiency but differential diagnoses include the inherited disorders of propionic and methylmalonic acid metabolism ...

OBJECTIVES Hypovitaminosis D is common in the general population. Many studies that have been conducted to show the association between vitamin D deficiency and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) reveal that deficiencies in vitamin D are common in this group of patients. Our aim was to study the relationship between 25(OH)D and disease activity in patients with SLE. METHODS Retrospective coho...

Addition of nitrogen leads to increased dry matter accumulation in vegetative plant parts and to increased final yields in cereal crops (Hageman and Lambert, 1988). The efficiency with which nitrogen is used varies with plant species and with environmental conditions. For example, plants that possess a C4 pattem of photosynthesis have, in addition to a superior method for trapping COz from the ...

The levels of complement C3 and C4 components were determined in non-indigenous (creoles) and indigenous (Warao) populations, the latter with an extremely high tuberculosis (TB) rate. Serum samples from 209 adults were studied and classified in 4 groups taking into account tuberculin skin tests (TST): (1) the group of Warao patients (58 positive for the TST, WP TST+ and 9 negative for the TST, ...

Decay-accelerating factor (DAF) and CD59 are 2 glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored membrane proteins that inhibit complement activation at the C3 and C5b-9 step, respectively. CD59 is considered critical for protecting erythrocytes from spontaneous complement attack, as deficiency of CD59 or CD59/DAF, but not of DAF alone, on human erythrocytes renders them sensitive to complement lysis in pa...

The mechanisms regulating the homing/mobilization of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) are not fully understood. In our previous studies we showed that the complement C3 activation peptide, C3a, sensitizes responses of HSPCs to stromal-derived factor 1 (SDF-1). In this study, mobilization was induced with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in both C3-deficient (C3-/-) and C...

background: the serum levels of c 3 , c4, and the total hemolytic activity of complement system (ch50) of patients ex­posed to mustard gas (mg) in the battlefield were measured in this study. methods: c3 and c4 were measured by single radial immunodifusion and ch50 was evaluated according to total hemolytic activ­ity of the serum. results:   the serum levels of c 3 showed a significant increase...

A patient with hereditary angio-oedema (HAO) developed mesangiocapillary glomerulonephritis (MCGN) under observation. HAO is characterized by an inherited defect of complement-deficiency of C1 esterase. MCGN is often associated with another complement abnormality which leads to depression of serum C3 and there is some evidence that the complement abnormality precedes the nephritis. The coincide...