Modern diagnostic methods enable clinicians to look beyond a diagnosis of chronic Q fever and discern whether patients instead have persistent focalized Coxiella burnetii infection(s). Use of these methods and development of criteria to define and treat such infections, especially cardiovascular infections, will improve the prognosis for patients previously thought to have chronic Q fever.

BACKGROUND Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is due to defective nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase activity and characterized by recurrent infections with a limited spectrum of bacteria and fungi as well as inflammatory complications. To understand the impact of common severe infections in CGD, we examined the records of 268 patients followed at a single center over 4 decade...

Recently, dysfunction of antigen-specific T cells is well documented as T-cell exhaustion and has been defined by the loss of effector functions during chronic infections and cancer in human. The exhausted T cells are characterized phenotypically by the surface expression of immunoinhibitory receptors, such as programmed death 1 (PD-1), lymphocyte activation gene 3 (LAG-3), T-cell immunoglobuli...

Chronic viral infections display a major health burden worldwide. Immune control of chronic viral infections requires a balanced interplay between immune activation promoting virus clearance and deactivation of antiviral immunity to prevent tissue damage. Our research is focused on identifying mechanisms regulating the balanced immune control of viral infections. Innate type I interferon produc...

In the more recent years since the introduction of anti-TNF therapy, the treatment strategy in chronic inflammatory bowel disease has developed more towards an early intensive, often double immunosuppression. While this leads to an improved therapeutic success, this intensified therapy also increases the risk for side effects and especially for infectious complications. The early detection of t...

Chronic and recurrent bone infections occur frequently but have not been explained. Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is often found among chronic and recurrent infections and may be responsible for such infections. One possible reason is that S. aureus can internalize and survive within host cells and by doing so, S. aureus can evade both host defense mechanisms and most conventional antibioti...

Numerous studies have demonstrated a high incidence of chronic infections in chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. These include viral infections of Epstein bar (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), human herpes virus6, (HHV-6), and bacterial infections such as mycoplasma, chlamydia pneumonia (CP) and Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease). There is controversy regarding the presence of active infect...

To the Editor: The study by Espinola-Klein et al1 showed a significant association between infectious burden (C pneumoniae, H pylori, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus 2) and the extent of atherosclerosis; moreover, the risk for future death was increased by the number of infectious pathogens, especially in patients with advanced atherosclerosis. The specific IgG or IgA antibodies used in t...

Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a primary immunodeficiency caused by a defect in production of phagocyte-derived reactive oxygen species, which leads to recurrent infections with a characteristic group of pathogens not previously known to include methylotrophs. Methylotrophs are versatile environmental bacteria that can use single-carbon organic compounds as their sole source of energy; ...