Background & Aims: The anti TNF drugs are new line treatment for articular inflammatory diseases which are used systemically, but due to expensiveness and some systemic adverse effects have limited usage. The aims of this study were to investigate the effect of intra-articular (local) injection of Etanercept and Infliximab as two anti TNF drugs on histopathology and also due to the important ro...

A polyvalent antigen composed of heat-killed agar-grown Legionella pneumophila serogroups 1-4 suspended in a suspension of yolk-sac from embryonated hens' eggs has been examined for use in the indirect fluorescent antibody test for Legionella infection. The serological response detected by monovalent antigen correlated well with that detected by polyvalent antigen. The use of polyvalent antigen...

PURPOSE The present study is to investigate the clinical utility of tumor marker cutoff ratio (TMR) and develop a TMR combination scoring system based on preoperative tumor marker (TM) levels to prognosis prediction in gastric cancer. METHODS We include 1,142 patients for whom two or more TMs were measured and who underwent radical gastrectomy between 1990 and 2003. RESULTS Five-year risk o...

Evidence has been accumulating that shows that insulin-dependent diabetes is subject to immunoregulation. To determine whether cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) is involved, we injected anti-CTLA-4 mAb into a TCR transgenic model of diabetes at different stages of disease. When injected into young mice, months before they would normally become diabetic, anti-CTLA-4 induced di...

Cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen (CTLA)-4 plays an essential role in immunologic homeostasis. How this negative regulator of T cell activation executes its functions has remained controversial. We now provide evidence that CTLA-4 mediates a cell-intrinsic counterbalance to restrict the clonal expansion of proliferating CD4(+) T cells. The regulation of CTLA-4 expression and function ensures that,...

The inhibitory T-cell surface-expressed receptor, cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4), which belongs to the class of cell surface proteins phosphorylated by extrinsic tyrosine kinases that also includes antigen receptors, binds the related ligands, B7-1 and B7-2, expressed on antigen-presenting cells. Conformational changes are commonly invoked to explain ligand-induced "trigge...

T cell Ig and mucin domain (TIM)-4 is preferentially expressed on antigen-presenting cells, and its counter-ligand, TIM-1, is thought to deliver co-stimulating signals to T cells. However, the physiological functions of TIM-4 remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that TIM-4 inhibits naive T cell activation through a ligand other than TIM-1. The inhibitory effect of TIM-4 was specific to naive T ...

OBJECTIVE The cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) is expressed on T lymphocytes, and inhibits the T-cell responses. In animal models, it has been shown that complete CTLA-4 deficiency was lethal due to massive infiltration of tissues by polyclonally proliferating lymphocytes. CTLA-4 A49G polymorphism, which has been suggested to reduce the inhibitory function of the CTLA-4 mole...

Immune system dysfunction is one of the key features in onset and development of cancer and autoimmunity. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-antigen-4 (CTLA-4), as a leader immune checkpoint plays a crucial effects in the regulation of immune suppression and tolerance. In this review, role of CTLA-4 and its three important polymorphisms (SNP), CTLA-4 +49A/G, CTLA-4 CT60 A/G and CTLA-4 −318C/T in developmen...