We report a case of a 15-year-old boy with autoimmune hepatitis lacking common serologic markers and normal gammaglobulinemia associated with immune thrombocytopenia and family history of psoriasis. He presented to our department with a 4-year history of a cervical posterior lymphadenopathy and recent petechiae. Previous laboratory results 6 months before already showed hepatocellular injury. A...

IntroductIon Autoimmunity is defined as, a condition characterized by a specific humoral or cell‐mediated immune response against the constituents of the body’s own tissues (autoantigens). In numerous autoimmune diseases, such an immune response is well recognized that causes damage to the self‐constituents of body tissues by the products of the immune system. Graves’ hyperthyroidism occurs aft...

HIV infection causes upregulation of markers of inflammation, immune activation and apoptosis of host adaptive, and innate immune cells particularly monocytes, natural killer (NK) and innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) restores CD4 T-cell counts, the persistent aberrant activation of monocytes, NK and ILCs observed likely contributes to the incomplete recovery o...

Today, HIV-infected children who have access to treatment face a chronic rather than a progressive and fatal disease. As a result, new challenges are emerging in the field. Recent lines of evidence outline several factors that can differently affect the ability of the immune system to fully reconstitute and to mount specific immune responses in children receiving HAART. In this paper, we review...

The human immunodeficiency virus infection, that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a dynamic process that can be modeled via differential equations. In this paper a control method to boost the response of the immune system by means of drug scheduling is introduced. The control purpose is to steer the system to an equilibrium condition, known as long-term nonprogressor, which corres...

The increasing understanding of immune mechanisms changed our perception of the ocular surface, which is now considered a compartment of the common mucosal immune system. It offered the possibility to alter the physiological immune response on the ocular surface and effectively combat inflammation, which impairs stability of the tear film and causes tear hyperosmolarity, causing symptoms of dry...

Patients may be referred to the immunology clinic for investigation of recurrent superficial abscess formation. In the majority of adult patients this clinical presentation does not equate with an underlying primary immune deficiency. Nevertheless, recurrent mucocutaneous abscesses can be associated with significant morbidity and long-term complications, including scarring and fistula formation...

Acknowledgements Although the actual writing of this thesis has been done by one person, there are a number of people without whom this thesis had never been written. These people, by offering support, ideas, critiques and various comments related and completely unrelated to the subject of this thesis, have guided the writing of this thesis as much as I did myself. First and foremost, out of a ...