Cystic hydatid disease is caused by cystic larval (metacestode) stages of Echinococcus granulosus. This parasite can potentially occur all over the world especially in Mediterranean and Middle East countries and some parts of Africa, Latin America and China which have major foci of human infections. The cyst wall of metacestodes consists of inner, middle and external layers. To date, little att...

Efficient diagnosis of emerging and novel bacterial infections is fundamental to guide decisions on therapeutic treatments. Here, we engineered a novel rational strategy to design peptide microarray platforms, which combines structural and genomic analyses to predict the binding interfaces between diverse protein antigens and antibodies against Burkholderia cepacia complex infections present in...

The review of non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis by Smith elegantly highlights the lack of evidence available in some areas. In particular, approach to immunological testing is varied. Table 2 on page 134 in this review describes the diagnostic features required for immunodeficiency (including immunoglobulin G [IgG] subclass 2 deficiency amongst other IgG subclass deficiencies). However, IgG su...

An epithelial cell line, designated as SGE1, has been established from isolated rat renal glomeruli. SGE1 cells are able to grow continuously in a serum-free medium at similar growth rates to those in the medium containing serum. Quantitative studies of the cells in the serum-free condition demonstrated that SGE1 cells required a collagen type I or IV, fibronectin, or laminin-coated substratum ...

asthma is a complex and multifactorial disorder. several studies have reported association between different hla- dqb1 and hla- drb1 alleles and allergic asthma. the aim of the present study was to investigate the association of hla-class ii alleles and haplotypes, with total serum ige and the results of the skin prick test in iranian children with allergic asthma. a total of 112 patients with ...

Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients suffer from many of the gastrointestinal conditions which occur in non-CF individuals, e.g., dyspepsia and peptic ulceration. These symptoms may be caused by Helicobacter pylori but could also be due to either pancreatic insufficiency or the intensive antibiotic treatment used in CF patients. Since CF patients chronically infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa produc...