conclusions chaharmahal and bakhtiari province could be categorized as a low endemic region for hepatitis b infection, with a seroprevalence similar to that in other provinces of western iran. vaccination seems to influence its decrease, especially in adolescents and youth. more surveillance and attention to risk factors are suggested to identify high-risk groups and to implement vaccination. r...

Monoclonal antibodies reactive with myeloid cell surface antigens were used to study evolutionary changes in granulocyte surface antigens from primate species. Certain of these granulocyte membrane antigens are conserved in phylogenetically distant species, indicating the potential functional importance of these structures. The degree of conservation of these antigens reflects the phylogenetic ...

Spermatozoa represent an immunologic challenge for the mammalian males. They are produced long after the establishment of the immune library of the individual and harbor specific spermatic antigens that are found nowhere else in other organs, tissues and cells. Consequently, spermatozoa are somehow "foreign" to the male adaptive immune system. In order not to elicit autoimmune responses that wo...

When mouse spermatozoa were briefly exposed in culture to radioactively labelled DNA (pSV2CAT plasmid), radioactivity could be detected by high-resolution autoradiography on the surface and within the nucleus of the spermatozoa. Spermatozoa from other mammalian species (boar, bull, man) could also bind foreign DNA. With the exclusion of human spermatozoa, which in most experiments showed very l...

Intact zona-free human oocytes were screened using a combinatorial peptide library selection protocol. Pieczenik Peptide Sequence 1 (PPS1) HEHRKRG binds human spermatozoa. A complementary and unique binding sequence HNSSLSPLATPA (PPS2) was developed from the first PPS1 ligand that binds to the human zona pellucida or oolemma. Cytoplasm-free zonae from unfertilized eggs were obtained and used as...

Freezing-thawing effects on the nuclei of porcine and human spermatozoa were studied by determining native DNA percentage from fluorescence after acridine orange (AO) staining and by analyzing chromatin structure by a quantitative microspectrophotometric study of Feulgen-DNA complexes before and after freezing. The study of boar spermatozoa revealed no alteration in native DNA percentage after ...

Mammalian sperm acrosomes contain a trypsin-like protease called acrosin which causes limited and specific hydrolysis of the extracellular matrix of the mammalian egg, the zona pellucida. Acrosin was localized on hamster, guinea-pig and human sperm using monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to human acrosin labelled with colloidal gold. This was visualized directly with transmission electron mi...