Human brucellosis is a significant public health problem in many Mediterranean countries including Greece. The conventional serological methods, as well as blood cultures, have serious limitations, especially in chronic, relapsing, and focal forms of the disease. Four different PCR assays were applied in 4,926 buffy coat, whole-blood, and serum samples received from 200 patients admitted with b...

A bone marrow transplant (BMT) is one kind of standard treatment modality in advanced hemato-oncology. In order to set up a BMT unit, one of the important steps before starting a clinical program is to evaluate the cryopreservation procedure for stem cell storage. Twenty one bags of buffy coat were used to be the testing specimens. They were processed and frozen according to cryopreservation pr...

BACKGROUND Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can be used clinically to treat cancer. As a diagnostic tool, the CTC count can be used to follow disease progression, and as a treatment tool, CTCs can be used to rapidly develop personalized therapeutic strategies. To be effectively used, however, CTCs must be isolated at high purity without inflicting cellular damage. METHODS We designed a microsca...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the individual differences in radiosensitivity of lineage-committed myeloid hematopoietic progenitors, colony-forming cells (CFC), detected in steady-state human peripheral blood (PB). Mononuclear cells were prepared from the buffy-coat of 30 individuals PB, and were assayed for CFC by semi-solid culture supplemented with cytokines. X irradiation was perform...

Human brucellosis is a significant public health problem, in many Mediterranean countries including Greece. The conventional serological methods as well as the blood cultures have serious limitations, especially in chronic, relapsing and focal forms of the disease. Four different PCR-assays were applied in 4926 buffy coat, whole blood and serum samples received from 200 patients admitted with b...

A new method is described for the quantitative study of leucocyte migration. Blood drawn into a capillary tube is centrifuged, forming a buffy coat. The migration of the leucocytes from the buffy coat into the plasma is measured by means of an ocular micrometer. While there is a great deal of variation from one normal individual to another in the migration rates of leucocytes those of each indi...

Ehrlichiosis is a zoonotic disease caused by gram-negative and intracellular obligatory bacterial organisms. Equine Granulocytic Anaplasmosis - EGA (formerly Equine Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis, EGE) is a seasonal disease, normally self-limited in horses. There are few reports in Brazil about this ehrlichial agent, as well as its natural vectors. Nowadays, veterinarians are considering the suspici...

Intravenous injection into rabbits of bacterial endotoxins results in an inhibition of migration of leucocytes from the buffy coat of their blood in tissue culture or in "slide cell" preparations. This effect was demonstrable 5 minutes after the intravenous injection and persisted for from 6 to 12 hours after the injection. It is as marked in rabbits receiving only a single intravenous injectio...

We prospectively analyzed p15 methylation patterns in 25 surgically resected tumors and 130 plasma, serum, and buffy coat samples from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, controls with chronic hepatitis/cirrhosis, and healthy subjects. Using methylation-specific PCR, we demonstrated for the first time p15 promoter methylation in 64% of tumors and 25% (4 of 16) of patients' plasma and serum...