Diagnosis and antimicrobial therapy of pulmonary infiltrates in febrile neutropenic patients

Patients with severe neutropenia lasting for more than 10 days, who develop fever and pulmonary infiltrates, are at high risk of treatment failure and infection-related death, under conventional broad-spectrum antibiotics. Early supplementation by a systemic antifungal therapy active against Aspergillus spp. has been shown to markedly improve their clinical outcome. Prognosis is significantly influenced by early identification of lung infiltrates by means of high-resolution thoracic computed tomography. Non-culture based diagnostic procedures using a highly sensitive Sandwich ELISA assay to detect circulating galactomannan, or PCR techniques to amplify circulating fungal DNA, may facilitate…

Neuron-specific enolase--a serum marker for malignant melanoma.

Induction of accessory cell function of human alveolar macrophages by inhalation of human natural interleukin-2.

Accessory function allows antigen-presenting cells to produce sufficient secondary signals for optimum T cell proliferation and interleukin-2 (IL-2) production. Alveolar macrophages are inferior accessory cells compared to monocytes (PBM). We report here that the accessory index (AI) of alveolar macrophages and PBM of patients with lung metastases of solid tumors treated with inhalations of human natural IL-2 (hnIL-2) increased following its administration (P0.005). The accessory index was significantly elevated from baseline values after 2 weeks of inhalation of 300,000 IU hnIL-2/day (8.2 +/- 10.2 compared to 1.1 +/- 1; P0.001). The inhalation of 150,000 IU also induced increases in the in…