COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY TO PREDICT HARDNESS OF BILEDUCT STONES BEFORE ENDOSCOPIC LITHOTRIPSY

1984

A new treatment for severe malabsorption due to radiation enteritis.

1996

Autoreactive CD4+ LKM-specific and anticlonotypic T-cell responses in LKM-1 antibody-positive autoimmune hepatitis

1996

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) and controls were studied for their proliferative response to six overlapping synthetic peptides covering the 33-amino acid immunodominant region of cytochrome P450IID6, the main target antigen of LKM-1 antibody-positive type II AIH. PBMC from 8 of 8 type II AIH patients (100%), 6 of 12 LKM-1 antibody-negative type I AIH patients (50%), but only 4 of 31 patients with chronic hepatitis C (12.9%) reacted with a 23-amino acid LKM peptide and mainly with a shorter 18-amino acid LKM peptide. Follow-up showed that LKM-specific T-cell responses decreased after immunosuppression had started. Fine specificity, HLA …

HLA-B27-restricted CD8 T cells derived from synovial fluids of patients with reactive arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.

1993

Ankylosing spondylitis and seronegative spondylarthropathies such as Reiter's syndrome and reactive arthritis are strongly associated with HLA-B27. However, the mechanisms by which HLA-B27 is involved in disease susceptibility and pathogenesis are unknown. If the disease association is a consequence of HLA-B27's physiological function in antigen presentation, the disease should be mediated by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) that recognise bacterial or self peptides presented by HLA-B27. Proof of this arthritogenic peptide model requires isolation of B27-restricted CD8 T cells from arthritic joints of patients with spondylarthropathies. An important question is whether "arthritogenic" bacteri…

Ligase Chain Reaction (LCR®) assay for semi-quantitative detection of HBV DNA in mononuclear leukocytes of patients with chronic hepatitis B

1996

Summary. A ligase chain reaction (LCR®)-based approach to detect hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) is described. Using this new amplification technique, we determined semi-quantitatively the amount of a short HBV S-gene fragment in PBMC lysates of 25 patients with different forms of chronic hepatitis (group A (n= 8), hepatitis B s antigen (HBsAg)+/hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)+; group B (n= 9), HBsAg+/HBeAg-; group C (n= 8), HBsAg-/HBeAg-). The LCR results were compared with the findings obtained with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of three distinct HBV gene regions (preS1/2, S and C) and related to the serological profiles of the patien…

Functional spectrum of sinusoidal endothelial liver cells

1992