Search results for "unity"
showing 10 items of 3852 documents
Factors associated with maximal walking speed among older community-living adults.
2011
Background and aims: The relative contribution of different domains on walking speed is largely unknown. This study investigated the central factors associated with maximal walking speed among older people. Methods: Cross-sectional analyses of baseline data from the SCAMOB study (ISRCTN 07330512) involving 605 community-living ambulatory adults aged 75–81 years. Maximal walking speed, leg extensor power, standing balance and body mass index were measured at the research center. Physical activity, smoking, use of alcohol, chronic diseases and depressive symptoms were self-reported by standard questionnaires. Results: The mean maximal walking speed was 1.4 m/s (range 0.3–2.9). In linear regre…
Conflicting rationales: leader's experienced ethical challenges in community health care for older people.
2017
BACKGROUND Ethical challenges arise in all types of care, and leaders need to be aware of how to resolve these challenges. Healthcare systems tend to be organised around medical conditions, and the patient is often faced with a series of uncoordinated visits to multiple specialties. Ideally, care should be organised around the patient's needs. AIM The purpose of this article was to highlight some ethical challenges perceived by leaders with responsibility for management and service distribution, finance and ensuring quality of community health services for older people. METHOD This study had a qualitative design with a qualitative content analysis of one focus group with six leaders that me…
Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern elicited by the comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine in nursing home residents.
2022
Immunosenescence may impact the functionality and breadth of vaccine-elicited humoral immune responses. The ability of sera to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S) from Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon variants of concern (VOCs) relative to the ancestral Wuhan-Hu-1 strain was compared in Comirnaty COVID-19-vaccinated elderly nursing home residents, either SARS-CoV-2 naïve (n = 22) or experienced (n = 8), or SARS-CoV-2 naïve younger individuals (n = 18) and non-vaccinated individuals who recovered from severe COVID-19 (n = 19). In all groups, except that including SARS-CoV-2-experienced nursing home residents, some participants lacked NtAb against one or more VOCs, mainly the Beta vari…
Virologic, hematologic, and immunologic risk factors for classic Kaposi sarcoma.
2006
BACKGROUND Classic Kaposi sarcoma (CKS) is an inflammatory-mediated neoplasm that develops in the presence of KS-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) and immune perturbation. In the current study, the authors compared CKS cases with age-matched and sex-matched KSHV-seropositive controls without human immunodeficiency virus-1 infection and markers of viral control, blood counts, CD4-positive and CD8-positive lymphocytes, and serum β-2-microglobulin and neopterin levels. METHODS Viral loads were detected using real-time amplification of the KSHV-K6 and EBV-pol genes, anti-K8.1 (lytic) titers were detected by enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay, and antilatent nuclear antigen (LANA) titers were detec…
Association Between Individual and Combined SNPs in Genes Related to Innate Immunity and Incidence of CMV Infection in Seropositive Kidney Transplant…
2014
In this study, we assessed the association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in seven candidate genes involved in orchestrating the immune response against cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the 12-month incidence of CMV infection in 315 CMV-seropositive kidney transplant (KT) recipients. Patients were managed either by antiviral prophylaxis or preemptive therapy. CMV infection occurred in 140 patients (44.4%), including 13 episodes of disease. After adjusting for various clinical covariates, patients harboring T-allele genotypes of interleukin-28B (IL28B) (rs12979860) SNP had lower incidence of CMV infection (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 0.66; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.46-0.96; p…
Spontaneous and antibody-dependent cellular immune reactions to ethanol-altered hepatoma cells
2008
— Spontaneous cell-mediated cytotoxicity (SCMC), antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) and proliferative lymphocyte stimulation in alcoholic liver disease (ALD) were investigated. Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from eight patients with advanced ALD and nine normal controls were tested against hepatoma cells (PLC/PRF/5) as targets. Target cells were grown in either normal culture medium or medium supplemented with 1 and 5% ethanol, respectively, for 24 to 48 h. Ethanol-exposed hepatoma cells exhibited profound and characteristic morphological alterations. Ethanol preincubation, however, proved to be without effect on immune reactions. Provided that hepatoma cells are an appropr…
Modifications of general parameters of immune activation in the sera of Sicilian patients with Boutonneuse fever
1998
SUMMARYThe serum levels of β2-microglobulin (β2-M), soluble HLA class I antigen (sHLA-I), soluble CD4 (sCD4) and CD8 (sCD8) were studied in 98 Sicilian patients with Boutonneuse fever (BF). In different stages of infection all markers were significantly increased in sera from Sicilian patients with acute BF compared with healthy controls. sCD8 and sHLA-I reached the peak in the second week after the onset of symptoms, whereas sCD4 and β2-M reached the peak in the first week. Afterwards sCD8 decreased to the levels of controls within the third week, the other parameters decreased later and were unmodified until the third week of infection. Significant correlations were found between sCD4 and…
Role of cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific polyfunctional CD8+ T-cells and antibodies neutralizing virus epithelial infection in the control of CMV infec…
2015
The role of cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific polyfunctional CD8+ T-cells and that of antibodies neutralizing virus epithelial infection (AbNEI) in the control of CMV DNAemia were investigated in 39 CMV-seropositive allogeneic stem-cell transplant (Allo-SCT) recipients with (n = 24) or without (n = 15) CMV DNAemia. AbNEI levels were monitored prospectively by means of a neutralization assay employing retinal epithelial cells (ARPE-19) and the recombinant CMV strain BADrUL131-Y4. Quantification of CMV-specific polyfunctional CD8+ T-cells (expressing two or three of the following markers: IFN-γγ, TNF-α and CD107a) in whole blood was performed by flow cytometry for intracellular cytokine staining…
Chloroquine Stimulates the Mitogen-Driven Lymphocyte Proliferation in Patients with Psoriasis
1993
Chloroquine is known to exacerbate psoriasis. Since immunological stimuli are considered to be important for the pathogenesis of psoriasis, we compared the effects of chloroquine on cell-mediated immunity in 15 healthy control individuals and 15 patients with psoriasis. We employed the spontaneous and phytohemagglutin (PHA)-induced uptake of 3H-thymidine to measure lymphocyte proliferation. Chloroquine was added to the cultures at concentrations ranging from 0.022 to 220 microM. We found that both spontaneous and PHA-driven lymphocyte proliferations were significantly lower in patients with psoriasis (p0.002). The spontaneous blastogenesis in both controls and patients remained stable under…
klebsiella pneumoniae-reactive t cells in blood and synovial fluid of patients with ankylosing spondylitis comparison with hla–b27 + healthy control …
1995
Objective To study the frequency of Klebsiella pneumoniae-responsive T cells in the peripheral blood (PB) of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients compared with that in healthy HLA-B27+ donors, and to examine T lymphocyte clones (TLC) derived from AS patient synovial fluid (SF) for the presence of Klebsiella reactivity. Methods Limiting dilution analysis of PB T cells in 8 patients with active AS and in 8 HLA-B27+ healthy subjects was used to determine the frequency of PB T cells responsive to K pneumoniae and Escherichia coli GroEL. SF T cells from a patient with active AS were cloned, and 125 TLC were characterized in proliferation assays. Results There were fewer T cells in the PB of AS p…