Publications by authors named "Alexis Stephens"

Human inborn errors of immunity include rare disorders entailing functional and quantitative antibody deficiencies due to impaired B cells called the common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) phenotype. Patients with CVID face delayed diagnoses and treatments for 5 to 15 years after symptom onset because the disorders are rare (prevalence of ~1/25,000), and there is extensive heterogeneity in CVID phenotypes, ranging from infections to autoimmunity to inflammatory conditions, overlapping with other more common disorders. The prolonged diagnostic odyssey drives excessive system-wide costs before diagnosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase delta syndrome (APDS) is a genetic immune disorder characterized by various immune issues, including infections and autoimmune responses.
  • This text presents a case series of three patients with APDS who developed refractory IgA vasculitis, a type of immune-mediated inflammation not previously linked to APDS patients.
  • Treatment with leniolisib, an FDA-approved drug for APDS, successfully resolved the IgA vasculitis, suggesting that patients with immune dysregulation, like IgA vasculitis, should be tested for APDS.
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A wide array of clinical manifestations follow infection with or , ranging from asymptomatic infection to life-threatening pulmonary disease or extrapulmonary dissemination and meningitis. Epidemiological studies require consistent definitions of cases and their comparative clinical features. Understanding host and pathogen determinants of the severity of coccidioidomycosis also requires that specific clinical features (such as coccidioidal meningitis) and their overlap be precisely defined and quantified.

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Article Synopsis
  • * This study analyzed rare genetic variants by combining data from 21 cohorts worldwide, involving over 5,000 severe cases and 571,000 controls.
  • * A significant finding showed that a rare harmful variant in the TLR7 gene greatly increases the risk of severe COVID-19, indicating that rare variants could offer valuable insights for understanding and treating the disease.
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It is known that the humanin (HN) peptide binding to amyloid-β (Aβ) protects against its cytotoxic effects, while acetylcholinesterase (AChE) binding to Aβ increases its aggregation and cytotoxicity. HN is also known to bind the insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3). Here, we examined the regulation of Aβ conformations by HN, AChE, and IGFBP-3 both and in the conditioned media from A549 and H1299 lung cancer cells.

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Insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) belongs to a family of six IGF binding proteins. We previously found that IGFBP-3 exerts its cytotoxic effects on A549 (p53 wild-type) cell survival through a mechanism that depends on hyaluronan-CD44 interactions. To shed light on the mechanism employed, we used CD44-negative normal human lung cells (HFL1), A549, and H1299 (p53-null) lung cancer cells.

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Background: Neurocognitive deficits have been described in school age children with sickle cell disease (SCD), even in the absence of stroke or silent infarcts. However, the age of onset and factors contributing to this problem have not been well studied. We hypothesized that in children with SCD the failure rate with Brigance screening would be higher than in the normal population.

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