Nucleoside-phosphorylase deficiency in a child with severely defective T-cell immunity and normal B-cell immunity.

A 5-year-old girl with a history of recurrent infection and anaemia has no measurable purine nucleoside phosphorylase (N.P.) activity in her red blood-cells.

Elevated IGA in carcinoma of the nasopharynx.

Fourteen patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma were evaluated immunologically prior to standard radiotion therapy. All had elevations of serum IgA, ranging from 300 mg/100 ml to 1000 mg/100 ml, with a mean value of 549 mg/100 ml. Seven patients demonstrated depression of cell-mediated immunity as measured by delayed hypersensitivity skin tests, total lymphocyte count, in vitro stimulation with PHA, and T-cell rosette formation.

Thymosin activity in patients with cellular immunodeficiency.

An extract of calf thymus, thymosin, induces an increase in percentage of T-cell rosettes when incubated in vitro with sheep erythrocytes and lymphocytes from patients with primary immunodeficiency diseases or viral illness. Precursor lymphocytes are required for this increase to occur. The percentage of T-cell rosettes, when they are normal, is not increased further upon incubation with thymosin.

Antibody-dependent lymphocyte killer function in human immunodeficiency diseases.

Antibody-dependent cell immunity to the lymphocyte system (ABCIL) has been shown to be a function of a non-thymus-processed cell in the experimental animal. To evaluate its role in the human and to assess its clinical usefulness, we assessed ABCIL in twenty-five patients with various immunodeficiency (ID) syndromes. Our technique measures the lysis of 51Cr-labelled normal human lymphocytes coated with HL-A-specific antibody.

T-cell reconstitution by thymus transplantation and transfer factor in severe combined immunodeficiency.

Reconstitution of cell-mediated immunity was achieved in a 5-month old female infant with severe combined immunodeficiency by fetal thymus transplant given simultaneously with two units of transfer factor. Thymus was obtained from a 15-week gestational age male fetus, and the two units of transfer factor from the lymphocytes of 500 ml of peripheral blood. Three weeks after transplantation, two nel HL-A antigens were detected on the infant's lymphocytes, one of which was present in the mother of the thymus donor; at the same time, some of the infant's own HL-A antigens disappeared.

Combined immunodeficiency presenting as the Letterer-Siwe syndrome.

Four infants with skin rash, hepatosplenomegaly, lymphocytosis, eosinophilis, and histiocytic infiltration of the lymph nodes and skin are described; in each of these infants an initial diagnosis of the Letterer-Siwe syndrome was made. Postmortem findings of thymic dysplasia and poorly differentiated, lymphopenic peripheral lympoid tissue in each of the four infants, as well as antimortem clinical findings in one, established a diagnosis of severe combined immunodeficiency. From these and similar cases in the literature, we postulate that the Letterer-Siwe syndrome may not be an unusual presentation of combined immunodeficiency.

Immune response to acute otitis media in children. I. Serotypes isolated and serum and middle ear fluid antibody in pneumococcal otitis media.

Seventy percent of pneumococci isolated from the middle-ear cavity of infants and children with acute otitis media were of one of the seven serotypes 1, 3, 6, 14, 18, 19, or 23. The immunological response in the serum and middle-ear fluid from otitis media caused by one of these serotypes was studied in 61 children by using either indirect hemagglutination or indirect fluorescent antibody tests, or both. Twenty-six of the patients had pneumococcal antibody present in the acute serum and 28 had it in the convalescent serum by at least one method.

Determination of antibody to pneumococcal polysaccharides with chromic chloride-treated human red blood cells and indirect hemagglutination.

A method is described for the quantitation of serum antibody to type-specific pneumococcal polysaccharide. The method uses highly purified pneumococcal polysaccharide coated onto human O+ red blood cells by the chromic chloride technique. Each of 14 pneumococcal polysaccharide types was individually coated onto red blood cells and used to determine the antibody response following primary immunization.