Study of wheezing and its risk factors in the first year of life in the Province of Salamanca, Spain. The EISL Study.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of wheezing and its associated risk factors in infants in the first year of life in the province of Salamanca, Spain.

Methods: A multicentre, cross-sectional, descriptive epidemiological study was designed to evaluate a representative sample of 750 infants in the first year of life, born in the province of Salamanca between 1 June 2008 and 30 September 2009. The study was based on a previously validated and standardised written questionnaire administered among the parents of those children seen for control at 12 months of age in any of the Primary Care centres in the province of Salamanca.

[Monocyte chemotaxis: critical evaluation of 2 methods of quantification].

The mononuclear phagocytic system (Mo) possesses a series of well defined functions regarding both its circulatory components--monocytes--and histiocytic macrophages. These functions--antimicrobial defense, elimination of cellular particles or detritus, immunological interaction with lymphocytes cells, antitumoral defense and control of granulopoiesis--require chemotaxis and phagocytosis or preceding steps. Although knowledge of these functional aspects is continually becoming better--always assured by advances obtained in the study of the function and pathology of polymorphonuclear cells--, an authentic pathology of monocyte chemotaxis as an independent clinical entity doesn't exist.

Monocyte functional defects in rheumatoid arthritis.

Monocytes derived from peripheral blood of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) had a marked defect in their chemotactic and phagocytic activity. The chemotactic defect resides at a cellular level, while the phagocytic defect is serum-dependent. Both defects could be of importance in the pathogenicity of RA and the susceptibility to infection such patients show.