Obstructing fungal cholangitis complicating metal biliary stent placement in pancreatic cancer.

Biliary obstructions can lead to infections of the biliary system, particularly in patients with occluded biliary stents. Fungal organisms are frequently found in biliary aspirates of patients who have been on antibiotics and have stents; however, fungal masses, or "balls", that fully obstruct the biliary system are uncommon and exceedingly difficult to eradicate. We present 4 cases of obstructing fungal cholangitis in patients who had metal biliary stents placed for pancreatic malignancies, and subsequently required aggressive antifungal administration along with endoscopic and radiologic interventions.

An extremely diverse CD4 response to vaccinia virus in humans is revealed by proteome-wide T-cell profiling.

CD4 T cells are required for the maintenance and recall of antiviral CD8 T cells and for antibody responses. Little is known concerning the overall architecture of the CD4 response to complex microbial pathogens. In a whole-proteome approach, 180 predicted open reading frames (ORFs) in the vaccinia virus genome were expressed and tested using responder cells from 20 blood samples from 11 vaccinees.

Dominance and diversity in the primary human CD4 T cell response to replication-competent vaccinia virus.

Vaccination with replication-competent vaccinia protects against heterologous orthopoxvirus challenge. CD4 T cells have essential roles helping functionally important Ab and CD8 antiviral responses, and contribute to the durability of vaccinia-specific memory. Little is known about the specificity, diversity, or dominance hierarchy of orthopoxvirus-specific CD4 T cell responses.

Diversity in the acute CD8 T cell response to vaccinia virus in humans.

Orthopoxviruses have complex proteomes. Infection provokes a brisk CD8 response, which is required in some systems for recovery from primary infection. Little is known concerning the Ags and epitopes recognized by CD8 T cells.

Susceptibility of common fibroblast cell lines to transmissible spongiform encephalopathy agents.

The risk of contamination of tissue culture cells with transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agents as a result of the use of animal products as medium components has been considered to be low, in part, because only a few brain-derived cell lines have been reported to be susceptible to TSE infection. In the present study, we demonstrate that the common laboratory fibroblast cell lines NIH/3T3 and L929, which express low levels of cellular mouse prion protein, are susceptible to infection with mouse-adapted scrapie. Our results show that the susceptibility of a cell line to TSE infection cannot be predicted on the basis of its tissue origin or its level of expression of the cellular prion protein, and they suggest that any cell line expressing normal host prion protein could have the potential to support propagation of TSE agents.