Early Stage Combination Treatment with Methylprednisolone Pulse and Remdesivir for Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia.

Background: This study evaluated the clinical outcomes of patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia treated with remdesivir plus standard corticosteroid treatment (SCT) or with remdesivir plus high-dose corticosteroid pulse therapy (HDCPT).

Methods: One hundred and two patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and respiratory failure were included. The patients were divided into two cohorts.

Acute additive effect of montelukast and beclomethasone on AMP induced bronchoconstriction.

Bronchial hyperresponsiveness to 5-adenosine mono-phosphate (AMP) is a marker of airway inflammation. Inhaled corticosteroids and antileukotrienes are used as anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of asthma. To find out if these two drugs exert their protection in an additive fashion, we compared the effects of acute treatment with inhaled beclomethasone (BDP) and montelukast (ML), alone or in combination, on methacholine and AMP induced bronchoconstriction.

Subsegmental pulmonary embolism: value of thoracic ultrasound for diagnosis and follow-up.

Timely diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) is crucial because prompt appropriate management can decrease mortality and morbidity. However, the diagnosis of PE is often a challenge because of aspecific clinical presentation and the lack of a single non-invasive diagnostic test sufficiently sensitive for the diagnosis in all suspected cases. The present report describes a 37-year-old woman in whom diagnosis of recurrent subsegmental PE was achieved through subtle integration of imaging techniques including thoracic ultrasound (TUS) that was demonstrated to be of valuable usefulness.

A case of pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis in a young woman with coeliac disease.

Pulmonary Langerhans cells histiocytosis (pulmonary LCH) is an idiopathic unusual lung disease and its association with other systemic diseases has been rarely observed. Here, we describe a young non-smoking woman with concomitant pulmonary LCH and coeliac disease that, despite therapy, suddenly deteriorated. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first report in the medical literature describing an association of coeliac disease with pulmonary LCH.

CCR5 and CCR3 expression on T CD3+ lymphocytes from HIV/Leishmania co-infected subjects.

CC chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) and CC chemokine receptor 3 (CCR3) are membrane-bound proteins involved in HIV-1 entry into susceptible cells. All T lymphocyte subsets display CCR5 and CCR3 on their membrane surface. T helper 1 cells are known to express CCR5 but not CCR3, and most of T cells expressing CCR3 are T helper 2.