Publications by authors named "Daniella Schwartz"

Article Synopsis
  • - Antisemitism has been increasing for decades, with a significant spike noted after October 7, 2023, particularly within the US medical community.
  • - A study analyzed healthcare professionals' publications and social media activity, revealing a more than fivefold increase in discussions about antisemitism, and a 2- to 4-fold increase in posts promoting antisemitic stereotypes.
  • - Approximately 75.4% of Jewish medical students and professionals reported experiencing antisemitism, indicating a troubling trend within the healthcare sector.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Inactivation of the A20 gene is linked to a specific form of lymphoma and is studied in patients with haploinsufficiency of A20 (HA20), revealing immune system impacts.
  • In a study of 34 HA20 patients, researchers found that the loss of one A20 gene copy leads to an increase in self-reactive lymphocyte receptors, often seen in lymphomas.
  • The immune changes are driven by a feedback loop involving tumor necrosis factor (TNF), A20, and NF-κB, and can potentially be reversed by anti-TNF treatment, but may still lead to lymphoma development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Interleukin-9 (IL-9) is a multifunctional cytokine with roles in a broad cross-section of human diseases. Like many cytokines, IL-9 is transcriptionally regulated by a group of noncoding regulatory elements (REs) surrounding the IL9 gene. These REs modulate IL-9 transcription by forming 3D loops that recruit transcriptional machinery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A20, encoded by TNFAIP3, is a critical negative regulator of immune activation. A20 is a ubiquitin editing enzyme with multiple domains, each of which mediates or stabilizes a key ubiquitin modification. A20 targets diverse proteins that are involved in pleiotropic immunologic pathways.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Allergic diseases are common, affecting more than 20% of the population. Genetic variants in the TGFβ pathway are strongly associated with atopy. To interrogate the mechanisms underlying this association, we examined patients and mice with Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) who harbor missense mutations in the kinase domain of .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fungal infections are a global threat; yet, there are no licensed vaccines to any fungal pathogens. Th17 cells mediate immunity to Candida albicans, particularly oropharyngeal candidiasis (OPC), but essential downstream mechanisms remain unclear. In the murine model of OPC, IκBζ (Nfkbiz, a non-canonical NF-κB transcription factor) was upregulated in an interleukin (IL)-17-dependent manner and was essential to prevent candidiasis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Disabling pansclerotic morphea (DPM) is a rare systemic inflammatory disorder, characterized by poor wound healing, fibrosis, cytopenias, hypogammaglobulinemia, and squamous-cell carcinoma. The cause is unknown, and mortality is high.

Methods: We evaluated four patients from three unrelated families with an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance of DPM.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Allergic diseases are a major global health issue. Interleukin (IL)-9-producing helper T (T9) cells promote allergic inflammation, yet T9 cell effector functions are incompletely understood because their lineage instability makes them challenging to study. Here we found that resting T9 cells produced IL-9 independently of T cell receptor (TCR) restimulation, due to STAT5- and STAT6-dependent bystander activation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Key Points: The entire extracellular domain of thrombospondin type-1 domain 7A (THSD7A) in the luciferase immunoprecipitation system immunoassay was required to detect autoantibodies with high sensitivity in membranous nephropathy (MN). In THSD7A-seropositive MN patients, changes in antibody levels precede changes in clinical status. Seropositive THSD7A antibodies were detected in some patients with MN considered to be secondary to autoimmunity or cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most studies of adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infection focus on peripheral blood, which may not fully reflect immune responses at the site of infection. Using samples from 110 children undergoing tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy during the COVID-19 pandemic, we identified 24 samples with evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, including neutralizing antibodies in serum and SARS-CoV-2-specific germinal center and memory B cells in the tonsils and adenoids. Single-cell B cell receptor (BCR) sequencing indicated virus-specific BCRs were class-switched and somatically hypermutated, with overlapping clones in the two tissues.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

T cells are critical orchestrators of the adaptive immune response that optimally eliminate a specific pathogen. Aberrant T-cell development and function are implicated in a broad range of human disease including immunodeficiencies, autoimmune diseases, and allergic diseases. Accordingly, therapies targeting T cells and their effector cytokines have markedly improved the care of patients with immune dysregulatory diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) is a systemic inflammatory condition that follows SARS-CoV2 infection or exposure in children. Clinical presentations are highly variable and include fever, gastrointestinal (GI) disease, shock, and Kawasaki Disease-like illness (MIS-C/KD). Compared to patients with acute COVID, patients with MIS-C have a distinct immune signature and expansion of expressing T cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Psoriasis is a heterogeneous inflammatory disease that involves the skin, joints, liver, heart, and other organs. Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), but the relative contributions of inflammatory and metabolic dysregulation to CVD are incompletely understood. We set out to discover novel potential contributors to CVD in PsA patients by comprehensively phenotyping a cohort of PsA patients using these advanced technologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adoptive T cell immunotherapy has been used to restore immunity against multiple viral targets in immunocompromised patients after bone-marrow transplantation and has been proposed as a strategy for preventing coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) in this population. Ideally, expanded severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-virus-specific T cells (CSTs) should demonstrate marked cell expansion, T cell specificity, and CD8+ T cell skewing prior to adoptive transfer. However, current methodologies using IL-4 + IL-7 result in suboptimal specificity, especially in CD8 cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Autoinflammatory diseases are a group of clinical syndromes characterized by constitutive overactivation of innate immune pathways. This results in increased production of or responses to monocyte- and neutrophil-derived cytokines such as interleukin-1β (IL-1β), Tumor Necrosis Factor-α (TNF-α), and Type 1 interferon (IFN). By contrast, clinical allergy is caused by dysregulated type 2 immunity, which is characterized by expansion of T helper 2 (Th2) cells and eosinophils, as well as overproduction of the associated cytokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-9, and IL-13.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The molecular mechanisms governing orderly shutdown and retraction of CD4 type 1 helper T (T1) cell responses remain poorly understood. Here we show that complement triggers contraction of T1 responses by inducing intrinsic expression of the vitamin D (VitD) receptor and the VitD-activating enzyme CYP27B1, permitting T cells to both activate and respond to VitD. VitD then initiated the transition from pro-inflammatory interferon-γ T1 cells to suppressive interleukin-10 cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Since its discovery, the Janus kinase-signal transduction and activation of transcription (JAK-STAT) pathway has become recognized as a central mediator of widespread and varied human physiological processes. The field of JAK-STAT biology, particularly its clinical relevance, continues to be shaped by 2 important advances. First, the increased use of genomic sequencing has led to the discovery of novel clinical syndromes caused by mutations in JAK and STAT genes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF