A patient empowerment program for primary immunodeficiency improves quality of life in children and adolescents.

To assess a patient empowerment program (PEP) for children/adolescents with primary immunodeficiency (PID) on IgG replacement therapy regarding quality of life (QoL) in patients and proxy. Health-related QoL was assessed using KIDSCREEN-27 and DISABKIDS-37 before and 6 months after PID-PEP kids in 19 children/adolescents and their parents. The following three dimensions of the KIDSCREEN-27 significantly increased in children/adolescents after PID-PEP kids as compared with baseline: Psychological Well-Being, Parents & Autonomy and School Environment.

Diverse stimuli engage different neutrophil extracellular trap pathways.

Neutrophils release neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) which ensnare pathogens and have pathogenic functions in diverse diseases. We examined the NETosis pathways induced by five stimuli; PMA, the calcium ionophore A23187, nigericin, and Group B Streptococcus. We studied NET production in neutrophils from healthy donors with inhibitors of molecules crucial to PMA-induced NETs including protein kinase C, calcium, reactive oxygen species, the enzymes myeloperoxidase (MPO) and neutrophil elastase.

Periodic fever, mild arthralgias, and reversible moderate and severe organ inflammation associated with the V198M mutation in the CIAS1 gene in three German patients--expanding phenotype of CIAS1 related autoinflammatory syndrome.

Dominant mutations in the CIAS1 gene cause a spectrum of autoinflammatory diseases such as familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome, FCAS, which is characterized by episodes of urticaria, arthralgia, fever and conjunctivitis after generalized exposure to cold. We here describe patients of two German families with the 592G-->A, V198M mutation, which has been described to induce FCAS before. However, in our patients the clinical phenotype was very different from this disease.