Clinical Impact of Bronchoalveolar Lavage in Pediatric and Young Adult Patients with Cancer and Suspected Respiratory Infections.

Background: Respiratory infections cause a significant amount of morbidity and mortality in pediatric and young adult patients with malignancy. Bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) is frequently utilized in the diagnostic process, but which patients would most benefit is poorly understood.

Methods: A retrospective study from 2013-2022 examined patients with active malignancy who underwent bronchoscopy with BAL.

Disseminated Disease After Candidemia in Children and Young Adults: Epidemiology, Diagnostic Evaluation and Risk Factors.

Background: Treatment of candidemia may be complicated by hematogenous dissemination. Limited data exist to guide decision-making regarding the evaluation for disseminated disease. We sought to describe the epidemiology of invasive disease after candidemia, report the diagnostic evaluations performed and identify risk factors for disseminated disease.

Reproductive outcomes after pregnancy-induced displacement of preexisting microchimeric cells.

Pregnancy confers partner-specific protection against complications in future pregnancy that parallel persistence of fetal microchimeric cells (FMcs) in mothers after parturition. We show that preexisting FMcs become displaced by new FMcs during pregnancy and that FMc tonic stimulation is essential for expansion of protective fetal-specific forkhead box P3 (FOXP3)-positive regulatory T cells (T cells). Maternal microchimeric cells and accumulation of T cells with noninherited maternal antigen (NIMA) specificity are similarly overturned in daughters after pregnancy, highlighting a fixed microchimeric cell niche.

Pregnancy enables antibody protection against intracellular infection.

Adaptive immune components are thought to exert non-overlapping roles in antimicrobial host defence, with antibodies targeting pathogens in the extracellular environment and T cells eliminating infection inside cells. Reliance on antibodies for vertically transferred immunity from mothers to babies may explain neonatal susceptibility to intracellular infections. Here we show that pregnancy-induced post-translational antibody modification enables protection against the prototypical intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.

Epidemiology of Pregnancy Complications Through the Lens of Immunological Memory.

In the fifteen minutes it takes to read this short commentary, more than 400 babies will have been born too early, another 300 expecting mothers will develop preeclampsia, and 75 unborn third trimester fetuses will have died in utero (stillbirth). Given the lack of meaningful progress in understanding the physiological changes that occur to allow a healthy, full term pregnancy, it is perhaps not surprising that effective therapies against these great obstetrical syndromes that include prematurity, preeclampsia, and stillbirth remain elusive. Meanwhile, pregnancy complications remain the leading cause of infant and childhood mortality under age five.

Tacrolimus exposure windows responsible for Listeria monocytogenes infection susceptibility.

Tacrolimus is widely used to prevent graft rejection after allogeneic transplantation by suppressing T cells in a non-antigen-specific fashion. Global T-cell suppression makes transplant recipients more susceptible to infection, especially infection by opportunistic intracellular pathogens. Infection followed by secondary challenge with the opportunistic intracellular bacterial pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes, was used to probe when tacrolimus most significantly impacts antimicrobial host defense.

Preconceptual Priming Overrides Susceptibility to Escherichia coli Systemic Infection during Pregnancy.

Maternal sepsis is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality during pregnancy. is a primary cause of bacteremia in women and occurs more frequently during pregnancy. Several key outstanding questions remain regarding how to identify women at highest infection risk and how to boost immunity against infection during pregnancy.

Treatment Options for Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Patients With Reduced or Absent Kidney Function.

Coronavirus disease 2019, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus, was first identified in the Hubei Province of China in late 2019. Currently, the only role for therapy is treatment of the disease, as opposed to postexposure prophylaxis, however multiple clinical trials are currently ongoing for both treatment and prophylaxis. Treating coronavirus disease 2019 relies on two components; the first is inhibition of the viral entrance and replication within the body and the second is inhibition of an exacerbated immune response which can be seen in patients with severe disease.

CD8 T Cell Functional Exhaustion Overrides Pregnancy-Induced Fetal Antigen Alloimmunization.

Pregnancy necessitates physiological exposure, and often re-exposure, to foreign fetal alloantigens. The consequences after pregnancy are highly varied, with evidence of both alloimmunization and expanded tolerance phenotypes. We show that pregnancy primes the accumulation of fetal-specific maternal CD8 T cells and their persistence as an activated memory pool after parturition.

Durability of the hepatitis B vaccination in pediatric renal transplant recipients.

Since hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine implementation, HBV infection has significantly decreased. However, adult renal transplant recipients show a higher rate of seroreversion compared to the general population, leading to HBV infection risk. Data are limited in pediatric renal transplant recipients.