A randomized and prospective study comparing treatment with high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin with monoclonal antibodies for rescue of kidney grafts with steroid-resistant rejection.

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) versus monoclonal anti-CD3 as a treatment for steroid-resistant rejections. From January 1995 to June 1997, 30 patients were analyzed. They were randomized into two groups.

Tolyporphin: a natural product from cyanobacteria with potent photosensitizing activity against tumor cells in vitro and in vivo.

Tolyporphin (TP), a porphyrin extracted from cyanobacteria, was found to be a very potent photosensitizer of EMT-6 tumor cells grown both in vitro as suspensions or monolayers and in vivo in tumors implanted on the backs of C.B17/Icr severe combined immunodeficient mice. Thus, during photodynamic treatment (PDT) of EMT-6 tumor cells in vitro, the photokilling effectiveness of TP measured as the product of the reciprocal of D50 (the light dose necessary to kill 50% of cells) and the concentration of TP is approximately 5000 times higher than that of Photofrin II (PII), the only PDT photosensitizer thus far approved for clinical trials.

Benign cephalic histiocytosis: report of four cases.

We cared for four patients with benign cephalic histiocytosis, a self-healing non-X, nonlipid cutaneous histiocytosis of children. The age of onset of the disease was 5 to 9 months, with papules and erythematous macules involving the head (mainly the cheeks), and posterior spread to the trunk and limbs in three patients. Microscopic examination of skin biopsies revealed a histiocytic infiltrate in the superficial dermis that was S100 protein-negative by immunoperoxidase (PAP method).

Infants with Down's syndrome. Use of cytogenetic studies and in vitro colony assay for granulocyte progenitor to distinguish acute nonlymphocytic leukemia from a transient myeloproliferative disorder.

Infants with Down's syndrome have an increased incidence of acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL). They are also at risk of developing a transient myeloproliferative syndrome indistinguishable from ANLL except by its eventual clinical recovery. The authors studied five infants with Down's syndrome and leukocytosis with circulating blast forms in their peripheral blood with in vitro cultures of bone marrow colony forming units-granulocyte macrophage (CFU-GM), cytogenetics and peripheral blood neutrophil alkaline phosphatase (NAP) score.