Influenza-induced production of interferon-alpha is defective in geriatric individuals.

Background: The majority of deaths (90%) attributed to influenza are in person's age 65 or older. Little is known about whether defects in innate immune responses in geriatric individuals contribute to their susceptibility to influenza.

Objective: Our aim was to analyze interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) production in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from young and geriatric adult donors, stimulated with influenza A or Toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands.

Rapid MHC-II antigen presentation of HIV type 1 by human dendritic cells.

HIV-1 is taken up by dendritic cells (DC) and degradation is detectable within a few hours. Little is known about how rapidly HIV-peptide-loaded MHC-II complexes appear on the surface of DC, however. A key impediment to the detailed understanding of MHC-II antigen presentation of HIV-1 has been the lack of good tools to quantitatively measure antigen presentation.

The differential interaction of p38 MAP kinase and tumor necrosis factor-alpha in human alveolar macrophages and monocytes induced by Mycobacterium tuberculois.

Cellular signaling by TNF-alpha is mediated through activation of mitogen activated protein (MAP) kinases. In particular, p38 MAP kinase is activated in mononuclear phagocytes and may be important in sustaining TNF-alpha activity. Here, we compared the activation and mutual regulation of p38 MAP kinase and TNF-alpha by MTB in human alveolar macrophages (AM) and blood monocytes (MN).