Children hypertension in Northern Africa.

Objectives: To assess factors associated with prehypertension and hypertension among children in North Africa.

Methods: An epidemiological observational, school- and college-based study among 3562 healthy children and adolescents to assess factors associated with blood pressure categories (normal, prehypertensive, hypertensive), including perinatal (gestational age, birth weight, breastfeeding) and current lifestyle characteristics (body mass index, time spent watching a screen and time spent exercising).

Results: Prevalence of hypertension increased with age from 8.

[Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID): clinical and immunological features of 29 Algerian patients].

Purpose: Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is the commonest symptomatic primary immunodeficiency. It is characterized by a defect of antibody production, recurrent respiratory tract infections and increased occurrence of auto-immune discords and lymphoproliferative disease.

Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on 29 patients fulfilling the classical CVID definition.

Foreign body aspiration in children: experience from 2624 patients.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to analyze the epidemiological, clinical, radiological and endoscopic characteristics of pediatric foreign body aspiration in Algeria.

Methods: In this retrospective study, the results of 2624 children younger than 18 years admitted in our department for respiratory foreign body removal between 1989 and 2012, were presented. Most of them had an ambulatory rigid bronchoscopy.

Clinical, immunological and genetic features in eleven Algerian patients with major histocompatibility complex class II expression deficiency.

Presenting processed antigens to CD4+ lymphocytes during the immune response involves major histocompatibility complex class II molecules. MHC class II genes transcription is regulated by four transcription factors: CIITA, RFXANK, RFX5 and RFXAP. Defects in these factors result in major histocompatibility complex class II expression deficiency, a primary combined immunodeficiency frequent in North Africa.