Patient involvement in surgical care-Healthcare personnel views and behaviour regarding patient involvement.

Background: All professions in surgical care have a responsibility to include patients in their health care. By Swedish law, all care should be done in dialogue with the patient. The essential part of health care is the meeting between patient and healthcare professional.

Experiences With a Self-Reported Mobile Phone-Based System Among Patients With Colorectal Cancer: A Qualitative Study.

Background: In cancer care, mobile phone-based systems are becoming more widely used in the assessment, monitoring, and management of side effects.

Objective: To explore the experiences of patients with colorectal cancer on using a mobile phone-based system for reporting neurotoxic side effects.

Methods: Eleven patients were interviewed (ages 44-68 years).

Cross-reactivity among fungal allergens: a clinically relevant phenomenon?

Atopic patients suffering from allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, or atopic eczema often have detectable levels of serum IgE antibodies to fungi. Although the association between fungal sensitisation and different forms of allergic diseases, including allergic asthma and life-threatening allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, is well established, the clinical relevance of cross-reactivity among different fungal species remains largely unknown. Recent progress in molecular cloning of fungal allergens and the availability of more than 40 completely sequenced fungal genomes facilitates characterisation, cloning, and production of highly pure recombinant allergens, identification of homologous and orthologous allergens widespread among the fungal kingdom, in silico prediction, and experimental in vitro and in vivo verification of cross-reactivity between homologous pan-allergens.

Mutational analysis of amino acid residues involved in IgE-binding to the Malassezia sympodialis allergen Mala s 11.

The yeast Malassezia sympodialis, which is an integral part of the normal cutaneous flora, has been shown to elicit specific IgE- and T-cell reactivity in atopic eczema (AE) patients. The M. sympodialis allergen Mala s 11 has a high degree of amino acid sequence homology to manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) from Homo sapiens (50%) and Aspergillus fumigatus (56%).

Immunoglobulin-E-mediated reactivity to self antigens: a controversial issue.

Immunoglobulin E (IgE) reactivity to self antigens is well established in vitro by ELISA, inhibition ELISA, Western blot analyses and T cell proliferation experiments. In vivo, IgE-binding self antigens are able to elicit strong type I reactions in sensitized individuals and, in the case of human manganese superoxide dismutase, to elicit eczematous reactions on healthy skin areas of patients suffering from atopic eczema. The reactions against self antigens sharing structural homology with environmental allergens can be plausibly explained by molecular mimicry between common B cell epitopes.