Immediate hypersensitivity to penicillins. Identification of a new antigenic determinant.

The study of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) constitutes a challenge in the area of Medicine. Drugs generate a large number of the total registered hypersensitivity reactions, where penicillins are responsible for more than half of them. In vitro tests in the market are not efficient enough since they lack in sensitivity and specificity.

IgE-mediated allergic reactions after the first administration of glatiramer acetate in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Background: Immediate adverse reactions to glatiramer acetate (GA), a drug used in the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), have been poorly investigated. We studied 3 MS patients who presented adverse reactions following GA administration. Two of them experienced severe anaphylactic reactions after the first administration and the other an eyelid edema upon reintroduction 6 months after GA withdrawal.

Effect of corticosteroids on the clinical course of community-acquired pneumonia: a randomized controlled trial.

Introduction: The benefit of corticosteroids as adjunctive treatment in patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) requiring hospital admission remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of corticosteroid treatment on outcomes in patients with CAP.

Methods: This was a prospective, double-blind and randomized study.

Impaired gamma interferon response to Mycobacterium vaccae antigens in patients with cavitary pulmonary tuberculosis.

The ability of tuberculosis patients to recognize Mycobacterium vaccae-specific antigens before starting chemotherapy and according to disease severity was analyzed. We report that the M. vaccae cell wall skeleton fraction triggers more enhanced cytokine production than the whole bacterium.

Mice with pulmonary tuberculosis treated with Mycobacterium vaccae develop strikingly enhanced recall gamma interferon responses to M. vaccae cell wall skeleton.

Whole heat-killed Mycobacterium vaccae is used as an immunotherapeutic agent in tuberculosis (TB), but the compound(s) that triggers its immunostimulatory ability is not known. Here, we show that among different subcellular fractions, the cell wall skeleton induced a prominent expression of gamma interferon in splenocytes from both non-TB and TB M. vaccae-treated mice.

The production of a new extracellular putative long-chain saturated polyester by smooth variants of Mycobacterium vaccae interferes with Th1-cytokine production.

Mycobacterium vaccae is of major pharmaceutical interest as an immunotherapeutic agent. Although M. vaccae 15483 ATCC(T) strain displays smooth and rough colonial morphologies on solid culture media, it is not known in which conditions M.