Single center experience of cell-free and concentrated ascites reinfusion therapy in malignancy related ascites.

Cell-Free and Concentrated Ascites Reinfusion Therapy (CART) is expected to improve patients' symptoms related to ascites. Use of a patient's own proteins in ascites might reduce the risk of infection. However, several reports have described that reinfusion of concentrated ascites might elevate body temperature.

Effectiveness of using clinical guidelines for conducting palliative care family meetings in Japan.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to pilot test the effectiveness of using recently developed clinical guidelines from Australia for conducting palliative care family meetings in Japan.

Methods: Palliative care family meetings were conducted using clinical guidelines with 15 primary family carers of cancer patients who were admitted to an acute care hospital in Japan. Using the pre-family meeting questionnaire, the primary carers were asked to write key concerns to discuss during the family meetings and rate their concerns via a numerical rating scale: how upset/worried they were about the problem, frequency in which problem occurs, life interference with the problem, and the confidence to deal with the problem.

Contribution of CCR4 and CCR8 to antigen-specific T(H)2 cell trafficking in allergic pulmonary inflammation.

Background: Recruitment of antigen-specific T(H)2 cells into the lung is critical for the development of allergic airway inflammation. Although CCR4 and CCR8 are preferentially expressed on T(H)2 cells and CCR4, CCR8, and CXCR3 ligands are increased in asthma, the specific relative contribution of these receptors to antigen-specific T(H)2 cell trafficking into the allergic lung is not known.

Objective: To determine the relative contribution of the chemokine receptors CCR4, CCR8, and CXCR3 to antigen-specific T(H)2 cell trafficking in a murine model of allergic pulmonary inflammation.

Airway hyper-reactivity mediated by B-1 cell immunoglobulin M antibody generating complement C5a at 1 day post-immunization in a murine hapten model of non-atopic asthma.

Contact skin immunization of mice with reactive hapten antigen and subsequent airway challenge with the same hapten induces immediate airflow obstruction and subsequent airway hyper-reactivity (AHR) to methacholine challenge, which is dependent on B cells but not on T cells. This responsiveness to airway challenge with antigen is elicited as early as 1 day postimmunization and can be adoptively transferred to naïve recipients via 1-day immune cells. Responses are absent in 1-day immune B-cell-deficient JH(-/-) mice and B-1 B-cell-deficient xid male mice, as well as in recipients of 1-day immune cells depleted of cells with the B-1 cell phenotype (CD19(+) B220(+) CD5(+)).