CD36 autoantibodies and thrombotic diathesis, thrombocytopenia and repeated early fetal losses.

Background And Objectives: Autoantibodies to CD36, a platelet glycoprotein, have been found in patients with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, and in those with lupus-like anticoagulant with thrombotic complications.

Materials And Methods: Conventional hematologic and laboratory methods were used. The patient was a pregnant woman, who had had two early fetal losses separated by a normal offspring.

Association of the alpha-adducin locus with essential hypertension.

Previous studies on genetic rat hypertension have shown that polymorphism within the alpha-adducin gene may regulate blood pressure. Adducin is a cytoskeletal protein that may be involved in cellular signal transduction and interacts with other membrane-skeleton proteins that affect ion transport across the cell membrane. There is a high homology between rat and human adducin and pathophysiological similarities between the Milan hypertensive rat strain and a subgroup of patients with essential hypertension.

Immune-complexes in malignant skin melanoma: quantitation by three methods, purification, and characterization of their non-tumor related constituents.

Circulating immune-complexes (ICs) and complement system (C) were studied in sera from 10 patients with malignant skin melanoma. The presence of ICs was demonstrated in all of them by three distinct methods. Moreover, ICs were purified in all the patient sera.

[Behavior of some parameters of humoral immunity in renal transplants after more than 3 years].

This paper evaluates the humoral immune response of 15 cadaver kidney transplant recipients more than three years after transplantation. The study was performed by determining immunoglobulin levels, complement fractions and circulating antigen-antibody complexes. The data obtained suggest that humoral immunity is impaired in patients who have undergone kidney transplant, even after more than three years later.