[Infantile visceral leishmaniasis in the Campania region, Italy: experience from a Paediatric Referral Centre].

In the first half of the 20th century, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) was a common infantile syndrome in coastal territories of the Campania region of Italy. After World War II, the incidence dropped to a few cases/year for three decades; in late 1980s the disease reemerged among both children and adults. To face the VL recrudescence, a Paediatric Reference Centre was established at the Santobono-Pausilipon hospital in Naples, for the clinical diagnosis, care and drug treatment of all infantile VL cases occurred in the Campania region.

[Ticks and the pediatrician].

The match between ticks and pediatricians in Italy is usually a seasonal event related to the spring and summer trips and to the increasing of outdoor activity that sun and warm weather allow, both for children and ticks. So cared parents reach emergencies asking for tick removal but more often after the tick has yet been removed by empirical manoeuvres and after the killing and the destruction of the "enemy". We have scheduled, in the years 2002-2003, the 167 children that reached our unit for a tick bite; they where 92 males (mean age four years) and 75 females (mean age five years).

A 6 day course of liposomal amphotericin B in the treatment of infantile visceral leishmaniasis: the Italian experience.

Objectives: To evaluate in a retrospective analysis the efficacy and safety of a 6 day course of liposomal amphotericin B (L-AmB) in infantile cases of Mediterranean visceral leishmaniasis (VL) diagnosed over a 10 year period in Italy.

Patients And Methods: Patients included were diagnosed as having VL consecutively admitted from December 1992 to December 2001 at four main referral children's hospitals in Italy and treated with six intravenous doses of 3 mg/kg L-AmB given on days 1-5 and 10 (a total dose of 18 mg/kg). Demographic data, nutritional status, underlying diseases, clinical and laboratory findings, and therapy outcome were considered.

Effects of gliadin-derived peptides from bread and durum wheats on small intestine cultures from rat fetus and coeliac children.

Peptic-tryptic-cotazym (PTC) digests were obtained, simulating in vivo protein digestion, from albumin, globulin, gliadin and glutenin preparations from hexaploid (bread) wheat as well as from diploid (monococcum) and tetraploid (durum) wheat gliadins. The digest from bread wheat gliadins reversibly inhibited in vitro development and morphogenesis of small intestine from 17-day-old rat fetuses, whereas all the other digests (obtained both from nongliadin fractions and from gliadins from other wheat species) were inactive. The PTC-digest from bread wheat gliadins was also able to prevent recovery of and to damage the in vitro cultured small intestinal mucosa from patients with active coeliac disease (gluten-induced entheropathy).

Toxicity of wheat flour proteins and protein-derived peptides for in vitro developing intestine from rat fetus.

A peptic-tryptic-cotazym (PTC) digest of a crude wheat gliadin preparation was obtained under experimental conditions simulating in vivo protein digestion and then fractionated into 10 peaks by ion-exchange chromatography. PTC-gliadin digest and one of its subfractions (coded as fraction 9 according to its elution pattern) were very active in inhibiting in vitro development and morphogenesis of small intestine from 17- and 18-day-old rat fetuses, whereas they were harmless for the culture of jejunum from 21-day-old fetuses. PTC-digest also induced extensive tissue degeneration and necrosis of in vitro cultured small intestinal mucosa from patients with active celiac disease (gluten-induced entheropathy), but did not cause any detectable effect on histologically normal human small intestinal mucosa.