Lactulose improves psychometric testing in cirrhotic patients with subclinical encephalopathy.

Background: Therapeutic trials suggest that lactulose is an effective treatment of acute and chronic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients.

Aim And Methods: As it is likely that portal-systemic shunting and hepatocellular dysfunction are associated with some degree of neurological dysfunction, 14 patients with cirrhosis and documented portal-systemic shunting, but without detectable encephalopathy, were randomized to treatment with either lactulose 20 g t.d.

Extrahepatic bile duct growth in mice repeatedly injected with human normal serum, IgA-deficient serum or purified secretory IgA.

Another group of researchers has reported that seven intraperitoneal injections into mice of purified human serum IgA or normal human serum--but not IgA-deficient serum, mouse serum or saline--induced considerable growth of the extrahepatic bile duct epithelium. They stated that heterologous IgA was principally responsible for this effect. We have quantitated this growth by another method: enumeration of total and radiolabeled nuclei of the lumenal and glandular epithelium in transverse duct sections after tritiated thymidine injection and autoradiography.

Anti-cholera toxin IgA-, IgG- and IgM-secreting cells in various rat lymphoid tissues after repeated intestinal or parenteral immunizations.

Single antibody-secreting spot-forming cells (SFC) of the 3 main isotypes were counted in lymphoid cells from the gut lamina propria (LP), Peyer's patches (PP), mesenteric nodes (MN) and spleen (SP) of rats immunized 2-6 times intraduodenally (ID) or intraperitoneally (IP) with cholera toxin (CT). Responses for all isotypes peaked in all tissues after 4 ID- or IP-immunizations at much larger values than previously reported, and significantly decreased thereafter, except in LP and PP after IP-injections, where IgA- or IgG-SFC, but not IgM-SFC, only appeared or increased after 6 IP-doses. The highest IgA-SFC numbers (17% of tested cells) were in LP after 4 ID-doses.

Use of anti-cholera toxin IgA-secreting hybridoma cells for the elaboration of an antigen-specific IgA-ELISPOT-assay.

Hybridoma anti-cholera toxin (CT) IgA-secreting cells, because of their monoclonal character, were used to establish and optimize an ELISPOT-assay for CT-specific IgA-secreting cells. The use of hybridoma cells easily and quickly allowed the elaboration of a sensitive, specific and reproducible ELISPOT-assay, which was successfully applied to enumerate intestinal lamina propria lymphoid cells secreting anti-CT IgA in mice immunized twice intraintestinally with CT. Monoclonal antibody-secreting hybridoma cells, if available against a given antigen, are suggested as ideal cell suspensions to elaborate new ELISPOT-assays to study antibody responses at the cellular level.

A retrospective study about the use of cotrimoxazole as diagnostic support and treatment of suspected cerebral toxoplasmosis in AIDS.

The aim of this retrospective study was to define a diagnostic strategy and to evaluate the efficacy of cotrimoxazole (CTMX) for presumed cerebral toxoplasmosis in patients with AIDS. Twelve patients with toxoplasma encephalitis were reviewed. The best diagnostical signs of reactivated acute cerebral toxoplasmosis were the association of neurological symptoms indicative of focal cerebral lesions, and a radiological picture showing ring contrast enhanced hypodense mass-lesions; serology was unreliable for the diagnosis.