A cost-effective approach to the diagnosis and treatment of the wheezing infant.

Wheezing in infancy presents the clinician with at least two broad clinical problems. First is the task of distinguishing the common entities of bronchiolitis and asthma from rare, yet potentially life threatening illnesses that may present with wheezing. The second problem deals with the difficulties in distinguishing an infant with an isolated episode of wheezing with an upper respiratory tract infection from those infants who are at risk for persistence of wheezing through infancy.

Suppression of graft-versus-host reaction in severe combined immunodeficiency with maternal-fetal T cell engraftment.

Simultaneous engraftment of maternal T cells and T cells from unrelated transfusion donor in an infant with severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) was identified by HLA typing blood lymphocytes of the patient, her triplet siblings, parents, and the platelet donor from whom the patient received nonirradiated platelet transfusion. T cell grafts from both the mother and platelet donor were stable for several months, but the graft-versus-host reactions (GvHR) remained mild and immune function was deficient. We hypothesize that immunosuppressive effects of a maternal-fetal GvHR may have modified the expected lethal GvHR from platelet donor's T cells.

Trisomy 18 and hepatoblastoma.

A 4-month-old girl with trisomy 18 had a congenital heart defect and an hepatoblastoma.