ABSTRACT
Sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) with house dust mite (HDM) preparation has been shown to reduce disease severity in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). A 5-year-old girl with severe Atopic Dermatitis refractive to all possible pharmacotherapy was put on SLIT for dust mite and followed up for a period of one year. SLIT to dust mite proved highly effective in reducing the disease severity score as well as prevention of exacerbations in this patient.
ABSTRACT
Background: Inflammation may be one cause of nephrolithiasis and the interleukin-18 (IL-18) encoding gene polymorphisms at +105 A>C has been implicated in several inflammation related diseases. The aim of this study was to test whether IL-18+105 A>C polymorphisms could act as genetic marker for renal stone disease. A case-control study was conducted to observe the genotype distribution of IL-18+105 A>C, to elucidate the possible role of this SNP as risk factor in renal stone development and to examine its correlation with the clinico-pathologic variables. Methods: Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technique, we tested the genotype distribution of 160 nephrolithiasis patients in comparison with 200 disease free controls from the same geographical region. Results: We observed significant differences of IL-18+105 A to C between the controls and patients with odds ratio 5.4 (P = 0.001). The prevalence of the variant genotypes AC + CC in the patients was higher than that in the controls (45% v/s 30%) and showed a significant association (P = 0.003). Moreover, the frequency per copy of the C allele of IL-18+105 A>C was found to be implicated more in patient group 0.27 as against only 0.16 in controls (P = 0.0003). Further, males and subjects with <45 years of age in patient group were significantly associated with variant genotype (P <0.05). Conclusion: Thus, it is evident from our study that IL-18+105 A>C is implicated in renal stone disease, and that the rare, C related allele is connected with higher susceptibility to nephrolithiasis.
ABSTRACT
Antiretroviral therapy has played an important role in improving the quality of life and extending the life span of HIV positive patients. In the present study 17 naive HIV positive patients out of a total of 23 positive cases from local population who had absolute CD4+ counts below 300 were given ARV therapy and followed for 1 year. The patients showed an overall improvement in CD4+T lymphocyte counts at one year survival. The values of CD3+ & CD8+ T lymphocytes also changed as expected.