[Imported schistosomiasis with late complications]. / Behurcolt schistosomiasis késöi szövödménnyel.

Schistosomiasis is a worm disease which causes a high mortality rate all over the world. The life span of worms can be 20-30 years, so if the acute phase of the disease is not fatal very often late complications can happen. Here we demonstrate two patients who suffered from different late complications of Schistosomiasis imported to our country. These two cases show the difficulty of diagnosis and therapy of such illnesses.

[Invasive amebiasis]. / Invazív amoebiasis.

There has only a small number of invasive amoebiasis cases occurred in Hungary up to now. Introducing two of our cases we would like to call attention on these cases coming mainly from tropical countries or having been just transiently there invasive amoebiasis should also be considered. Modern diagnostic imaging technics are of importance in differential diagnosis in showing antibodies against amoebas (!) because amoebas frequently cannot be directly shown from the patients in the invasive stage. Both ulcerous amoebic colitis and amoebic liver abscesses can be treated with drugs affecting amoebas in deep tissues (metronidazole, emetine, and its derivates, etc.).

[Imported food poisoning caused by fish toxins (ciguatoxin)]. / Importált alimentaris intoxicatio halméreggel (ciguatoxin).

Various types of fish-poisoning mainly occur in tropical areas. Saxitoxin, tetrodotoxin, scombrotoxin and clupeotoxin are heat labile while ciguatoxin, in contrast, is heat stable thus it may be the source of severe poisoning even in case of thorough cooking and baking. In December 1987 a mass alimentary poisoning occurred following ingestion of fish meat in a group returning from Cuba. The most severe case was admitted to our department with symptoms of extended paresis. Diagnosis of ciguatoxin poisoning was established based upon the history, clinical features and laboratory results. Nowadays exotic, remote "Fish-poisoning" cases have to be taken into consideration even in our country.

[Isolation of human immunodeficiency virus from Hungarian AIDS and ARC patients]. / Humán immundeficientia vírus izolálása magyar AIDS és ARC betegekböl.

Human immunodeficiency virus infected persons are usually identified by indirect methods, detecting viral-specific antibodies. Helping the early diagnosis of HIV infection there is a need to detect virus or viral specific antigens directly. Virus isolation have been attempted from separated lymphocytes of HIV infected five homosexual male patients and one transfusion recipient. Three patients had AIDS, three belonged to the ARC group at the time of the examination. In 3 out of 6 lymphocyte cultures cocultivated with normal donor lymphocytes, virus antigens and virus replications had been detected within ten days of culture. The amount of HIV antigen p24 ranged between 0.5----2.0 ng/ml during the first two weeks of cocultivation. Permanent human lymphoid and monocyte/macrophage cell lines have been infected by the viruses isolated from the primer lymphocyte cocultures. Productive infection could be initiated in Jurkat tat-III and U937 cells, while infection of Jurkat and HUT 78 cell lines was transient. Results indicate, that HIVs could be isolated from infected Hungarian patients with various stages of AIDS and one isolate--termed HIV-1FB918--actively replicates in human permanent cell lines.

Experiences with malaria chemoprophylaxis.

Hungarian citizens travelling to malaria endemic regions have been supplied with malaria chemoprophylactics since the compulsory screening examinations initiated in 1962. Upon return to Hungary after long-term service an additional screening examination is performed. In this present study we report information gained from examination of 15,600 persons. From our examinations we found that chemoprophylactics given by our Institute (chloroquine, pyrimethamine) and taken regularly by our patients provide sufficient protection against manifest disease. The data from 12,780 persons show that with regular chemoprophylaxis the occurrence of malaria was one-tenth of that in persons not taking the drug (1.2% compared with 12%).