Preliminary results of transfer factor therapy of persistant cutaneous leishmania infection.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M K Sharma.
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Cell-mediated immunity (CMI) was compared in professional and voluntary blood donors. Depressed CMI in professional donors was revealed by the presence of significantly lower numbers of positive delayed reactive hypersensitivity responses to Candida albicans, streptokinase and streptodornase, as well as a decrease in lymphoblast transformation response to phytohaemagglutinin. Furthermore, the serum protein and albumin levels in professional donors did not correlate with the depression in CMI. The blood of professional blood donors should be considered to be a poor source of therapeutic immune cell fractions.
Among professional and voluntary blood donors in Tehran HBsAg carriers and RPR positives were found more frequently in the former group. The levels of haemoglobin, serum total protein and serum immunoglobulins G, A and M were significantly lower in commercial blood. Measurement of transferrin saturation showed that one-third of professional donors were quite severely iron deficient. For fractionation purposes the maximum theoretical yield from commercial plasma is 16% less IgG than from plasma of voluntary donors, 21% less total immunoglobulins and 20% less albumin.
Cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses are important in the immunity against Leishmania spp. infection in man. However, an infection continues to persist for a limited or indefinite period of time in spite of demonstrable CMI. The factors which allow the infection to persist in the presence of the CMI are hitherto unknown. Evidence is presented here that Leishmania tropica or their products suppress the in vitro proliferative response of normal human lymphocytes to mitogen and specific antigens. The suppressive effect of L. tropica is neither due to a direct toxic action on lymphocytes nor to competition for nutrients or antigens. In vivo such an immunosuppressive effect could both facilitate macrophage parasitization and the intracellular survival of L. tropica, even after the CMI develops to processed L. tropica antigen. Persistence of infection is seen in many other bacterial, viral and fungal infections. The in vitro suppressive effect of L. tropica on the immune response observed in our study therefore becomes relevant to the understanding of the host-parasite interaction, which may determine the eventual outcome of infection in many other intracellular infections.
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The in vivo and in vitro demonstration of specificity of transfer factor (TF) has so far been hampered by lack of a suitable antigen. The host partiality of Leishmania suggested that in the case of leishmania antigen it should be possible to obtain lymphocytes of both donors and recipients of TF which were either sensitized or truly virgin. Lymphoblast transformation of normal donor lymphocytes to leishmania major antigen (LMA) was therefore measured in the presence of TF prepared from donors with a history of cutaneous leishmania infection (LSTFd) and normal donors (NSTFd). A clear augmentation of the lymphoblast transformation equal to that usually seen when lymphocytes from sensitized individuals are exposed to LMA was observed with LSTFd. An insignificant increase in lymphoblast transformation, however, occurred when NSTFd was used together with LMA and when LSTFd or NSTFd was used alone. The results, although limited by the number of TF preparations, tested, clearly substantiate the in vitro specificity of TF.
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