NK cell and steroid use

BACKGROUND: A rise in secondary fungal infections during the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a deeper understanding of the associated immunological perturbations. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the clinical and immunological characteristics observed in patients with rhino-orbito-cerebral mucormycosis temporally associated with SARS-CoV2 (CAM) infection. PATIENTS/ METHODS: Cases of mucormycosis with or post COVID-19 infection were compared to cases of acute COVID-19 and convalescent COVID-19...

OBJECTIVE: High-dose radiation is well known to induce and modulate the immune system. This study was performed to evaluate the correlation between clinical outcomes and changes in natural killer cell activity (NKA) after Gamma Knife Radiosurgery (GKS) in patients with brain cancer. METHODS: We performed an open-label, prospective, cross-sectional study of 38 patients who were treated with GKS for brain tumors, including metastatic and benign brain tumors. All of the patients underwent GKS, and blood samples were collected before and after GKS...

Excessive alcohol consumption is a global healthcare problem with enormous social, economic, and clinical consequences. While chronic, heavy alcohol consumption causes structural damage and/or disrupts normal organ function in virtually every tissue of the body, the liver sustains the greatest damage. This is primarily because the liver is the first to see alcohol absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract via the portal circulation and second, because the liver is the principal site of ethanol metabolism...

BACKGROUND: The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) generated by cancer-infiltrating immune cells has a crucial role in promoting or suppressing breast cancer progression. However, whether the steroid receptor coactivator-3 (SRC-3) modulates TIME to progress breast cancer is unclear. Therefore, the present study evaluates whether SRC-3 generates a tumor-promoting TIME in breast tumors using a syngeneic immune-intact mouse model of breast cancer. METHODS: We employed E0771 and 4T1 breast cancer in immune-intact syngeneic female C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice, respectively...

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (alloHSCT) can be a life-saving treatment for patients with hematological disorders but far too often carries the feared complication of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). The first-line treatment of GVHD is typically corticosteroids, but steroid-refractory chronic GVHD (cGVHD) has led to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of ruxolitinib (Jakafi), ibrutinib (Imbruvica), and belumosudil (Rezurock). Patient 1 was a four-year-old female diagnosed with natural killer (NK) cell dysfunction who underwent alloHSCT with cells from a 9/10 National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) donor and subsequently developed chronic GVHD (cGVHD) of the skin and gut...

Breast cancer treatment failure is related to low response rates, high costs, and long-term toxicities. Thus, it is necessary to find less toxic, cheaper, and more effective treatments. In situ administration ensures drug delivery to tumor cells and decreases systemic toxic effects. The androstene-3β, 17α-diol (α-AED) reduces breast tumor cell proliferation and is an ideal candidate to treat mammary tumors. This study aims to identify the in vitro and in vivo effects of α-AED on a triple-negative mammary tumor model...

Steroid hormones, especially glucocorticoids, androgens, and estrogens, have profound influence on immunity. Recent studies using cell-type specific steroid hormone receptor-deficient mice have revealed the precise roles of some of these hormones in the immune system. Glucocorticoids are known to have strong anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects and pleiotropic effects on innate and adaptive immune responses. They suppress the production of inflammatory cytokines by macrophages and DCs and the production of IFN-γ by NK cells, thus inhibiting innate immunity...

INTRODUCTION: Women with repeated implantation failure (RIF) and unexplained recurrent miscarriage (RM) are proposed to be at opposite ends of the implantation spectrum, with RM representing an overly receptive endometrium (implantation of genetically aberrant or poor-quality embryos) versus RIF representing an overly selective endometrium (no implantation even with good quality embryos). In both cases, often no explanation for reproductive failure can be found and although promising add-on treatments have been introduced, therapeutic options are frequently limited to supportive care...

Blau syndrome (BS) is an autoinflammatory disorder characterized by non-caseating granulomatous dermatitis, arthritis, and uveitis. We present a case of refractory and severe BS that was treated with the Janus kinase inhibitors (JAKINIBS), Tofacitinib (TOFA) and then Baricitinib (BARI). Our aim was to describe the clinical and immunological outcomes after treatment with JAKINIBS. Blood tests and serum samples were obtained during follow-up with TOFA and BARI. We assessed their effects on clinical outcomes, acute phase reactants, absolute lymphocyte counts (ALCs), lymphocyte subset counts, immunoglobulins, and cytokine levels...

Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is a proinflammatory cytokine which plays a crucial role in controlling inflammatory responses. The pathway of Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) leading to TNF-alpha is activated by macrophages and quite often by natural killer cells and lymphocytes. In the inflammatory phase, it is believed to be the main mediator and to be anchored with the progression of different diseases such as ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn's disease, and Rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The major goal of this study is to use in silico docking studies to investigate the anti-inflammatory potential of a bioactive molecule from the medicinal plant Andrographis paniculata ...

Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) are a heterogeneous group of lymphoproliferative disorders originating in B-lymphocytes, T-lymphocytes, or natural killer (NK) lymphocytes. First line therapy is well established and generally a combination of steroids and chemotherapy. Treatment of relapsed/refractory (R/R) NHL however remains a challenge with rapidly evolving new therapies. Many of these new therapies focus on manipulating the body's natural immune mechanisms to identify and eradicate tumor cells. There has been much success with using checkpoint inhibitors in Hodgkin's Lymphoma (HL)...

The human host immune system wards off attacks by enemies such as viruses by mounting an inflammatory response which may sometimes injure self-tissues. Dysfunctional immune/inflammatory response by the host may affect the functioning of vital organs. The largest number of innate immune cells in the body resides in the liver. On encountering a new insult or injury to the liver, the innate immune system responds quickly to counter it. Acute liver insults may trigger acute liver failure or acute on chronic liver failure; these disorders are associated with a predominant innate immune response...

Sex hormones are known to interact with the immune system on multiple levels but information on the types of sex hormone receptors (SHR) and their expression levels in immune cells is scarce. Estrogen, testosterone and progesterone are all considered to interact with the immune system through their respective cell receptors (ERα and ERβ including the splice variant ERβ2, AR and PGR). In this study expression levels of SHR genes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and cell subsets (CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, CD56+ NK-cells, CD14+ monocytes and CD19+ B-cells) were analyzed using standard manual qPCR or a qPCR array (TLDA)...

Veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-ECMO) is a life-saving rescue therapy in patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). ECMO has been associated with development of lymphocytopenia that is also common in COVID-19. Hyperinflammation may complicate SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia, prompting therapy with steroids and immunomodulatory drugs. We aimed to evaluate the association of therapies such as steroids and Tocilizumab with trajectories of the total leukocytes, lymphocyte subpopulation count, and inflammatory and fibrinolysis markers in COVID-19-related ARDS, requiring or not VV-ECMO support...

PURPOSE: Vitamin D (VitD) deficiency is a significant public health concern in many areas around the globe and has been associated with many immune-mediated diseases, including asthma. Severe asthma has been linked to a decreased glucocorticoid receptor (GR) ratio (GR- α /GR- β ratio), indicating steroid hyporesponsiveness. Using a combination of in silico and in vivo approaches, we aimed to explore the immunomodulatory effect of VitD on asthmatic patients diagnosed with hypovitaminosis D...

BACKGROUND: Lymphopenia is a hallmark of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). We aimed to characterize lymphocyte subsets' shifts and their correlations with other severity markers of MIS-C. METHODS: In this prospective cross-sectional study, we performed peripheral lymphocyte phenotyping in 32 patients with MIS-C. We analyzed lymphocyte subsets at three time points of the disease: the acute (A), convalescent (B), and recovery (C) phases. Based on age-normalized lymphocyte counts, we distinguished two groups of patients: "the mild" (higher lymphocyte counts) and "the severe" (lower lymphocyte counts)...

BACKGROUND & AIMS: In patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis (SAH), little is known about the profile of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) at baseline and during corticosteroid therapy, among those who can be treated successfully with steroids (steroid-responders [R] and those who cannot (steroid-non-responders [NR]); 2 groups with different outcomes. METHODS: We performed RNA-seq analysis in PBMCs from 32 patients with definite SAH, at baseline and after 7 days of corticosteroids...

INTRODUCTION: There is currently no optimal treatment modality for refractory or relapsed Extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type (ENKTL). In recent years, programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed cell - ligand 1 pathway blockade and histone deacetylase inhibitors have emerged as promising strategies for refractory or relapsed ENKTL. Accumulating evidence has shown that therapeutic effects of anti-PD-1 antibody could be enhanced by histone deacetylase inhibitors. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 52-year-old male patient was diagnosed with stage I ENKTL by biopsy on February 2010...

BACKGROUND: Immunosuppression therapy is ineffective at preventing bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), primarily a disease of the small airways (SAs). Our previous reports show increased senescent CD28null T and natural killer T (NKT)-like cells in the peripheral blood of patients with BOS and increased cytotoxic, proinflammatory lymphocytes in the SAs. We hypothesized that the cytotoxic, proinflammatory lymphocytes in the SAs would be steroid-resistant senescent CD28null lymphocytes...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To understand the pathogenesis of autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) and the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment options that have improved lately. We summarize the latest research. RECENT FINDINGS: Concerning pathogenesis of AIH, different groups have identified pieces of the puzzle that fit together well: An altered microbiome in the gut results in a proinflammatory response in the liver. This response is built by type II natural killer cells and CD4 T cells with an inflammatory phenotype and marked tumor necrosis factor production...