Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024312 (lymphopenia)
 4,859 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

BB rats were found to have autoantibodies to gastric parietal cells, thyroid colloid antigens, smooth muscle, and thymocytes. No autoantibodies reactive with pancreatic islet cells (cytoplasmic), thyroid epithelial cells, adrenal cortex, testes, or anterior pituitary sections were identified. BB rats with gastric parietal autoantibodies had modest degrees of lymphocytic gastritis, but none developed iron or vitamin B12 deficiencies. These results suggest that BB rats have an underlying autoimmune diathesis. In addition, reports of peripheral T lymphopenia in such rats were confirmed, and markedly reduced helper T cell and cytotoxic-suppressor T cell subsets were demonstrated. Histological studies also revealed depletions of the T cell areas of spleen and lymph nodes. Furthermore, BB rats exhibited a profound inability to reject skin grafts across major and minor histocompatibility barriers. This was confirmed by mixed lymphocyte culture studies in vitro. BB-rat lymphocytes from either spleen or peripheral blood also showed profoundly reduced responses to T cell mitogens. Although BB-rat lymphocytes could produce normal levels of interleukin-2, they were unable to respond to this T cell growth factor. However, examination of thymuses from BB rats showed largely normal histologies, normal numbers of thymocyte subsets, and good mitogenic responses to con A. Thus, it appears that BB rats may have a thymic or post thymic defect in T lymphocyte maturation. The relevance of the immunologic lesion to the etiology of IDD in BB rats remains to be shown.
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PMID:Autoimmune diatheses and T lymphocyte immunoincompetences in BB rats. 634 99

Early immune reconstitution after intensive chemotherapy for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) occurs after 2-4 weeks of cytopenia, but T cell reconstitute is usually completed after several months. Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is a T cell growth factor involved in the late immune reconstitution, but its function during the early period of cytopenia has not been investigated. In the present study, we found that patients with untreated AML had decreased IL-7 serum levels, and induction chemotherapy had divergent effects on these levels. In contrast, patients in complete remission (CR) had intermediate levels immediately before consolidation therapy, and these levels decreased significantly when the patients developed therapy-induced cytopenia. Systemic IL-7 levels showed only minor increases during febrile neutropenia. Furthermore, IL-7 enhanced in vitro proliferative responses of polyclonal T cells derived from cytopenic patients, and the majority of circulating clonogenic CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells from cytopenic patients could respond to both IL-2 and IL-7. To conclude, patients with untreated AML and severe chemotherapy-induced leukopenia (1) differ from other patients with CD4(+) T lymphopenia in that they show decreased IL-7 serum levels, and (2) the detection of circulating IL7-responsive T cells indicates that variations in systemic IL-7 levels are functionally important and contribute to an additional qualitative T cell defect in these severely T lymphopenic patients.
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PMID:Interleukin-7 (IL-7) in patients receiving intensive chemotherapy for acute myelogenous leukemia: studies of systemic IL-7 Levels and IL-7 responsiveness of circulating T lymphocytes. 1243 86

Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is a stromal factor that is crucial for the development of T lymphocytes in humans and mice, and also B lymphocytes in mice. IL-7 can act as a T cell growth factor as well as a critical anti-apoptotic survival factor. The essential non-redundant role of this cytokine for T cell development in vivo is indicated by the phenotype of murine knockout models as well as by humans with a T-B+NK+ form of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) resulting from mutations in IL-7 receptor alpha chain. IL-7 deficiency has now been found in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a finding that relates not only to the T-lymphocyte status in this disease but also to the ability of patients with rheumatoid arthritis to recover from therapy-induced lymphopenia.
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PMID:Interleukin-7 deficiency in rheumatoid arthritis. 1564 46