Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0029713 (immaturity)
 4,335 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The influence of age on the susceptibility of gnotobiotic dogs to infection with virulent canine distemper virus (R252-CDV) was studied. Of the dogs infected at less than one week of age, 85% died of acute encephalitis two to five weeks after infection. In contrast, only 28.5% of infected weanling and 33.3% of infected adult dogs died after receiving inoculations of R252-CDV. Furthermore, about one-half of the fatally infected weanling dogs developed chronic encephalitis characterized by infiltration of lymphocytes and plasma cells in areas where demyelination of the central nervous system had occurred. Age-related susceptibility correlated with in vitro responses of peripheral blood lymphocytes to phytomitogens. The results of this study suggest that physiological immaturity of the immune system of neonatal dogs may account for their increased susceptibility to infection with CDV.
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PMID:Age-related susceptibility to infection with canine distemper virus in gnotobiotic dogs. 100 16

To focus attention on the problem of infant mortality in Lebanon, data were compiled on infant mortality from 1978 to 1986 at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. Causes of death are analyzed for 602 males and 398 females. 54.9% deaths occurred at 1 month of age and 77.4% died within the 1st year. Autopsies were performed on .7%. 37.7% of all neonatal deaths were due to neonatal diseases such as hyaline membrane disease, asphyxia neonatorum, immaturity, necrotizing enterocolitis, hemorrhage, hemolysis, meconium aspiration, and kernicterus. Better prenatal care would reduce this group, or the administration of corticosteroids to the mother 24-48 hours prior to delivery, as well as rapid resuscitation at birth and prevention of the 5 curses: hypoxemia, hypoglycemia, hypothermia, hypotension, and acidosis. Although unavailable in Lebanon, administration of surfactants through an endotracheal tube would also help. Infections constitute 25.1% of deaths; many are preventable through adequate public health measures and strict personal hygiene, i.e., diseases such as sepsis, pneumonia, meningitis, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, encephalitis, and 1-2 cases of the following: diphtheria, measles, peritonitis, tetanus, tuberculosis, cytomegalis inclusion, herpes, parathyphoid, pertussis, poliomyelitis, and shigellosis. Congenital diseases were 21.6%. In utero diagnosis could prevent some diseases and in utero treatment is possible for hydrocephalus and hydronephrosis. Screening programs postnatally could lead to treatment. 5.9% were malignancies such as leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors, histocytosis, Wilm's tumor, Ewing sarcoma, and Hodgkin's disease. Early diagnosis is critical if mortality is to be reduced in this group, but medical advances are still needed. 2.9% are miscellaneous diseases such as poisoning, rheumatic diseases, marasmus, Reye's syndrome, nephrosis, rickets, and epilepsy. Most of these diseases are preventable, except for rheumatic inflammation of the heart. Recommended necessary steps to reduce infant mortality are: prenatal care, diagnosis and screening, intrauterine surgery; resuscitation and intensive care centers with modern equipment and trained personnel; national vaccination and screening programs; adequate public health measures and hygiene; parental education; and well-equipped hospitals to serve all regardless of income level.
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PMID:Pediatric mortality: an avoidable tragedy. 251 28

The immaturity of the infant's immune system and the rapid evolution of pathogens has created a demand for the mother to provide ready made specific defence factors to her offspring. This is achieved during the fetal period by transplacental transport of IgG antibodies, and after birth via IgA antibodies in the breast milk. The breast milk also contains a variety of nonspecific defence factors contributing to its antimicrobial effect. Breast feeding has been shown to decrease morbidity in gastroenteritis, septicemia, otitis media, urinary tract infection, encephalitis, pneumonia, and necrotizing enterocolitis. The antibody content in the mother's milk probably contributes not only to the immediate but also to the long term protection of the infant including both resistance to infection and development of immunological tolerance to harmless environmental antigens.
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PMID:Antibodies in milk. 1088 98

Early onset of Rasmussen's syndrome, chronic encephalitis and epilepsy, is associated with a greater tendency to bilateral disease. A cluster of such children is described. This form has a poor prognosis and is usually fatal. This may be related to immaturity of the immune system. Bilateral involvement, as distinct from bilateral epileptic discharges, has also been described in adults but seems to have a more favourable prognosis. Isolated patients treated with immune modulating agents may also have bilateral disease but the significance of the treatment accounting for the contralateral spread requires further observations.
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PMID:Early onset Rasmussen's syndrome: a malignant, often bilateral form of the disorder. 1682 51

While studying the brain function of the human partial epilepsy gene, leucine-rich glioma-inactivated 1 (LGI1), a new mechanism of human epileptogenesis was revealed-persistent immaturity of glutamatergic circuitries. LGI1, a novel secreted protein, was found to be increased during the postnatal period; when glutamatergic synapses both downregulate their presynaptic vesicular release probability and reduce their postsynaptic NMDA-receptor subunit NR2B. During this same period, the dendritic arbor and spines are pruned and remodeled. Using bacterial artificial chromosome transgenic mouse techniques, excess wild-type LGI1 was shown to magnify these critical brain developmental events in the hippocampal dentate gyrus; while an epilepsy-associated, truncated, dominant-negative form of LGI1 blocked them. By contrast, the hippocampal dentate granule neuron GABAergic synapses and intrinsic excitability were unaltered. A role for LGI1 in downregulating glutamate synapse function was confirmed by germline gene deletion; this intervention also revealed a selective increase of glutamatergic synaptic transmission with unaltered GABAergic synapses and intrinsic excitability of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. Interestingly, the role of LGI1 in neurological disease was further expanded when a subset of patients with limbic encephalitis (an autoimmune disorder with memory loss in 100% and seizures in 80% of individuals) were discovered to carry autoantibodies to LGI1.
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PMID:Arrested glutamatergic synapse development in human partial epilepsy. 2115 44