No abstract

The agammaglobulinemia subjects perceived a lower global quality of life than the healthy subjects, but significantly higher than the rheumatic diseases controls. The clinical relevance of health-related quality of life assessment in X-linked agammaglobulinemia pediatric patients is discussed.

No abstract

SUMMARY Lymphocyte subpopulations were studied in 20 hypertransfused patients with ,B-thalassaemia major, some of whom had been splenectomised. B-lymphocytes were normal but T-lymphocytes were decreased in all patients. The T-cell count was lower in the splenectomised patients than in the nonsplenectomised ones. In the former, the active rosette-forming lymphocytes were also diminished, but the difference was not significant. In all patients the percentage of null cells was greater and the activity of K-cells increased compared with controls.

The variation of natural killer (NK) cell activity and lymphocyte subsets 20 h after a single test dose of α-IFN, was studied in 17 thalassemic patients with chronic hepatitis C. All patients had suspended the α-IFN therapy at least 12 months before the study: 10 were considered responders and 7 nonresponders. Also NK cell cytotoxicity after in vitro incubation with α-IFN was studied. The administration of a single dose of α-IFN increased NK cell cytotoxic activity significantly in the group of responders and in non-responders; moreover the NK cell cytotoxic activity after α-IFN in vitro incubation increased both in responders and nonresponders, but to a lesser degree than in healthy controls. Absolute values of CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes decreased significantly only in responders. In conclusion, our data suggest that the variation of NK cytotoxic activity and lymphocyte subsets after a test dose of α-IFN can be considered a parameter related to IFN biological effects.