The acquisition of H. pylori infection occurs by close contact with infected individuals in early childhood, especially via contact with infected mothers and other infected children.

Wetreated a married couple who developed Mycoplasmapneumonia at the same time, and whose clinical courses and serum soluble interleukin-2 receptor (SIL-2R) levels were markedly different. The 30-year-old wife developed acute respiratory failure and her SIL-2R levels were extremely increased. After pulse therapy, her clinical state was improved, with a marked decrease in SIL-2R. In contrast, the 36-year-old husband, also suffered from the pneumonia with a moderate increase of SIL-2R, and recovered without any complications. The difference in their clinical states may be reflected in their serum SIL-2R levels, a marker of T cell activation in vivo. (Internal Medicine 34: 430-435, 1995)

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We evaluated the conditions of fixation for ultrastructurally demonstrating the endogenous peroxidase (PO) activity of macrophages in biopsied human liver. The application of microwaving and immersion fixation with tannic acid and aldehydes allowed excellent visualization of PO activity in the nuclear envelope (NE), rough endoplasmic reticulum (rER), and cytoplasmic granules (CG), with good preservation of cellular ultrastructures. The macrophages with PO activity showed one of the following five patterns of PO localization: positive in both the NE and rER but negative in the CG (type 1); negative in both the NE and rER but positive in the CG (type 2); negative in the NE but positive in both the rER and CG (type 3); positive in all three (type 4); PO negative (type 5). The type 1 cells resembled typical Kupffer cells, type 2 cells monocytes, and type 3 and 4 cells the exudate-resident macrophages considered to be a transitional form between exudate and resident macrophages. Type 5 cells may also be a transitional form between the exudate and resident macrophage, or an end-stage macrophage derived from exudate macrophages which have lost their PO activity. Tannic-acid-aldehyde immersion fixation with microwaving may be a useful method in the study of the PO activities of macrophages in biopsied human liver specimens.

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