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Biomedical subjects

A Alessandrini

Publications and source records attributed to A Alessandrini.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Role of diagnostic lymphnode biopsies in 56 anti-HIV positive patients.

The authors have examined two separate series of samples from 33 and 23 anti-HIV positive patients with persistent generalized lymphadenopathy (PGL) undergoing lymphnode biopsy. For the first group of patients, the aim was to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic correlation between clinical and laboratory features and histologic findings. For the second group, an assessment was made of the indications for lymphnode biopsy as determined by the rate of positive histopathologic findings. Histologic alterations were classified into four types according to Ràcz, without knowledge of clinical and laboratory data. At the time of biopsy, the first sample (n = 33) included 21 lymphadenopathy associated syndrome (LAS) (64%), 6 ARC (18%), and 6 AIDS (18%) patients; a significant prevalence of type 1 histologic features was evident in LAS/ARC patients, while type 4 was exclusively present in the AIDS group. These preliminary results suggested that only symptomatic anti-HIV positive patients (ARC/AIDS) should have been selected for lymphnode biopsy, because of the expected high rate of opportunistic infections, malignant lymphoma, or Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) in this specific subset of patients. Actually, in the second sample of 23 patients (ARC = 8: AIDS = 15) the detection rate of AIDS-related neoplasms included ten Kaposi's sarcoma and three Hodgkin's disease. These findings suggest that diagnostic lymphnode biopsies should be limited to selected anti-HIV positive patients with evidence of AIDS-related neoplasms or treatable opportunistic infections, or for the purpose of detecting histopathologic features of prognostic significance.

AIDS-Related Complex↗
PubMed1989

Lymph node biopsy in the diagnostic and prognostic assessment of patients with HIV infection.

Thirty-three anti-HIV positive patients with persistent generalized lymphadenopathy (PGL) who underwent lymph-node biopsy were studied to assess the diagnostic and prognostic relations existing between clinical, histological and laboratory findings. Patients were also examined for known risk factors, laboratory and bacteriological tests, and mononuclear cell surface marker analysis. 4 histological types were identified according to Ràcz's classification. At biopsy, there were 21 cases of LAS (64%), 6 cases of ARC (18%) and 6 cases of AIDS (18%); a clear prevalence of type 1 was evidenced in LAS/ARC patients, while only type 4 was present in the AIDS group. An ARC type 3 patient developed manifest AIDS within 13 months from biopsy. These results suggest that anti-HIV positive asymptomatic patients with PGL apparently do not require lymph node biopsy, as none of them showed histologic findings suggestive of opportunistic infections, malignant lymphoma or Kaposi's sarcoma. On the contrary, lymph node biopsy can play a diagnostic and prognostic role in anti-HIV negative subjects with PGL, and in ARC and AIDS patients.

AIDS-Related Complex↗
PubMed1987

Continuing rearrangement of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor genes in a Ha-ras-transformed lymphoid progenitor cell line.

The arrangement of immunoglobulin genes has been examined in a series of lymphoid cell lines transformed with the Harvey murine sarcoma virus. One cell line, HAFTL-1, expresses antigenic markers characteristic of B-lymphoid cells and undergoes frequent rearrangement at the JH locus (where J = joining and H = heavy chain) during propagation in culture. By molecular cloning and nucleotide sequence determination, these rearrangements were found to represent the earliest postulated step in heavy chain gene assembly: the joining of a diversity (D) segment to a JH segment. The HAFTL-1 cell line also undergoes infrequent D beta-to-J beta joining at the T-cell receptor beta locus in culture. The observations presented here suggest that the HAFTL-1 cell line represents the early stage of B-cell differentiation at which immunoglobulin gene rearrangement is initiated.

Animals↗