Research on Immunology

Chapter 1 presents a real-world analysis using cancer registry linked to medical claims data evaluated treatment patterns and outcomes among elderly, medically unfit, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients. The results suggest that chemoimmunotherapy is more effective than chemotherapy alone in elderly CLL patients with a high prevalence of comorbidity, and this supports conclusions from clinical trials in younger, medically fit patients.



Chapter 2 discusses the role of the leukocyte adhesion cascade for the pathophysiology of nasal polyps in chronic rhinosinusitis patients, with a special view to the predominant immune imbalance within nasal polyps.



Chapter 3 discusses the efficiency and safety of the combination of DC/CIK cytotherapy with TRT in advanced NSCLC. The authors found that this novel strategy is a potentially viable option for patients with advanced NSCLC.



Chapter 4 reviews the innate and adaptive components of the human immune system that mediate allergic reactions as well as immune tolerance toward cow's milk proteins. Possible therapeutic strategies to induce immune tolerance in subjects with a risk to develop cow's milk allergy are discussed. Mechanistic interactions between cow's milk allergy and other inflammatory diseases are analysed as well.



Chapter 5 discusses the importance of immune reactions in the current understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and potential immune-related treatments to be considered in future therapeutic paradigms. Given that this disease entity is still not completely understood, therefore efforts should be made to fully investigate the pathogenesis and treatment strategies.



Chapter 6 discusses the discovery about the cytokine immunopathogenesis of enterovirus 71 infection and insights into agents, IVIG and milrinone, modulate the cytokine storm.



Chapter 7 presents studies that: (i) characterize the L1 genetic variability of HPV 16 and HPV 18 genotypes, working with both single infection and multiple HPV infection samples, (ii) assess the prevalence of HPV variants in our region and (iii) analyze the relationship between variants and type of cervical lesion.



Chapter 8 discusses various nanosystems which have shown the ability to simplify drug regimens, enhancing antiretroviral activity, while reducing their toxicity and increasing patient's compliance, preventing development of drug resistance.



Chapter 9 presents an update on the West Nile virus Infection (epidemiology, etiology, parthenogenesis, clinical aspects and treatment) and also the association with Opsoclonus Myoclonus Syndrome (a pluri-ethiological neurological disorder) through the personal experience of the authors.



Chapter 10 proposes a histological image mosaicing approach to create the panoramic image automatically by mosaicing all the images acquired from a specimen. It effectively compensates for the congenital narrowness in field of views.



Chapter 11 reviews the problems related to phylogenetic tree searches, sequence alignment, and phylogenetic uncertainty estimation. In addition, parallel approaches to these issues are outlined, and examples are provided of their use with microbial datasets.