Background: Aicardi-Goutières syndrome (AGS) is a rare monogenic type I interferonopathy characterized by dysregulated inflammation and tissue damage that primarily affects the central nervous system. AGS is genetically diverse, with pathogenic variants across multiple genes, including TREX1, which drives excessive type I interferon (IFN) production.
Objective: This study investigated the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying AGS in a family of two affected children, focusing on the role of variants in protein expression and dysregulation of the interferon pathway.
Paediatr Child Health
February 2025
Objectives: Inborn errors of immunity (IEI) are a heterogeneous group of genetic diseases that impact normal immune development and function. Individual IEI are rare, but collectively, can represent an important health burden. Little is known about the types of IEI seen in Canadian First Nations (FN) and Inuit populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Many individuals with inborn errors of immunity (IEIs) have poor humoral immune (HI) vaccine responses. Only a few studies have examined specific cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines in this population. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine HI and CMI responses up to 6 months post-COVID-19 vaccine dose 3 in adults with IEIs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2024
Patients with autoimmune polyendocrinopathy syndrome type 1 (APS-1) caused by autosomal recessive AIRE deficiency produce autoantibodies that neutralize type I interferons (IFNs), conferring a predisposition to life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia. Here we report that patients with autosomal recessive NIK or RELB deficiency, or a specific type of autosomal-dominant NF-κB2 deficiency, also have neutralizing autoantibodies against type I IFNs and are at higher risk of getting life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia. In patients with autosomal-dominant NF-κB2 deficiency, these autoantibodies are found only in individuals who are heterozygous for variants associated with both transcription (p52 activity) loss of function (LOF) due to impaired p100 processing to generate p52, and regulatory (IκBδ activity) gain of function (GOF) due to the accumulation of unprocessed p100, therefore increasing the inhibitory activity of IκBδ (hereafter, p52/IκBδ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet
July 2023
Background: Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is fatal unless durable adaptive immunity is established, most commonly through allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). The Primary Immune Deficiency Treatment Consortium (PIDTC) explored factors affecting the survival of individuals with SCID over almost four decades, focusing on the effects of population-based newborn screening for SCID that was initiated in 2008 and expanded during 2010-18.
Methods: We analysed transplantation-related data from children with SCID treated at 34 PIDTC sites in the USA and Canada, using the calendar time intervals 1982-89, 1990-99, 2000-09, and 2010-18.
J Allergy Clin Immunol
August 2021
Background: Both intravenous and subcutaneous human immune globin G (IgG) replacement (IVIG and SCIG, respectively) reduce severe infection and increase serum IgG levels in primary immune deficiency disorder (PIDD) patients who require replacement. SCIG can be administered either with the aid of an infusion pump, or by patients or caregivers themselves, using butterfly needles and a syringe ("SCIG push"). SCIG offers advantages over IVIG, including higher steady state IgG levels, improved patient quality of life indicators, and decreased cost to the healthcare system, and for these reasons, SCIG has been increasingly used in Manitoba starting in 2007.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Allergy Clin Immunol Pract
September 2020
Background: Peanut oral immunotherapy is an effective treatment for desensitizing peanut-allergic patients, but the frequency of adverse reactions has limited its widespread use.
Objective: To review the frequency of adverse reactions that patients on peanut oral immunotherapy experience during build-up and maintenance phases and explore factors that may contribute to adverse events.
Methods: A retrospective chart review of children and adults with peanut allergy undergoing peanut oral immunotherapy at the New England Food Allergy Treatment Center in West Hartford, Conn was performed.
IKBKB immune deficiency is a rare but life-threatening primary immunodeficiency disorder, involving activation defects in adaptive and innate immunity. We present sixteen cases of a homozygous IKBKB mutation (c.1292dupG) in infants characterized by early-onset bacterial, viral, fungal and Mycobacterial infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe incidence of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) in Manitoba, (1/15,000), is at least three to four times higher than the national average and that reported from other jurisdictions. It is overrepresented in two population groups: Mennonites ( founder mutation) and First Nations of Northern Cree ancestry ( founder mutation). We have previously demonstrated that in these two populations the most widely utilized T-cell receptor excision circle (TREC) assay is an ineffective newborn screening test to detect SCID as these patients have normal numbers of mature T-cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) can be caused by biallelic mutations in , encoding perforin, or , , , , , and , encoding proteins involved in cytotoxic lymphocyte degranulation. Natural killer (NK)-cell cytotoxicity assays can quickly screen for all of these genetic diseases, facilitating treatment, but combining NK-cell perforin expression and CD107a upregulation tests can as well. To determine the relative diagnostic accuracies for each approach, we retrospectively reviewed screening test performance in 1614 patients referred for HLH evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergy Asthma Clin Immunol
September 2016
Background: Heterogeneity has been noted in the selection and reporting of disease-specific, pediatric outcomes in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The consequence is invalid results or difficulty comparing results across trials. The primary objective of this systematic review was to assess primary outcome and outcome measure selection and reporting, in pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) treatment trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Clin Immunol
October 2016
ZAP70 deficiency is a rare T + B + NK+ combined immunodeficiency with limited outcome data to help guide decisions around hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). We sought to understand the long-term clinical and immunologic outcomes of both conditioned and unconditioned HSCT for ZAP70 deficiency following transplant from a variety of graft sources. We performed a retrospective, single center review of all cases of HSCT for genetically confirmed ZAP70 deficiency since 1992.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Considerable heterogeneity has been observed in the selection and reporting of disease-specific pediatric outcome measures in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This makes interpretation of results and comparison across trials challenging. Outcome measures in pediatric anaphylaxis trials have never previously been systematically assessed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: The clinical importance of overgrowth syndromes in the pediatric patient population has been increasingly recognized during the past decade, but clinical overlap among overgrowth syndromes often makes diagnostic categorization difficult. Advances in the molecular delineation of overgrowth syndromes in recent years have furthered our knowledge of the phenotypic spectrum of this group of conditions. This review focuses on developments in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms and phenotype-genotype correlations in the two most common overgrowth syndromes, Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome and Sotos syndrome.
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