Recent Advances: Clinical immunology

BMJ 1996;312:1465-1469 (8 June)

Education and debate

Recent Advances: Clinical immunology

Tom Eirik Mollnes, professor,^a Morten Harboe, professor ^b

^a Department of Immunology and Transfusion Medicine, Nordland Central Hospital, University of Tromso, N-8017 Bodo, Norway, ^b Institute of Immunology and Rheumatology, Rikshospitalet, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Correspondence to: Dr Mollnes. tomeirik{at}fagmed.uit.no.

Summary points

The genetic basis for many types of hereditary immunodeficiency has now been found, allowing more precise diagnosis and giving hope for future treatments
Manipulation of proteins that regulate complement activation has exciting therapeutic implications, such as ameliorating the hyperacute rejection of xenografts
Deficiencies in complement regulators have been implicated in several types of kidney disease, and soluble complement receptor 1 may be useful in future treatments
Intravenous immunoglobulin is now used to treat several systemic inflammatory conditions, and its effects include modulating proinflammatory cytokines and complement activation
Use of new technologies is allowing development of more effective vaccines and avoidance of adverse effects such as found with whole cell pertussis vaccine

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