Paraproteinemia in a case of mixed-cellularity Hodgkin's disease.

A man with histologically unequivocal mixed-cellularity Hodgkin's disease, stage IVB, developed an IgG lambda paraproteinemia with bone marrow plasmocytosis but without any other evidence of multiple myeloma. This unusual finding is discussed in the context of recent data suggesting a B-cell origin for some cases of Hodgkin's disease as well as in relation to the evidence of immunoregulatory disturbances in this entity.

Immunopharmacological effects of Saccharomyces boulardii in healthy human volunteers.

Investigation of oral administration of Saccharomyces boulardii in healthy volunteers demonstrates several cellular and humoral changes in peripheral blood. Among its effects are the increase of erythrocytes, leucocytes, polymorphs, neutrophils, complement components C3, C5, C3d, serum anticomplementary activity and leucocyte chemokinesis, specially when autologous serum and antigen have been added to the culture medium and decrease of complement haemolytic activity (CH50, classic and alternative pathways). We have also demonstrated that in vitro S. boulardii was able to activate complement directly, to fix C3b to its surface and that its phagocytosis by mononuclear cells was complement-dependent. The overall changes in serum proteins suggested changes of acute phase proteins typical of an inflammatory process. Furthermore S. boulardii had no mitogenic response of lymphocyte populations. Our results demonstrated that S. boulardii activates the reticuloendothelial system and complement system and suggest that S. boulardii merits therapeutic trial in a variety of clinical situations.