Salvo Reina

University of Genoa | UNIGE · Microbiology Institute

Productive infection by the LAV strain has been demonstrated in T cell precursors at different stages of intrathymic development, while viral replication in thymic epithelial cells is still controversial. In this article we show that epithelial cell cultures derived from the medullary component of normal thymus are infectable by HTLV-IIIB virus thr...

Normal human keratinocytes can reconstitute in vitro cohesive sheets of epithelium suitable for grafting onto patients. Despite the widespread use of autografts and allografts, no data are yet available on productive infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) of human keratinocytes. To address this point, we challenged keratinocytes at the s...

The medical research on twins, carried out at the Gregor Mendel Institute for Medical Genetics and Twin Study in Rome over the past four decades, has resulted in a vast collection of clinical paper records. A challenge was presented by the need for a more secure method of storage to preserve this enormously valuable historical and scientific patrim...

The availability of a small laboratory animal model suitable for the evaluation of methods for prevention and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection would be a valuable resource for AIDS research. Here we describe the infection of a strain of domestic rabbits by intraperitoneal inoculation with cell-free human immunodeficiency v...

Genetic transfer mediated by spheroplast formation and fusion in Escherichia coli was studied. Recombination did not occur from spheroplasts prepared by the combined glycine and lysozyme-EDTA treatment described by Coetzee et al. (1979). In contrast, when bacteria were exposed to a sub-inhibitory concentration of polymyxin B (0.5 microgram/ml) duri...

The suitability of collecting whole blood specimens on filter paper disks for HIV antibody assay was evaluated. ELISA and Western blot assay results were in complete agreement for serum and blood spot disk samples. Sensitivity of the two methods was tested using diluted whole blood and sera from HIV-seropositive individuals. Results demonstrate tha...

We estimated the relationship of Post Antibiotic Effect (PAE) induced by ofloxacin in both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, with the Percent Growth Rate Average (PGRA) considered on an increase of 1 log (CFUs/ml). The results showed a good correlation between parameters (0.84, p less than 0.001), and enabled us to find out that the drug-in...

A four-fold (P<0.001) mean increase in iron levels was found in 18 patients (a total of 36 courses of therapy) with ovarian cancer at the end of a 5-day course of cisplatin (40 mg/m2 per day every 4–5 weeks). The kinetics of these modifications began very early (24–48 h after initiation of therapy): they reached their maximum on the 4th–5th day, co...