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It is not clear what role immediate hypersensitivity immune responses have in the pathogenesis of human onchocerciasis, but it is certain that these responses are prominent both in the course of natural infection and during the Mazzotti reactions that follow treatment with diethylcarbamazine. In humans, the levels of total serum IgE associated with onchocerciasis are as high or higher than those associated with almost any helminth infection, although specific IgE antibodies to Onchocerca volvulus appear to be a small and still poorly characterized fraction of the total serum IgE. Evidence about the relationship of these prominent IgE responses in patients with onchocerciasis to the onchocercal skin disease that manifests as pruritus and papular eruptions is conflicting, but in a guinea pig model of ocular pathology induced by onchocerca microfilariae evidence for the pathogenetic importance of IgE and immediate hypersensitivity is much less equivocal. The suggestive findings from this model make it imperative to carry out similar studies of Onchocerca-affected human eyes to determine whether immediate hypersensitivity responses play a similar critical role in the pathogenesis of the ocular lesions in humans.
E A Ottesen
January 1976,
International archives of allergy and applied immunology,
E A Ottesen
January 1985,
Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Immunologie,
E A Ottesen
April 1975,
Experientia,
E A Ottesen
January 1986,
Progress in clinical and biological research,
E A Ottesen
December 1977,
The American review of respiratory disease,
E A Ottesen
January 1980,
Glas. Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti. Odeljenje medicinskih nauka,
E A Ottesen
May 2001,
Microscopy research and technique,
E A Ottesen
June 1969,
The Journal of laboratory and clinical medicine,
E A Ottesen
January 1987,
Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift (1946),
