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Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: The Authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this research.

Vasculitides are a set of serious diseases of unknown aetiology with various immunopathogenetic mechanisms, characterized by inflammation and necrosis of the vessel wall with consequent lumen obliteration. They may be primitive or associated with other diseases, have heterogeneous clinical manifestations and different degrees of severity which may be related to the localization of the interested vessels. Although in the last years many classifications have been proposed, a standardized nomenclature of vasculitides is unquestionably still needed to facilitate the diagnosis and management of patients with the disease. Steroids and immunosuppressant are the conventional therapy, whereas other therapeutic strategies are reserved for the refractory vasculitides to conventional therapies or for intolerant recipients to cytotoxic drugs. New approaches are represented by monoclonal antibodies and drugs which could be effective in the treatment of the trigger factors which activate the immunopathological mechanisms. Current data suggest that, rather than pursuing the idea of a single therapy for vasculitides, an oncological model of combined therapy, to induce both the disease control and maintenance of remission, might be adopted. An improvement of our knowledges on the mechanisms underlying the different entities associated to standardized criteria of activity and remission of disease will lead to an improvement of our therapeutic strategies.

An absolute and relative increase of circulating CD56+ (NKH1, Leu19) natural killer cells has been found in a patient with systemic sclerosis. The expanded natural killer cells exhibited reduced natural killer activity and antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the limiting dilution analysis of spontaneous in vitro immunoglobulin synthesis demonstrated that the precursor frequency of immunoglobulin-secreting cells and the "single-hit" kinetics of the titration curve were similar to healthy controls, but strongly different from previously reported patients in whom CD16+NK cell subset was expanded. Thus, our findings might suggest that expanded CD56+ natural killer cells exhibit unique regulatory properties on B cell function in systemic sclerosis.

An experimental study on rats in order to discovery any possible interaction between Ciclosporin (CyA) and H2-receptor antagonists has been carried out. The results obtained demonstrated that the serum levels of CyA were higher in rats treated with CyA and Cimetidine or Ranitidine, but not Famotidine. It is probable that the increase of ciclosporinaemia is the consequence of an increased hepatotoxicity due to administration of Cya in association with Cimetidine or Ranitidine.

Heterogeneity of the CD4 antigen epitopes has been occasionally reported in healthy subjects, in patients affected by autoimmune diseases, such as Graves' disease and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and recently also in HIV-infected subjects. A 63-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of dyspnea, autoimmune thrombocytopenia and serum antinuclear autoantibodies. The clinical course and X-ray films of the chest were consistent with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The evaluation of peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets showed low CD4+ cells by use of OKT4 (Ortho Mune) monoclonal antibody (30%, normal range 35-45) and normal values of the same CD4+ subset by use of OKT4A (Ortho Mune) and Leu3a (Becton Dickinson) monoclonal antibodies (48%, normal range 45-55), which are specific for a different epitope of CD4 molecule. These differences indicate that the patient is heterozygous for the OKT4 epitope deficiency on CD4+ lymphocytes surface. The routine use of a panel of monoclonal antibodies, such as OKT4, OKT4A, Leu3a, which recognize different CD4 epitopes, is suggested in order to perform an accurate evaluation of CD4+ lymphocyte subset in patients affected by immune-mediated disorders other than Graves' disease and SLE.