This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (59)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Prevention and Treatment of Disease

JAMA. 1990;264(24):3189-3193.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Immunoglobulins are proteins produced by cells of the B-lymphocyte lineage that are the major effector molecules of the humoral immune system. Immunoglobulin molecules are antibodies that react with specific antigens, although in many circumstances the specificity of a given immunoglobulin antibody is unknown. Immunoglobulin preparations from human blood were first used in clinical medicine in 1952 to treat immunodeficiency conditions. At that time, the only available preparations required intramuscular (IM) administration. In the past decade, several immunoglobulin preparations for intravenous administration have become available. Although initially used for immunodeficiency states, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) has also been utilized as a prophylactic and therapeutic reagent in a variety of other conditions. The use of IVIG has undergone tremendous growth in the past several years. This rapid growth in use is the result of improvements in the preparations of IVIG, which have led to reduced morbidity and reports of its benefits in a . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
NIH Consensus Development Conferences are convened to evaluate available scientific information and to resolve safety and efficacy issues related to biomedical technology. The resultant NIH Consensus Statements are intended to advance understanding of the technology or issue in question and to be useful to health professionals and the public.

NIH Consensus Statements are prepared by a nonadvocacy, nonfederal panel of experts and are based on (1) presentations by investigators working in areas relevant to the consensus questions during a 11/2-day public session; (2) questions and statements from conference attendees during open discussion periods that are part of the public session; and (3) closed deliberations by the panel during the remainder of the second day and the morning of the third day. This statement is an independent report of the panel and is not a policy statement of the NIH or the federal government.

From The Office of Medical Applications of Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Reprint requests to Office of Medical Applications of Research, Bldg 1, Room 260, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892 (William H. Hall). Bibliography, prepared by the National Library of Medicine, is available from the same address.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?