Background —Black tea is known to be a potent inhibitor of intestinal absorption of non-haem iron at least in healthy subjects. Aims —To investigate this effect in patients with genetic haemochromatosis, and, more importantly, the effect of regular tea drinking on the accumulation of storage iron in these patients over one year. Patients —Investigations were carried out on 18 patients with clinically proven genetic haemochromatosis. For the study of storage iron accumulation, they were separated into a group instructed to drink a particularly tannin rich tea regularly with meals and a control group. Methods —Intestinal iron absorption from a test meal was measured using whole body counting. Body iron stores were evaluated quantitatively by exhaustive phlebotomy, using haemoglobin, saturation of serum iron binding capacity, and serum ferritin for the assessment of body iron status. Results —A significant reduction in iron absorption was observed when the test meal was accompanied by drinks of tea instead of water. In the tea drinking group, the increase in storage iron was reduced by about one third compared with that of the control group. Conclusions —Regular tea drinking with meals reduces the frequency of phlebotomies required in the management of patients with haemochromatosis.

To evaluate the interferon-gamma-releasing assays QuantiFERON-tuberculosis (TB) Gold and T-SPOT.TB in addition to tuberculin skin test (TST) for diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection in HIV patients. Prospective cross-sectional study for asymptomatic HIV-infected outpatients from a large University hospital. Simultaneous performance of QuantiFERON-TB Gold, T-SPOT.TB and TST. Incidence and risk factors for a positive test reaction and the concordance (kappa) between the tests were investigated. Of 286 enrolled patients, 81% were men; median age was 44 years, the median CD4 cell count 408/microl (range 7-1510) with a median nadir of 126/microl (range 0-749). A number of patients (63.8%) had undetectable HIV RNA (<50 copies/ml). Both T-SPOT.TB and QuantiFERON-TB showed more positive test results than TST: 25.2 and 20.0% (P = 0.133) compared with 12.8% (P < 0.001 and P = 0.008, respectively). Agreement between T-SPOT.TB and TST (kappa = 0.201) respectively QuantiFERON-TB and TST (kappa = 0.335) was fair, but only poor between the serological assays (kappa = 0.146). T-SPOT.TB provided more indeterminate results than QuantiFERON-TB (8 vs. 1/256, P < 0.01). Patients with a positive QuantiFERON-TB result had higher median CD4 cell counts (457 vs. 405 cells/microl for patients with negative result, P = 0.044); the amount of released interferon-gamma correlated with CD4 cell counts (rho = 0.199; P < 0.002). T-SPOT.TB results were independent from CD4 cell counts. In HIV-infected patients from a low prevalence TB country, both interferon-gamma assays are more sensitive than TST, but seem to be less sensitive than in immunocompetent patients. The blood tests show poor agreement and differ in their dependence on the CD4 cell count.

The capacity of convalescent and vaccine-elicited sera and monoclonal antibodies (mAb) to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants is currently of high relevance to assess the protection against infections. We performed a cell culture-based neutralization assay focusing on authentic SARS-CoV-2 variants B.1.617.1 (Kappa), B.1.617.2 (Delta), B.1.427/B.1.429 (Epsilon), all harboring the spike substitution L452R. We found that authentic SARS-CoV-2 variants harboring L452R had reduced susceptibility to convalescent and vaccine-elicited sera and mAbs. Compared to B.1, Kappa and Delta showed a reduced neutralization by convalescent sera by a factor of 8.00 and 5.33, respectively, which constitutes a 2-fold greater reduction when compared to Epsilon. BNT2b2 and mRNA1273 vaccine-elicited sera were less effective against Kappa, Delta, and Epsilon compared to B.1. No difference was observed between Kappa and Delta towards vaccine-elicited sera, whereas convalescent sera were 1.51-fold less effective against Delta, respectively. Both B.1.617 variants Kappa (+E484Q) and Delta (+T478K) were less susceptible to either casirivimab or imdevimab. In conclusion, in contrast to the parallel circulating Kappa variant, the neutralization efficiency of convalescent and vaccine-elicited sera against Delta was moderately reduced. Delta was resistant to imdevimab, which, however, might be circumvented by combination therapy with casirivimab together.