Chandigarh : The two day national conference on Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (PIDs) organized by The Indian Society for Primary Immunodeficiency (ISPID) and The Foundation for Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (FPID), USA, concluded today at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.
A number of international and national experts in the field of PIDs delivered talks on various aspects of primary immunodeficiency diseases.
The day began with scientific session on systemic manifestation in PIDs. Dr Amita Aggarwal from SGPGI Lucknow, elaborated on the various rheumatologic complications seen in children with PIDs. Dr. Ranjan Minz spoke on the complex interplay between PID and autoimmunity. Dr Shiv Sarin, Director, Institute of Liver and Biliary Diseases, New Delhi, gave a talk on gastrointestinal manifestations of patients with PIDs. He highlighted the fact that these patients can often be incorrectly diagnosed to have a gastrointestinal condition when in reality they have a defect in their immune system to account for their symptoms. One of the known presentations of common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is with persistent or recurrent diarrhea. Dr Sujatha Mohan from the RIKEN Institute at Yokohama, Japan, delivered a talk on the rapidly advancing field of bioinformatics and explained the complex inter-relationship between genotypic and phenotypic manifestations of PID.
A special session was organized on therapy of PIDs. Dr. Neena Kapoor, from USA, spoke on the role of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in PIDs. She has more than 30 years of experience in this field. She showed how HSCT can be curative for conditions like severe combined immunodeficiency and Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome. Dr. Revathi Raj from Apollo Hospital, Chennai, talked about her own experience on HSCT in the Indian setting. This procedure is still rather expensive and several patients in our country are unable to afford the costs involved. This was followed by a lecture on Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIg) by Dr. Sudhir Gupta from Irvine, USA. He spoke on the indications and usage of IVIg in PIDs. Patients with humoral immune defects need life-long replacement with IVIg. He showed how patients with hypogammaglobulinemia who are diagnosed in time and treated appropriately with IVIg can have a virtually normal life-span.
Dr. Anju Gupta, Dr. Deepti Suri and Dr. Amit Rawat from the Dept. of Pediatrics, PGIMER, detailed their experience of diagnosing and managing various PIDs at Chandigarh. Dr. Anju spoke on chronic granulomatous disease, Dr. Deepti on Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and Dr. Amit on hypogammaglobulinemia.
The meeting ended with a panel discussion on 3 patients with PID, who are being followed up at the PGI.