Antibody Deficiency and Common Variable Immunodeficiency – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Antibody deficiency and common variable immunodeficiency in 18 board-style clinical cases with worked explanations. Each case gives you a clinical vignette, four options, the correct answer, and an explanation of why each of the other three is wrong, with the guideline or textbook it follows named on the answer.

Board-style teaching questions for paediatricians and trainees preparing for paediatric board, MRCPCH and licensing examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 18 cases, in order

1. Nothing at the back of the throat
2. The signal that never arrives
3. Late, and not obviously ill
4. Numbers that do not settle it
5. A dip that mends itself
6. A test that reads negative anyway
7. Years of cough before anyone looked
8. Nodules, and not an infection
9. Pale, yellow and tired
10. Months of loose stools and weight loss
11. A risk beyond infection
12. A treatment that fits around school
13. Aiming at the wrong target
14. Slowly losing ground
15. One chance to take it
16. Low levels with a reason
17. Watching the lungs over years
18. What to tell the rest of the family

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Cystic fibrosis with chronic sinopulmonary sepsis, Bruton tyrosine kinase, Transient low levels of childhood, A sweat chloride test and nasal brush biopsy, Transient hypogammaglobulinaemia of infancy, A gluten-free diet started before the blood was taken, Pulmonary tuberculosis with cavity formation in the lung, Organising pneumonia following a viral infection, Autoimmune haemolytic anaemia, Shigella sonnei, Hepatoblastoma and Wilms tumour of childhood, A short course of corticosteroid treatment, Raise the dose until breakthrough infection stops, Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis after measles.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• No tonsils and no B cells: antibody failure.
• Pre-B block in the marrow: Bruton kinase.
• Low IgG plus poor vaccine response: think CVID.
• Totals show quantity; vaccine titres show function.
• Normal vaccine responses mean the dip will mend.
• No IgA means the usual coeliac test cannot be read.

Work through the deck once for recognition, then again a week later to test yourself — each question gives the answer and explains why every other option fails.

More from this system: all rheumatology and immunology case decks · pediatric reference values.