Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A West.
Individuals with severe psychotic illnesses may experience hallucinatory voices from animals. Six cases are described, and the significance of such hallucinations is discussed. The term 'Dolittle phenomenon' is proposed.
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A case is described who exhibited lycanthropy during an acute psychotic illness. During a short period she experienced herself as four different species of animal, an occurrence not previously reported. The phenomenon of lycanthropy is most appropriately regarded as a delusion, but the abnormal subjective experience is stressed, not just the falsely-held belief.
Family, twin, and adoption studies have suggested an important role for hereditary factors in the etiology and pathogenesis of several psychiatric disorders. Advances in molecular and statistical genetics may very well reveal the identity of these factors, which may include single genes. Linked markers, critical to the discovery of abnormal genes in several medical conditions, have been reported for Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Psychiatric disorders pose particular problems (etiologic heterogeneity, incomplete penetrance, variable expressivity) for genetic research. New practical and ethical questions also arise. Nevertheless, knowledge may emerge that will suggest new approaches to diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.
The frequent practice of X-raying all injured ankles is reviewed. A simple test using basic equipment to measure the injuries was assessed. A ratio comparing the swelling, expressed as the bimalleolar diameter of the patient's injured ankle to that of the uninjured ankle, gave a highly reliable method of predicting whether a fracture was seen on X-ray or not. All the fractured ankles had a bimalleolar ratio above 1.065. Patients whose ratios were less than 1,065 formed 62 per cent of the series, and as these contained no fractures, the use of X-rays in these cases is questioned.
1. Whole-cell and patch clamp techniques have been applied to cells isolated from the rabbit sino-atrial (S-A) node to study the ionic mechanism(s) of adenosine-induced slowing of cardiac pacemaker activity. 2. Viable spontaneously active cells were isolated from the central region of the S-A node of the rabbit heart by an enzymatic dispersion procedure similar to that reported by Giles & van Ginneken (1985) and van Ginneken & Giles (1988). In these spontaneously beating cells application of adenosine caused a dose-dependent slowing accompanied by a small hyperpolarization of the maximum diastolic potential. Relatively high doses of adenosine (greater than 20 microM) caused complete arrest, associated with a hyperpolarization of 12-15 mV. 3. In corresponding whole-cell voltage clamp experiments adenosine activated a time-independent potassium current, IK(ADO), which at -50 mV is approximately 30 pA in normal Tyrode solution and 50 pA in high [K+]o (20 mM) Tyrode solution. This current is similar to the one identified previously in guinea-pig atrium (Belardinelli & Isenberg, 1983a; Kurachi, Nakajima & Sugimoto, 1986). 4. Patch clamp recordings of the single-channel events underlying IK(ADO) showed that they have a conductance of approximately 25.0 +/- 1.9 pS. The whole-cell or macroscopic current, IK(ADO), and the adenosine-induced single-channel events exhibit strong inward-going rectification. 5. Adenosine in doses (10 microM) which significantly activate IK(ADO) failed to produce any measurable effect on the calcium current, ICa, in these isolated cardiac pacemaker cells. However, after ICa has been enhanced by the addition of isoprenaline, adenosine (1-10 microM) caused a significant inhibition: it reduced ICa back to approximately the control levels. 6. A similar 'indirect' effect of adenosine was observed on If, the slow time- and voltage-dependent inward current which is activated by hyperpolarizing these S-A node cells. Adenosine (10(-5) M) failed to influence the control or basal If; however, after If was enhanced by isoprenaline, adenosine markedly inhibited it. 7. These results provide explanations for both the direct and the indirect effects of adenosine in mammalian cardiac pacemaker tissue: activation of IK(ADO), and of a time-independent background potassium current and inhibition of ICa and If, respectively. Since it is known that there is significant adrenergic tone in the mammalian S-A node both the indirect and the direct effects of adenosine may be of physiological importance.
There is much speculation about fragile sites on human chromosomes predisposing to specific chromosome rearrangements seen in cancer. Acute myelomonocytic leukemia is characterized by neoplastic chromosome rearrangements involving band 16q22 in patients who carry the rare fragile site at 16q22. This specific leukemic breakpoint is within the metallothionein gene cluster, which is here shown to be proximal to the rare fragile site (FRA16B) and to a common fragile site (FRA16C) in this region. Hence neither of these fragile sites are at the breakpoint in this leukemic chromosomal rearrangement.
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Several theorists have hypothesized that the right hemisphere operates in a primary process manner, whereas the left hemisphere operates in a secondary process manner. Evidence for this hypothesis, though supportive, has been indirect. In two experiments, we applied a validated content-analytic measure of primary process cognition to verbal material produced by subjects while right-hemisphere and left-hemisphere alpha-wave amplitude was monitored. Both experiments indicated that amount of primary process content in language is related to basal or long-term hemispheric asymmetry (high levels of right-hemisphere activation, as compared to left-hemisphere activation), and that the relation with asymmetry is stronger than that with absolute levels of either right-hemisphere or left-hemisphere activation. Both experiments showed that primary process content is not closely related to momentary asymmetry. The second experiment indicated that within subjects, momentary asymmetry is in fact weakly related to primary process content in the direction opposite to that predicted.
The human metallothionein (MT) IB gene (hMT-IB) is located in a region of human DNA containing at least four tandemly arranged MT genes. As deduced from its sequence, hMT-IB is likely to encode a functional protein. However, the predicted amino acid sequence differed from the hMT-I amino acid sequence in four positions. Most remarkable was the presence of an additional cysteine. Like other MT genes, hMT-IB has at least two copies of the metal-responsive element upstream from the transcription initiation site. These elements probably are responsible for the metal responsiveness of the hMT-IB promoter, leading to inducible expression of fused heterologous genes. Unlike the hMT-IIA and hMT-IA genes described previously, which are expressed in many different cell types, a high level of expression of the endogenous hMT-IB gene could be detected only in human hepatoma and renal carcinoma cell lines. Therefore, this is the first MT gene described which exhibits tissue specificity of expression. This specificity is controlled by a cis-acting mechanism involving methylation, since incubation of nonexpressing cells with an inhibitor of DNA methylation led to activation of the hMT-IB gene. In support of this notion, we found that the 5' flanking region of the hMT-IB gene was highly methylated in HeLa cells, a nonexpressing cell type, but it was not methylated in a hepatoma (expressing) cell line.
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We previously have shown that proliferating lymphoid cells contain an extractable cytoplasmic protein that is capable of inducing DNA synthesis in isolated quiescent nuclei (activator of DNA replication, ADR). ADR is present in continuously proliferating (transformed) lymphoblastoid cell lines and in mitogen- or interleukin 2-stimulated human peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) but is not detectable in extracts from resting (unstimulated) PBL. In the present study, we investigated the possibility that quiescent PBL may contain a factor than can inhibit ADR activity. We found that unstimulated human PBL contain a heat-stable protein greater than or equal to 50,000 Da that is capable of suppressing the induction of DNA synthesis in isolated nuclei by ADR derived from both normal and neoplastic sources. The inhibitor was not detectable in freshly isolated PBL but appeared within the cells after a brief (2-6 hr) culture period. Depletion experiments revealed that the inhibitor was neither derived from nor dependent upon the macrophage component of the PBL cultures. These results suggest that one mechanism by which resting lymphocytes may maintain quiescence may involve the suppression of cytoplasmic mitogenic signals by intracellular inhibitors. In addition, the implications of our findings provide a possible explanation for the loss of growth control in abnormal proliferative states, such as neoplasia.
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Seventy-two normal adult male subjects wrote TAT stories under baseline and either placebo- or marijuana-ingestion conditions. Marijuana subjects received 20 mg. doses of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol. The stories were keypunched and content analyzed with the Regressive Imagery Dictionary, which yields a score for primary process content. Results indicate that marijuana, relative to placebo, caused subjects to write stories with a higher proportion of primary process content than they had included in baseline stories.
Our objectives in this study were to elucidate various aspects of the epidemiology of Staphylococcus saprophyticus. This organism was isolated from the midstream urine specimens of 7.5% of 145 college women with frequency and urgency of urination and dysuria, but from only 0.07% of 14,835 urine specimens from adult inpatients at the Victoria General Hospital. It was found to be part of the urethral flora of only 2% of healthy women. Other staphylococci which formed part of the urethral flora of 100 healthy women included S. epidermidis (59 women), S. hominis (15 women), S. haemolyticus (13 women), S. warneri (9 women), and S. aureus (6 women). Finally, we determined that resistance to the 5-micrograms novobiocin disk has a 93% positive predictive accuracy as a presumptive test for S. saprophyticus.