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Biomedical subjects

C Bingham

Publications and source records attributed to C Bingham.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Resonance of about-weekly human heart rate rhythm with solar activity change.

In several human adults, certain solar activity rhythms may influence an about 7-day rhythm in heart rate. When no about-weekly feature was found in the rate of change in sunspot area, a measure of solar activity, the double amplitude of a circadian heart rate rhythm, approximated by the fit of a 7-day cosine curve, was lower, as was heart rate corresponds to about-weekly features in solar activity and/or relates to a sunspot cycle.

Adult↗

Telehygiene system for preventive chronopharmacology in space.

A remote computerized health care (telehygiene) system for space travel includes monitoring devices and pharmaceuticals aimed at the optimization of health and the environment. Early risk indicators are provided by dynamic characteristics of rhythms of several frequencies describing variation inside the physiologic range. These rhythm characteristics, assessed as one goes, can be updated and compacted as data accumulate by the use of chronobiologic software that resolves anticipated components of lower and lower frequency, thus providing summaries of data at intervals of differing length. At any time, harbingers of risk, including characteristics of circannual rhythms, can be retrieved in an instant. On their basis, early preventive action can be instituted for risk lowering and for delivery of timed treatment when needed. Preventive or curative health care in space and terrestrial spin-offs are the more effective the more of the chronome (time-structure) is resolved.

Aerospace Medicine↗

Doctors and AIDS.

Just a year ago most authorities considered the chances of patients contracting AIDS from doctors and other healthcare workers a virtual impossibility. But last week a Florida woman who got AIDS from her dentist lay near death, and two Minneapolis physicians admitted they had treated hundreds of patients since being diagnosed with the virus. Although doctors are at far greater risk than patients, the Minneapolis cases renewed the debate over the right of sides to know each other's HIV status.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

Environmental factor(s) during suckling exert long-term effects upon blood pressure and body weight in spontaneously hypertensive and normotensive rats.

To define the role of nurse and pup strain (spontaneously hypertensive rats: SHR nurses and shr pups; Wistar-Kyoto rats: WKY nurses and wky pups) and dietary salt in nurses and pups (low salt and high salt) upon pup body weight and blood pressure, we cross-suckled shr and wky from birth. Nurses after delivery and pups after weaning received either low- or high-salt diets. Pup body weight indicated that WKY dams were better nurses than SHR and that high salt in the nurse and pup diet decreased body weight. At 7 days, WKY on a low-salt diet normalized shr blood pressure and SHR on a high-salt diet reduced shr blood pressure. At 100 days, pup strain strongly affected blood pressure. Salt sensitivity to pup dietary salt depended upon a low-salt diet in nurses. Salt resistance depended on a high-salt diet in WKY nurses. At 300 days, pup strain accounted for most of the blood pressure variability. However, pup diet, pup strain and nurse diet also affected blood pressure (P = 0.05); the blood pressure of shr on a high-salt diet was higher if the nurse was an SHR on a high-salt diet. Thus, nurse environment modulated shr hypertension throughout life.

Animals↗

Further extensions of the cosinor approach to problems of the pharmaceutical industry.

The resolution of a more complex time structure than that described by the useful first approximation of a single cosinor is suggested herein. The cosinor serves the purpose of parsimony in the case of sparse and short time series, yet it can be usefully extended by assessing the variations in rhythm characteristics for treatment timing in the clinic rather than only for research.

Animals↗

A special group of ultradian oscillations.

Based on results from our studies, including those on leaf movements, circummutations of shoots, levels of enzyme activity, and metabolites, and from an extensive review of the literature, we have identified a special group of ultradian oscillations. Collectively, these oscillations have periods that range from approximately 30 to 240 min. Their patterns seldom exhibit strict periodicity or constant waveform. They have been observed in various animals, human beings, plants, and microorganisms. These oscillations appear to be a ubiquitous phenomenon, present at various levels of organization, e.g., biochemical to behavioral, and provide a unifying paradigm for exploring biological dynamics.

Activity Cycles↗

Individualized principal component analysis of endocrine circannual variability.

The technique of principal component (PC) analysis (PCA) of multivariate observations is a method that allows dimension reduction of multivariate data for further analysis. It is here introduced as a means of selecting chronobiologically important variables that can be further studied by an analysis of variance. The use of PCA is illustrated for a study of major temporal sources of human endocrine variability. Contributions to temporal variability by seven steroidal and six nonsteroidal hormones are compared in samples available at 100-min intervals for 24 hr in three seasons for each of three clinically healthy individuals: an adolescent woman, a menstrually cycling woman, and a postmenopausal woman. On an individualized basis, it is ascertained that the first principal component, a new variable, is primarily determined by steroids and that PCA can single out variables displaying interseasonal (circannual) differences validated as statistically significant by a subsequent analysis of variance. The variables here scrutinized and identified as contributing to the PC, however, need not all differ with statistical significance along the scale of the seasons. The steroids contributing the first principal component are DHEA-S and an estrogen in all three individuals studied, cortisol and aldosterone in two of them, and 17-OH progesterone in one case.

Adolescent↗

Bootstrapped potential circadian harbingers if not determinants of cardiovascular risk.

Among 12 endocrine variables in blood from clinically healthy adult women sampled systematically around the clock and the year, discriminant analysis methods have singled out certain hormones in certain seasons as classifiers for a high or low risk of developing diseases associated with a high circadian rhythm-adjusted mean (midline estimating statistic of rhythm, MESOR, M) of blood pressure, i.e., risk of M-hypertension (RMH). Before extending the labor intensive, costly data base, showing circadian changes with RMH, we reanalyzed available data by circadian bootstrapping, complementing earlier circannual bootstrapping. Differences in circadian M for aldosterone in all four seasons and for TSH in spring and summer (the only seasons checked), but not for the cortisol M checked in spring and summer, are validated, as are differences in circadian amplitude for TSH in spring and summer and aldosterone in spring. Identification of classifiers provides cost-effective, time-specified endocrine checks complementing the targeted automatic monitoring of blood pressure as part of a system of chronobioengineering for health maintenance.

Adolescent↗

Increased vascular density associated with lesions of canine globoid leukodystrophy.

Two control dogs and 2 dogs that had globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD) were studied to document vascular alterations associated with the leukodystrophic lesion. Spinal white matter was sampled by transverse and frontal planes of section from dorsal and ventral halves of the lateral funiculus of five spinal segments. Vessel profiles were classified as capillaries or larger vessels. GLD lesion was associated with an increase in capillary mean diameter. Vascular density, estimated by profiles per area, was compared in affected and control tissues. Capillary density was not significantly different, but the density of larger vessels was increased in proportion to the extent of GLD lesion. The increased density is presumed to be the result of lengthening or proliferation of vessels which had normal density prior to lesion formation.

Animals↗

Quantitative investigation of hepatic genomic response to hormonal and pathophysiological stimuli by multivariate analysis of two-dimensional mRNA activity profiles.

We have applied techniques of multivariate analysis to the characterization and comparison of the effects of various pathophysiological and hormonal stimuli on the expression of the rat hepatic genome at a pretranslational level. In vitro translated products were resolved by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. We analyzed 10 pathophysiological states brought about by variation in thyroidal status, starvation, administration of high carbohydrate diet, and the production of experimentally induced diabetes mellitus. Each state differed significantly from every other state in the two-dimensional electrophoretic profiles. The set consisting of the minimal number of products necessary for maintaining the distinctive patterns was identified. The analysis also defined those clusters of products that behaved in a coordinate fashion in response to the various stimuli. Lastly, the similarity and dissimilarity of hepatic mRNA activity profiles to each other could be geometrically represented in three-dimensional space. Our finding that the hepatic mRNA activity profile could distinguish reliably between closely related hormonal and pathophysiological stimuli indicates the specificity of hepatic genomic expression. A systematic analysis of such profiles may be useful as an overall index of the biologic response at the hepatocellular level.

Animals↗

Hepatic messenger ribonucleic acid activity profiles in experimental azotemia in the rat. Relationship to food intake and thyroid function.

We have studied the hepatic messenger RNA (mRNA) activity profile in chronically azotemic rats and sought to determine whether the observed changes could be mediated either by reduced food intake or diminished thyroid function at the tissue level. mRNA activity profiles were produced by two-dimensional gel electrophoretic separation of radioactively labeled products of an in vitro reticulocyte lysate system which had been programmed by hepatic RNA. Of the approximately 240 translational products identified in this system, seven sequences were consistently altered in azotemia. In pair-fed animals six of these also decreased, but the alterations in three were depressed to a significantly lesser extent in the pair-fed group. Moreover, analysis of covariance suggested that food intake could account for the differences in only one sequence. The possibility that the mRNA activity profile in azotemia could represent the effects of diminished thyroid function was minimized by the finding that the reductions in plasma thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) levels observed were due largely to reduced plasma protein binding, with maintenance of the mean free T4 and free T3 concentrations within the normal range. The changes in only one mRNA sequence could be related to free T3 levels alone. Our findings, therefore, indicate that although diminished food intake and reduced thyroid function may contribute to some of the observed changes in the mRNA activity profiles, the bulk of alterations in azotemia appear to be mediated by other mechanisms. The striking overlap between the sequences affected by azotemia and pair-feeding raises the speculation that altered gene expression in azotemia may reflect an impaired hepatic response at the pretranslational level to metabolic signals associated with food intake.

Animals↗

The volume density of cells and capillaries of the normal stria vascularis.

The purpose of this study was to provide morphometric (i.e. quantitative anatomical) data on the normal chinchilla stria vascularis. Five normal chinchillas were used in the present investigation and four regions of the cochlea were examined in each animal. The width, radial area and number of marginal cells across the stria's width increased from the cochlear apex toward the base. The increase in strial width and area appeared to be due to hyperplasia of the marginal cells. The mean total endolymphatic surface area of the stria vascularis was estimated to be 7.4 mm2 (S.E. = 1.23). The mean total volume of the stria vascularis was estimated to be 0.15 microliter (S.E. = 0.01). In addition, using a stereological method we found that the volume density of the cells and capillaries of the stria vascularis was constant along the length of the scala media. The mean (+/- S.E.) volume density of the stria cells and capillaries was estimated to be: marginal cells = 0.528 (0.013), intermediate cells = 0.212 (0.026), basal cells = 0.163 (0.009) and capillaries = 0.097 (0.009).

Animals↗