Rat epiphyseal cartilage. II. Sulfate-35 incorporation into proteinpolysaccharide, in vitro.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C Slater.
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The rise in ischemic heart disease in the U.S. after 1920 has been described in the literature both as a 20th century epidemic and as an artifact of the decline of competing causes of death, particularly the infectious, parasitic and diarrheal diseases. Shifting medical terminology and occasional major revisions in cause of death codes have aggravated efforts to resolve the debate. Through regression analysis and ordinary and cause-deleted life tables we trace the course of the disease. The accumulated evidence points to a major epidemic but one largely confined to males. Reversals in patterns are now beginning.
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Health promotion has become an official health policy of this country, and it is being pursued through efforts to change individuals' health-related behavior. This approach is based on the assumption that it is in fact an individual's behavior that most directly determines his or her health status. But how good is the evidence that supports this assumption? Specifically, is the evidence sufficient for this assumption to outweigh the long-standing finding that social and economic conditions have a strong relationship to health status? The major support for the behavior approach derives from the coronary heart disease risk-factor studies and the Alameda County Study. In a series of reports over time, the relationship between individuals' health practices and their health status generally, as well as that between heart disease and cancer specifically, have been established by these studies. These observations, however, have not been confirmed when deliberate efforts have been made to change those practices. The evidence in support of the importance of social and economic conditions to health status has been documented through a long series of studies in this country, which have found a direct relationship between individuals' socioeconomic status and their health status. This relationship, however, has not in this country been tested by intervention. Only a few studies have examined the interrelationship between these two approaches to health promotion, but the evidence to date has failed to suggest that either one is the mediator of the other. We must, therefore, conclude that pursuing a policy of health promotion based on either approach to the exclusion of the other would indeed be short-sighted health policy.
It has been proposed that the increase in amino acid flux and derived protein synthesis rates observed in weight-losing cancer patients may contribute to an ongoing negative energy balance. The mediators and tissues responsible for such apparent increased protein synthesis have not been clearly identified. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between protein synthetic rates in whole-body, skeletal muscle, and circulating cortisol concentrations in healthy subjects (n = 6) and cancer patients with evidence of an inflammatory response (n = 6). Protein synthetic rates were measured with a primed continuous 20-h infusion of [15N]glycine. Skeletal muscle was biopsied at laparotomy. Serum cortisol, resting energy expenditure, plasma proteins, nitrogen metabolites in urine, and skeletal muscle free amino acids were also measured. Derived whole-body and skeletal muscle protein synthetic rates in the cancer group were increased significantly (by 70 and 93%, respectively, p < 0.05). Circulating concentrations of cortisol, fibrinogen, and C-reactive protein were also significantly increased in the cancer group and indicated the presence of an inflammatory response. However, there was no significant increase in resting energy expenditure. Mechanisms by which apparent increases in whole-body and skeletal protein synthesis do not result in an increase in resting energy expenditure are discussed. We conclude that glycine utilization is increased in cancer patients but that rates of protein synthesis derived from [15N]glycine kinetics may not be valid in such patients.