Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C Yin.
Unexplained symptoms of night blindness in low vision patient signaled the need for careful fundus examination. When opacities of the media obscured potential signs of disease, perimetry, color vision testing, electrodiagnostic testing and dark adaptometry were needed to establish a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa.
A female patient, the first child of healthy non-consanguineous parents, presented at the age of 16 months with delayed motor development and facial dysmorphism. In addition she displayed a palatoschizis and multiple skeletal abnormalities as hypoplastic scapulae, hypoplastic os ilea, and an extreme cervical kyphosis. Biochemical investigation of urine revealed no abnormalities except for the presence of large amounts of reducing sugars. The sugar was identified as L-arabinose, which mainly originated from fruit formula in her diet. In addition highly elevated levels of L-arabitol were found in urine, plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid. Although little is known about human arabinose metabolism, we presume that L-arabitol dehydrogenase is deficient in our patient. As polyols are potentially toxic to the central nervous system there could be deleterious long-term effects of this disorder. Withdrawal of dietary fruit led to normalization of polyol levels. The above-mentioned clinical abnormalities are probably not related to this new inborn error of metabolism and should be considered as a separate entity.
We present the first case of primary vulvar mucinous adenocarcinoma of ectopic breast origin. The patient is an 84-year-old woman with a mass on the left side of her vulva. A left partial vulvectomy with bilateral inguinal lymph node dissections revealed a mucinous adenocarcinoma that involved the dermis and subcutaneous tissue. The tumor cells were positive for estrogen receptors (ERs), progesterone receptors (PRs), and BRST-1 markers. The clinical and pathologic features, differential diagnosis, and treatment are discussed.
OBJECTIVES: Lassa fever virus (LAS) is transmitted to man by rodent carriers and is fatal in a third of untreated cases. Our goal is to provide immune protection from Lassa fever by mucosal vaccination. STUDY DESIGN/METHODS: Mice were vaccinated intragastrically with control vectors or with vectors (vaccinia or Salmonella) expressing LAS nucleocapsid protein (NP). Mice were challenged intracranially with a lethal dose of the related arenavirus, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), as a measure of the vaccine's ability to elicit cross-protection. RESULTS: Salmonella and vaccinia vectors expressing LAS NP each protected a third of the mice from lethal challenge with LCMV. All mice vaccinated with a vector expressing LCMV NP were protected as expected. CONCLUSIONS: The LAS recombinant Salmonella vector is comparable to the LAS recombinant vaccinia vector in its ability to cross-protect mice from lethal challenge. Nucleocapsid protein is an inadequate immunogen on its own, but provides sufficient cross-protection to make it a useful component of a broadly reactive arenavirus vaccine.