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Biomedical subjects

G Bell

Publications and source records attributed to G Bell.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources
PubMed1966

Medical care of the alcoholic patient.

Alcoholism is an illness that constitutes a major health problem at all levels of society. The physician should accept his responsibility to prevent it and to care for the alcoholic. If he knows that one of his patients is drinking immoderately, he should warn him of the outlook. A patient's acquired dependence on alcohol may be overt, or revealed only on examination for organic disease or emotional disturbance. The diagnosis may be accepted reluctantly, or denied despite positive evidence, but the patient should be persuaded to give up drinking. He may require psychiatric help or advice from a social worker. He may be so ill as to require treatment in hospital, and hospitals must recognize the urgency of such admissions. Discharge from hospital does not end treatment, for alcoholism is a chronic disease, requiring long-term planning, persistent follow-up and enduring sympathy by the physician, who must always be as available to his alcoholic patient as he is to his patient with diabetes, epilepsy or cardiac disease.

Alcoholism↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Influence of lumbar spine pathology on the incidence of paresthesia during spinal anesthesia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Paresthesia occasionally occurs during dural puncture or injection of local anesthetic for spinal anesthesia. Although the incidence of neurologic complications after spinal anesthesia is extremely low, the significance of paresthesia is unknown. The influence of known lumbar spine pathology on the incidence of paresthesia during spinal anesthesia is studied. METHODS: Incidence of paresthesia with dural puncture (PP) or injection (PI) was studied in two groups of patients. Group 1 included patients for elective total joint replacement without known spine pathology or complaints. Group 2 included patients for elective lumbar spine surgery who received spinal anesthesia. RESULTS: Significantly more PP (20% vs 9%) and PI (16% vs 6%) occurred in the spine surgery group. There were no neurologic sequelae of spinal anesthesia. CONCLUSIONS: This information suggests that the incidence of paresthesia during the conduct of spinal anesthesia is higher in patients with lumbar spine pathology. Although there were no neurologic complications, the sample size is too small to exclude an increase in the neurologic risk of spinal anesthesia in patients with known intraspinal pathology.

Adrenergic Agonists↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Mammalian chiasma frequencies as a test of two theories of recombination.

A broad survey of asexuality in the animal kingdom is sufficient to reject all theories of sex and recombination except two: the Red Queen and the Tangled Bank. The Red Queen theory states that an organism's biotic environment tends to be 'contrary', consistently evolving to the detriment of the organism; sex and recombination result in progeny genetically distinct from their parents and grandparents and thus less susceptible to the antagonistic advances made during the previous generations, particularly by their parasites. The alternative theory, the Tangled Bank, states that sex and recombination function to diversify the progeny from each other, thus reducing competition between them. An extensive survey of mammalian recombination shows that the total number of chiasmata in excess of one per bivalent is strongly correlated with generation time but uncorrelated with fecundity. We conclude that crossing-over may function to combat antagonists with short generation times but does not function to reduce sib competition. Chromosome number is selectively neutral with respect to these factors.

Aging↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Disturbance and diversity in experimental microcosms.

External agents of mortality (disturbances) occur over a wide range of scales of space and time, and are believed to have large effects on species diversity. The "intermediate disturbance hypothesis", which proposes maximum diversity at intermediate frequencies of disturbance, has received support from both field and laboratory studies. Coexistence of species at intermediate frequencies of disturbance is thought to require trade-offs between competitive ability and disturbance tolerance, and a metapopulation structure, with disturbance affecting only a few patches at any given time. However, a unimodal relationship can also be generated by global disturbances that affect all patches simultaneously, provided that the environment contains spatial niches to which different species are adapted. Here we report the results of tests of this model using both isogenic and diverse populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens. In both cases, a unimodal relationship between diversity and disturbance frequency was generated in heterogeneous, but not in homogeneous, environments. The cause of this relationship is competition among niche-specialist genotypes, which maintains diversity at intermediate disturbance, but not at high or low disturbance. Our results show that disturbance can modulate the effect of spatial heterogeneity on biological diversity in natural environments.

Ecosystem↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Results of long-term leukocyte interferon (alpha IFN) therapy using an individually determined dose schedule in recurrent laryngeal papillomatosis].

Out of 24 patients with laryngeal papillomatosis 6 (5 female, 1 male) suffered from repeated relapses and underwent long-term treatment with alpha-IFN-therapy. Age at onset of the disease: 1 5/12-16 2/12 years. Duration of illness: 1-7 years, with several relapses were treated surgically and with laser-coagulation. Three out of 6 patients had a tracheal cannula and were cauterized by podophylline at 2-4 week intervals. IFN was given in dosages of 5-20 X 10(4) U/kg 2 or 3 times a week. IFN-dosage for each patient was determined using the induction kinetics of (2'-5')-oligo(A)synthetase (OAS) in the mononuclear cells of the circulating blood of patients with laryngeal papillomatosis. A continuous effect could be achieved by the dose of IFN determined in the described way always before OAS activity decreased to its initial level. All 6 patients responded favorably to the alpha-IFN-therapy. Two patients treated only with IFN showed remission without relapses. In 2 cases IFN was successfully used to prevent relapses after surgical treatment and laser-coagulation. In 2 patients with papillomatosis extending into the main bronchi the disease could only be brought to a standstill, i.e. it was not necessary to remove the papillomas. Two out of 3 patients with laryngeal papillomatosis could be decannulated. Long-term therapy following the above described principles is efficient and without significant side-effects. Three patients are in treatment for more than 3 10/12 years.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The sexual nature of the eukaryote genome.

This paper supports a previous conjecture that the sexual cycle of eukaryotes arose from the infection of cells by genome parasites. The finding are as follows. (1) In prokaryotes, conjugative plasmids ensure their own spread by directing partial cell fusion. (2) Conjugative plasmids permit gene transfer between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and can be integrated into the eukaryote genome. (3) Genes can be transferred between unrelated eukaryotes, and between different genomes within eukaryotic cells. (4) Elements such as transposons and retroviruses evolve as parasites of the eukaryote sexual system. (5) The mating-type genes of bipolar fungi are idiomorphic: alternative genes directing sexual specificity are dissimilar and non-homologous. It is argued that they arose as parasitic elements directing cell fusion, which have become integrated into the genome. (6) Mating-type idiomorphs in different taxa may be dissimilar, reflecting the independent acquisition of different infectious elements by different eukaryote lineages. (7) Sexual competence is rapidly lost through mutation accumulation or antagonistic pleiotropy during vegetative proliferation, so that many lineages are sexually sterile. (8) In multipolar systems, novel mating-type alleles arising by mutation spread in a parasite-like manner by virtue of their access to lineages which have become sexually sterile. (9) It is suggested that centromeres arise as devices to enable low copy number plasmids to persist. (10) Crossing over is favored if it enables the genes that direct it to unlink themselves from inferior genomes, or from the consequences of their own transposition.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

DNA Transposable Elements↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Sexual partner networks in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. An analysis of gonorrhea cases in Sheffield, UK.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Routine contact tracing data on patients with gonorrhea are used to identify sexual partner networks. These are combined with gonococcal typing data to study patterns of transmission. The role of persons in transmission is discussed. STUDY DESIGN: Contact tracing data on patients with gonorrhea attending the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield in 1988 and 1989 are analyzed. Gonococcal strains identified by auxotype/serovar (A/S) class are combined with these data to identify transmission paths. RESULTS: The network contained 1,272 persons, 724 (77%) of whom had gonorrhea during the study period. Four hundred two clusters of linked cases were identified. The largest cluster, containing 35 persons connected over 16 months, is discussed in greater detail to illustrate how these data may help identify patterns of transmission and the role of persons. CONCLUSION: Contact tracing data can be used to identify sexual partner networks and to study transmission patterns. Microbiologic data can aid interpretation. An person's risk of acquiring infection depends on indirect links as well as direct links. To understand patterns of transmission it may be important to distinguish between those involved in transmission and those only acquiring infection. Networks established through gonococcal transmission are also relevant to the transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Community placement: establishing links.

Many strategies are required in the development of the community placement to ensure a learning environment is established which can meet the needs of students on traditional EN conversion, undergraduate and Project 2000 courses. In this first of two articles, the process of establishing a community clinical links team is discussed. The development and evaluation of an audit tool specifically designed for use within the community will be discussed in the second article next week.

Community Health Nursing↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Community placement: auditing the quality.

The second article in this two-part series analyses the development of an educational audit tool to examine the quality of the learning environment for student nurses undergoing community placement. Deficits in existing tools are identified and rationales suggested to overcome perceived problems. The article also discusses the issues which emerged during the piloting of the tool and its value as an audit instrument.

Community Health Nursing↗