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H J Lamers

Publications and source records attributed to H J Lamers.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

Dietary advice for acute diarrhoea in general practice: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Although there is no evidence that diet shortens acute diarrhoea, doctors tend to give dietary advice. AIM: To test the effects of eating and drinking normally on the duration of acute diarrhoea and on the feeling of well-being. METHOD: Randomized single-blinded, controlled trial in urban and semi-urbanized areas. Patients aged 3-70 years suffering with diarrhoea at least three times on the preceding day, lasting no more than five days, were eligible. Two regimes were randomly allocated to practices. In the intervention group, the advice was to eat everything one liked and to drink more. The control group was advised to follow a strict regime of fasting for 24 hours and was subsequently given specified limitations. RESULTS: No significant differences between the 44 patients in the intervention group and the 27 in the control group were found for the duration of watery diarrhoea (median 14 versus 13 hours), or the total number of evacuations (2 versus 2.5). Among the items concerning well-being, only nausea (51% versus 23%) showed a significant difference. CONCLUSION: In this pilot study, the null hypothesis that both treatments will show equal results cannot be confirmed or rejected because of the small number of participants. Despite our efforts, we included fewer patients than expected. This might be due to the data-forms, which were rather complicated and voluminous for both, including doctors and participants.

Adolescent↗

Exogenous interleukin 2 recruits in vitro lymphokine-activated killer activity by in vivo activated lymphocytes.

Cryopreserved and thawed lymphocytes can be used instead of fresh lymphocytes to avoid test-to-test variability in studies of fluctuations of natural killer (NK) and lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) activities as a function of time. We investigated the effects of 1-h versus 18-h resting of lymphocytes on their lytic activities, because the process of cryopreservation and thawing decreases NK and LAK activities. Lymphocytes from renal cell cancer patients receiving adoptive immunotherapy were studied. An 18-h versus 1-h resting period led to a significant increase in NK activity but had no significant effect on LAK activity. The presence of 1200 IU/ml interleukin 2 (IL-2) in the medium 1 h prior to and during the cytotoxicity (CTX) assay increased in vivo and in vitro IL-2-induced LAK activities. This phenomenon has been interpreted as IL-2 dependency of effector lymphocytes (J.A. Hank, P.C. Kohler, G. Weil-Hillman, N. Rosenthal, K. H. Moore, B. Storer, D. Minkoff, J. Bradshaw, R. Bechhofer, and P. M. Sondel. Cancer Res., 48: 1965-1971, 1988). We performed kinetic studies to assess the role of effector lymphocyte recruitment in these experiments. LAK activity was tested in the presence or absence of IL-2 during preincubations and CTX assays varying between 0 and 120 min. These kinetic studies showed that effector lymphocyte recruitment indeed contributed to the increased level of LAK activity when IL-2 was added to the CTX assay. A minimal incubation period of 30 min was required to detect recruitment of lymphocytes. Effector lymphocytes could be recruited for periods varying between 90 and greater than 240 min, depending on the lymphocyte donor. We conclude that: (a) in vitro, IL-2-mediated recruitment of lymphocytes due to presence of IL-2 in the CTX assay may lead to an overestimate of the actual LAK activity; and (b) in vivo, prolonged IL-2 infusion after the administration of activated lymphocytes seems warranted in order to recruit maximal levels of effector lymphocytes with LAK activity.

Carcinoma, Renal Cell↗

Early mobilization after myocardial infarction: a controlled study.

During the years 1968-71 203 patients with proved myocardial infarction were admitted to the trial. Patients were mobilized either on day 10 (102 patients) or on day 20 (100 patients). All patients were kept in hospital for 30 days in order to ensure a detailed comparison of clinical course and laboratory data. In neither group was there a fatal complication and the differences in clinical outcome or laboratory data were statistically not significant. Half of the patients from each group were re-examined after an average of one-and-a-half years, and again no differences were observed. It is concluded that patients with an uncomplicated myocardial infarction may safely be mobilized after 9 days and discharged after three weeks.

Adult↗