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Biomedical subjects

J H Githens

Publications and source records attributed to J H Githens.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Recruitment and retention program for minority and disadvantaged students.

Attracting ethnic minority and disadvantaged students to health careers and facilitating their successful completion of training program requirements have been major activities of the University of Colorado Medical Center since 1969. As a result of extensive college campus recruitment efforts, high school and college level preprofessional programs, and the participation of ethnic minority faculty members in the medical school admissions process, the number of applicants to the medical school increased from 45 in 1971 to 265 in 1977. Concurrently, medical school matriculants increased from 12 in 1971 to 24 in 1977, with a maximum of 30 in 1975. However, significantly fewer minority students have shown interest in nursing, dentistry, or allied health professions careers. Because of support programs for matriculants (including preadmission and postadmissions personal, academic, study skills, and test-taking counseling and a prefreshman year summer orientation course), 71 percent of the minority students entering medical school in 1971-73 have received the M.D. degree.

Colorado↗

Nine cases of sphingomyelin lipidosis, a new variant in Spanish-American Children. Juvenile variant of Niemann-Pick Disease with foamy and sea-blue histiocytes.

We describe nine Spanish-American children from five families with an unusual hereditary lipid storage disease. The family origins were in two small southern Colorado towns. The clinical course varied, but all of the children were found to bruise easily and to have splenomegaly, while most had hepatomegaly. Post-natal jaundice and hepatitis occurred in four. Impairment of vertical gaze and intellectual and neurologic deterioration occurred in most of the patients, with the onset of the disease, usually in childhood. The bone marrow in all patients examined contained both foamy and sea-blue histiocytes. Sphingomyelinase levels in skin fibroblast cultures were greatly decreased in seven of the eight cases evaluated. It is believed that these patients have a sphingomyelin lipidosis and represent a variant of the Niemann-Pick disease. Clinical and enzymatic findings are compared with those of other cases in the literature.

Adolescent↗

Splenic sequestration syndrome at mountain altitudes in sickle/hemoglobin C disease.

The splenic sequestration syndrome was observed in five children with sickle/hemoglobin C (S/C) disease in association with a change in altitude. In four of them, it occurred during or immediately following a trip to mountain altitudes greater than 9,000 feet. In the fifth child, the crisis occurred in ten days after travel in a pressurized plane from sea level to Denver. No previous reports of this complication in S/C patients during mountain travel have been noted although the occurrence is known in association with aircraft flights.

Abdomen↗

Establishment of erythropoiesis following bone marrow transplantation in a patient with congenital hypoplastic anemia (Diamond-Blackfan syndrome).

Marrow transplantation was attempted in a 13-yr-old boy with congenital hypoplastic anemia who had never responded to corticosteroid therapy. Prior to the transplant, he had received 238 transfusions, at least 12 of which were from his father. He was prepared for grafting with antilymphocyte globulin, procarbazine, and total body irradiation (1000 rads). The patient, whose red cells were Group B, then received marrow cells from his Group O, histocompatible, sister. Thereafter, reticulocytes, Group O erythrocytes, and female leukocytes appeared in the peripheral blood. Erythroid precursors were seen in the patient's marrow for the first time in his life, and all lacked fluorescent Y chromosomes. Dividing cells were all female. After initially progressing well, the patient developed interstitial pneumonia and died 55 days after the transplant. The successful erythroid graft suggested that this patient's failure to produce red blood cells was due to a defective stem cell rather than to a humoral defect, plasma inhibitor, or abnormal marrow microenvironment. It suggested further that sibling marrow may be engrafted in patients who have received multiple transfusions, even from a parent.

Adolescent↗