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Biomedical subjects

J M Ross

Publications and source records attributed to J M Ross.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Endoscopic detection and therapy of colonic actinomycosis.

Abdominal actinomycosis is a disease that is difficult to diagnose nonoperatively. Usual manifestations are abscesses and draining sinus tracts. Treatment is typically surgical and requires prolonged intravenous antibiotics. Presented is a patient who underwent surveillance colonoscopy after resection for colon carcinoma. Diagnosis of colonic actinomycosis and subsequent resolution was demonstrated endoscopically after lengthy oral penicillin therapy (2 g/day for 1 yr). This case documents that resection may not be necessary to effect cure of abdominal actinomycosis.

Actinomycosis↗
PubMed1991

Primary squamous cell carcinoma of a gastric remnant.

A 77-yr-old male developed primary gastric squamous cell carcinoma 33 yr after gastric resection for peptic ulcer disease. At the time of diagnosis, he was being endoscopically followed for large irregular stomal polyps. Infiltrating squamous cell carcinoma with focal keratinization and stomal polypoid hypertrophic gastritis was found. Previous reports describe adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma in gastric remnants. There are various theories as to how such a tumor may arise in this setting.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

A new approach to preparing students for academic medicine.

Critical thinking and self-directed learning by students are goals strongly endorsed by medical educators. Teaching medical interviewing and physical diagnosis skills is one of the most important tasks in medical school. An elective for fourth-year students was designed to address both areas. Ten senior medical students spent one month with a teaching staff member and fellow in general medicine. Part of the course was designed for independent problem-solving posed by sophisticated medical problems encountered in a general medicine practice. Skills in problem formulation, reading and assessing the medical literature, and communicating with peers were learned or improved. In the remainder of this course five pairs of senior students precepted 28 randomly chosen second-year students and taught medical interviewing and physical diagnosis. Techniques of teaching and basic pathophysiology were reviewed, and role-playing, feedback, demonstration and role-modelling were used.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1989

Measurement of nuclear oestrogen receptors in human breast tumours.

Recent reports suggest that oestrogen receptors detected in the cytosolic fraction of homogenized human breast tumours might be mainly nuclear receptor released into the cytoplasm during tissue processing. This study thus compares the tumour content of steroid hormone receptors in conventional cytosolic receptor assays with direct measurements of receptor in the cell nucleus. Unoccupied cytoplasmic oestrogen receptors (cER), cytoplasmic progesterone receptors (cPR) and total (occupied plus unoccupied) nuclear oestrogen receptors (nER) have been measured in parallel in human breast tumour tissue using biochemical radioreceptor assay. Of 125 tumours, 62% and 61% were positive for cER and cPR, respectively, 50% contained nER with high affinity for oestradiol (nER I) and 13% expressed nER with low affinity for oestradiol (nER II). The concentration of cER correlated significantly with age, cPR and log nER I. A significant proportion of tumours which were positive for both cytosol receptors also possessed nuclear receptors with high and low affinity for oestrogen. It is possible that this group of tumours which are positive for cER, cPR, nER I and nER II will respond well to hormone therapy.

Breast Neoplasms↗
PubMed1985

A system of affective learning behaviours for medical education.

Two basic questions are raised about the relationship between emotion and learning, the affective domain of education: how can objectives be defined without specifying 'desirable' attitudes?; and how, as part of learning, do we revised existing attitudes? A model of the affective domain is described which links, in the setting of the consultation, the emotion and learning behaviours of the doctor. The model depicts a system in which emotion and behaviour are interdependent, and existing values can be amended. From the model the attributes of sensitivity and flexibility are defined in terms of the doctor's capacity to modify behaviour and control the impact of emotion. The present unsatisfactory position of affective learning in medical education and training is reviewed; and its importance to general practice re-emphasized. Use of the model to define objectives in this domain is proposed.

Affect↗
PubMed1984

Allergy to insulin.

Allergy to insulin occurs in nearly all insulin-treated patients, is a clinical problem in about 15 per cent of patients, and can be life-threatening in 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of patients. This article summarizes the clinical expression of insulin allergy and reviews some aspects that contribute to our understanding and therapy of this allergy.

Desensitization, Immunologic↗
PubMed1984

The infrequent occurrence of mycoplasmas in amniotic fluid from women with intact fetal membranes.

As human genital mycoplasmas have been associated with various forms of reproductive failure, the present study was undertaken to investigate whether M. hominis and U. urealyticum organisms (ureaplasmas) are capable of crossing intact fetal membranes. Nearly 300 women in Denmark and England were investigated. Most of them were seen at about the fourth month of gestation and the remainder towards or at the time of birth, all with unruptured membranes. A swab was taken from the uterine cervix or vagina and M. hominis was isolated from 9% of the women and ureaplasmas from half of them. The presence of these mycoplasmas was not associated with an abnormal outcome of pregnancy. In contrast to the frequent presence of mycoplasmas in the lower genital tract, amniotic fluids obtained by transabdominal amniocentesis or at cesarean section did not contain M. hominis and ureaplasmas were isolated from only one of them. This was associated with the same ureaplasmas serotype being recovered from the cervix and also from the blood of both infant and mother, whose case differed from the others as labor had already started when the amniotic fluid was obtained. Thus, in our populations, we have no evidence that mycoplasmal invasion of the amniotic fluid occurs before the onset of labor. During labor, despite intact membranes, it seems that genital mycoplasmas may occasionally invade the fetal--placental unit, probably by the hematogenous route after strong uterine contractions, or otherwise directly after membrane rupture. Since both these events are followed usually by immediate delivery, there would seem to be insufficient time for the genital mycoplasmas to cause fetal damage.

Amniotic Fluid↗
PubMed1981

Interaction of calmodulin with histones. Alteration of histone dephosphorylation.

The Ca2+-dependent regulator protein (CDR), also frequently termed "calmodulin" was determined to influence the dephosphorylation of mixed calf thymus histones or purified histones 1, 2A, or 2B by a partially purified bovine brain phosphoprotein phosphatase. CDR increase the rate of dephosphorylation of mixed histones more than 20-fold. With increasing concentrations of mixed histones as substrate, a proportionate increase of CDR concentration was required to maintain maximal expression of histone phosphatase activity. Mixed histones suppressed the activation by CDR of a bovine brain cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase activity, with activation being restored by increased quantities of CDR. Dephosphorylation of casein and phosphorylase alpha by the phosphatase preparation was not affected by CDR. These observations support the interpretation that the effects of CDR on histone dephosphorylation are substrate-directed. The rates of dephosphorylation of histones 1, 2A, and 2B by the phosphatase were 4- to 12-fold more rapid at low (sub-micromolar) concentrations of free Ca2+ than at high (200 microM) Ca2+ in incubations containing CDR, but they were unaffected by Ca2+ in incubations without CDR. The addition of stoichiometric quantities of calmodulin increased the apparent Km of the phosphatase for the various histones 2- to 6-fold, while maximal velocities were 4- to 12-fold higher at low than at high added Ca2+. The inhibitory effect of Ca2+ on histone dephosphorylation was immediately reversible by chelation of Ca2+ with EDTA. Ca2+-dependent inhibition of histone 1 or 2B phosphatase activities was also produced by rabbit skeletal muscle troponin C, but not by rabbit skeletal muscle parvalbumin, by poly(L-aspartate) or poly(L-glutamate). The phosphorylated fragment from the NH2-terminal region of either H2A (generated by treatment with N-bromosuccinimide) or H2B (generated by treatment with cyanogen bromide) was dephosphorylated by the phosphatase, with the rates of dephosphorylation being reduced 3- to 6-fold by Ca2+ in incubations containing CDR.

Animals↗
PubMed1979

Perinatal implications of the lower genital tract flora.

In a longitudinal study of the microflora of the lower genital tract at three stages in pregnancy and once postnatally, 20 different groups or genera of microorganisms were isolated. No substantial change was demonstrated in the flora as pregnancy progressed, although there was a fall in the rate of isolation of organisms after delivery. Few infants acquired organisms from their mother's lower genital tract. Caucasian mothers colonized by genital ureaplasmas gave birth to infants with a higher mean birth weight for length of gestation than the infants of ureaplasma-negative mothers. There was no correlation between birth weight and maternal genital colonization with ureaplasmas in the infants of Asian mothers. Group B streptococci were recovered from the ano-rectum more frequently than from the posterior vaginal fornix during pregnancy and strains recovered from these sites in individual patients were indistinguishable by serotyping and phage typing, suggesting that the ano-rectum or bowel is the probable source of the organism. Group B streptococci were never recovered from Asian patients (16% of the study population). Sera of women colonized with group B streptococci and cord sera from their infants had higher levels of type-specific IgG antibody than non-colonized controls and their neonates.

Antibodies, Bacterial↗
PubMed1979

Fathering: a review of some psychoanalytic contributions on paternity.

The paper has traced psychoanalysis' gradual appreciation of a father's facilitative impact on his children's psychosexual and psychosocial growth. Freud's initial notions accentuated the inhibiting, punitive aspects of the paternal representation, highlighting, as they did, the oedipal father of the primal horde. Save for a few significant glimmers here and there, he pretty much failed to consider a son's or daughter's search for a father with whom to identify and, with this, underplayed some of the crucial preconditions for the oedipal complex itself. In recent years, an ego-psychological focus on the 'dual unity' of mother and child, in Mahler's words, has tended to relegate the father to a secondary role in pre-oedipal development. And yet, influenced by this overview, Loewald, Greenacre, Abelin and others have underlined the ways in which a father helps extricate a child from the maternal orbit, facilitating a sense of reality, self-constancy, sexual identify and other epigenetic achievements which help secure object constancy and self-identity. What remains is a fuller elucidation of the reciprocal and complex affective interchanges that take place within the father-child dyad throughout childhood.

Child↗