From 1970 to 1984, 32 patients were treated for tuberculous (TB) masses, which measured 1.2-5.5 cm. The posterior triangle was involved in 19 patients, anterior triangle in 7, and more than one triangle in 6 (3 bilateral). A superficial node was excised for diagnosis. Acid-fast bacilli were identified on the smear of 18 patients. Caseation necrosis was present in 27 specimens, sarcoidosis in four, nonspecific lymphadenitis in one; all cultures grew Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A chest x-ray showed no active TB. Chemotherapy was given for 9-18 months (9 months when only one node was diseased and 18 months with extensive nodal involvement). Follow-up examinations in all patients (greater than 3 years, mean 8.6 years) has revealed no recurrence. The need to excise all cervical TB nodes, chronically inflamed and often fused to important structures, was eliminated by adequate chemotherapy.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Decreasing expression of a gene encoding a protein related to basic fibroblast growth factor during differentiation of human preadipocytes.

Pursuant to our findings that pituitary basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) stimulates the replication of preadipocytes and inhibits their differentiation, we have studied the changes in expression of a bFGF-related mRNA during differentiation. Human omental preadipocytes were grown in primary culture and induced to differentiate with chemically defined serum-free medium. The differentiation process was assessed by monitoring the rise of glycerophosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH) activity, while mRNA expression for a bFGF-related protein(s) and GPDH was examined by amplifying the respective target sequences by polymerase chain reaction. In the case of all cell strains, differentiated preadipocytes revealed much lower expression of bFGF-related mRNA than undifferentiated preadipocytes. Concurrently, the expression of the GPDH mRNA rose significantly. The finding that the expression of the bFGF-related protein is decreased appreciably during adipose differentiation is consonant with its proposed function to expand and maintain adipose cells in a relatively undifferentiated state.

Adipocytes↗