Oral metallic mercury. A folk medicine remedy for gastroenteritis.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M E Geffner.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A 17 year-old female with septo-optic dysplasia (SOD) and hypopituitarism who has grown normally despite GH deficiency is presented. Her serum was examined to test current hypotheses to explain the phenomenon of growth without GH. The patient's serum possessed potent in vitro growth-promoting activity (GPA) in an erythroid progenitor-cell clonal proliferation assay consistent with the patient's normal growth performance. In contrast to previously reported cases of growth without GH, total IGF-I concentrations were very low in this patient, precluding IGF-I being responsible for the observed GPA and normal growth pattern. Furthermore, circulating free IGF-I was also low which is reported for the first time in such a case. A detailed picture of IGF-binding proteins is also presented. To test the hypothesis that hyperinsulinemia might be responsible for the observed GPA, in vitro GPA experiments were performed before and after removal of insulin by immunodepletion. Neither partial nor complete removal of insulin abolished the in vitro cell proliferation response. These data demonstrate that neither IGF-I nor insulin is the factor responsible for GPA in at least this patient with SOD and growth without GH.
Significantly early-morning hyperglycemia was observed in insulin-dependent diabetic individuals who were otherwise well controlled while receiving a continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) at standard doses. We measured the levels of the five key counterregulatory hormones (CRH) throughout the night for a total of 10 patient-nights in four such patients. No abnormalities in the patterns of glucagon, cortisol, growth hormone, epinephrine, or norepinephrine secretion were observed. Stepping up the daytime basal infusion rate in six affected patients before bedtime by 37.0 +/- 7.5% and maintaining the increased infusion until breakfast significantly blunted this early-morning hyperglycemia without causing significant early nighttime hypoglycemia. Plasma glucose concentrations before breakfast averaged 106.8 +/- 13.0 mg/dl after increase of the overnight basal infusion rate as compared with 269.8 +/- 39.1 mg/dl while receiving a single basal rate over 24 h (P less than 0.02). Thus, the "dawn phenomenon" may occur in patients receiving CSII by an unmodified algorithm and may be obviated by a carefully determined step-up in nocturnal basal infusion rate. The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon of increased early-morning insulin need remains to be elucidate.