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Biomedical subjects

M S Rice

Publications and source records attributed to M S Rice.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia presenting as jaundice.

An unusual presentation of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in a 6-year-old girl is reported. She presented with unilateral cervical lymphadenopathy, a mixed obstructive/cholestatic jaundice and a progressive pancytopenia. Ultrasound examination revealed an obstructed common bile duct with gross thickening of the wall of the duct and intrahepatic bile duct dilatation. The jaundice resolved with high dose intravenous (i.v.) methylprednisolone. It is postulated that this was due to infiltration of the common bile duct, given the failure to demonstrate any other cause for the bile duct pathology.

Child

Leiomyosarcoma of the saphenous vein in a child with 12-year follow-up.

Leiomyosarcomas of the vasculature are exceedingly rare tumors in childhood. The case of a 2-year-old girl who underwent three local excisions with two courses of adjuvant chemotherapy over 3 years for a leiomyosarcoma of a saphenous vein tributary is described. Follow-up over the following 9 years has shown no evidence of further recurrence or metastases suggesting that cure has been achieved. Treatment options are discussed and pertinent literature is reviewed.

Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols

A model of health care delivery in a child day-care setting.

Many children in our country spend all or part of their days in group day care while their parents work or go to school. These children are not only at risk for day-care-related illnesses, but also may lack preventive health care because their parents have time constraints or financial barriers. A group of nursing faculty members found that by collaborating with early childhood educators, accessible and cost-effective health care could be provided to children at a campus day-care site. This collaboration allowed for the early detection of problems, thereby reducing barriers to learning. Furthermore, by entering a day-care system, nurses found opportunities to conduct health education and promotion that had a positive impact on children, parents, and day-care staff. This model, or components of it, could be replicated in similar settings.

Child Day Care Centers

Metastatic osteogenic sarcoma to the heart presenting as bacterial endocarditis.

A patient with metastatic osteogenic sarcoma involving the left atrium is described who presented with features of bacterial endocarditis. The source of infection was the adjacent esophagus into which the tumor had eroded. This case demonstrates that sarcomas metastasizing to the heart may result in a clinical condition indistinguishable from infective endocarditis. At post-mortem, careful dissection of cardiac metastases should be undertaken to check for possible esophageal involvement.

Adult

Surgical complications in acute leukemia in childhood: a 20 year experience.

A retrospective study of all patients presenting with acute leukemia to a single institution during the period 1968-1988 was undertaken to determine the type and incidence of surgical complications. One hundred twenty-eight of 296 patients were identified as requiring a surgical consultation for complications occurring during the course of the disease and many surgical disciplines were involved. Operative intervention was often required for these complications. Pediatric surgical specialists need to be aware of the range of surgical complications that can occur in children with acute leukemia and they must work in close co-operation with pediatric medical oncologists to ensure optimal treatment for all patients.

Bacterial Infections

Sites of deamidation and methylation in Tsr, a bacterial chemotaxis sensory transducer.

The sensory transducer proteins in bacterial chemotaxis undergo two covalent modifications, deamidation and reversible methylation, in response to attractants and repellents. Oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis was used to alter putative methylation and deamidation sites in one of the transducers to further define these sites and their role in chemotaxis. The mutations, in combination with peptide maps and Edman analysis, have clarified the sites of covalent modification in Tsr. Tsr contains six specific glutamates and glutamines that serve as methyl-accepting sites. An arginine-containing tryptic peptide (R1) has two sites, one at glutamate 493 and a newly located site at glutamate 502. A lysine-containing peptide (K1) has four methyl-accepting sites. Two of the lysine peptide sites are glutamates and can accept methyl groups without deamidation. The other two sites are glutamines and two methyl-accepting sites are created by two distinct deamidations. Both deamidations can occur on the same polypeptide chain. Single glutamate mutants have shown that one deamidation (at glutamine 311) proceeds rapidly, while the other deamidation (at glutamine 297) has a half-life of approximately 60 min under our experimental conditions.

Amides

The significance of an M2 bone marrow at cessation of chemotherapy in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The decision to cease chemotherapy in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is taken when clinical examination and investigations at the end of the predetermined treatment period show no evidence of residual disease. Since 1972, 11 children treated at this institution have not fulfilled the criteria for cessation of therapy in that they all had elevated blast counts in their bone marrows at "off-treatment" studies (i.e., an M2 marrow, defined as 5-25% blasts). Initially, the significance of this finding was not appreciated and the first child in this series received a further 2 years of chemotherapy. Subsequently the relevance of such an M2 marrow to remission status was questioned and the next 10 patients were simply observed and their bone marrows were reexamined after an interval of 4-12 weeks. Nine of these 11 remain in continuous complete remission with a follow-up of 5-15 years from diagnosis. It is postulated that this finding represents an immunologic rebound phenomenon and is not related to potential for later relapse.

Bone Marrow Cells

Autologous responses to human leukaemic cells in mixed leucocyte culture.

Cryopreserved leukaemic blasts and remission non-T cells from 22 patients with acute leukaemia (15 lymphocytic, 7 non-lymphocytic) were tested as stimulators of autologous remission T cells and normal allogeneic T cells in primary and secondary MLC. In most cases the autologous response elicited by leukaemic cells was less than or equal to that elicited by remission non-T cells. However, T cells from 2 patients in long-standing first remission from ANLL displayed greater proliferation in response to leukaemic blasts than to remission non-T cells in both primary and secondary MLC. The results are suggestive of sensitization of these 2 patients to leukaemia-specific antigens, but other possible explanations are discussed.

Acute Disease