Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M Stern.
Occasionally an oro-antral communication persists after vigorous standard therapy. This case report demonstrates the successful use of a posteriorly based lateral tongue flap in such a situation.
We describe a technique for transferring electrophoretically separated bands of double-stranded DNA from agarose gels to diazobenzyloxymethyl-paper. Controlled cleavage of the DNA in situ by sequential treatment with dilute acid, which causes partial depurination, and dilute alkali, which causes cleavage and separation of the strands, allows the DNA to leave the gel rapidly and completely, with an efficiency independent of its size. Covalent attachment of DNA to paper prevents losses during subsequent hybridization and washing steps and allows a single paper to be reused many times. Ten percent dextran sulfate, originally found to accelerate DNA hybridization in solution by about 10-fold [J.G. Wetmur (1975) Biopolymers 14, 2517-2524], accelerates the rate of hybridization of randomly cleaved double-stranded DNA probes to immobilized nucleic acids by as much as 100-fold, without increasing the background significantly.
2-Mercaptopyridine was used to effect the selective, mild and efficient cleavage of the o-nitrophenylsulphenyl amino-protecting group from several amino acids and peptides. By utilization of this reagent a stepwise synthesis of the tetrapeptide Thr-Lys-Leu-Arg([Leu3]tuftsin) was successfully achieved. The potential use of 2-mercaptopyridine in mechanized peptide synthesis via the polymeric reagents approach is discussed.
Recent suggestions that patients "hopelessly burned" be permitted to die peacefully have refocused attention on the accuracy of different methods of predicting whether an individual burn patient will survive. The purpose of this presentation is to compare the accuracy of mortality predictions based upon four different statistical methods: (1) Baux's rule which adds the patient's age in years to the percentage of his body surface area burned--the original assertion was that values over 75 meant a very poor prognosis. (2) probit analysis, (3) discriminant analysis, and (4) logistic risk function analysis. Each of these methods was applied to data for over three thousand consecutive admissions to St. Mary's Hospital Burn Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This data base and the four statistical models are described. Mortality predictions derived from the four models are compared, and some observations are made concerning the selection of an appropriate model for predicting burn mortality.
The granulocytes in paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) are defective, and the defect is similar to that previously described for the PNH erythrocyte. Using anti-I antibody to activate complement and 51Cr release to detect cell lysis, we found two populations of granulocytes that differed in their susceptibility to lysis by complement in 5 of 6 patients. A proportion of the cells were lysed by one-fifteenth to one-twentieth the amount of complement required to lyse normal cells; the remainder of the granulocytes appeared to be normal in their susceptibility to the lytic action of complement. The binding of the third component of complement (C3) to PNH granulocytes was at least twice that bound to normal cells, even though the binding of antibody was the same for normal and PNH cells. This suggests that the binding of C3 and probably the efficiency of the terminal steps of complement lysis are increased in the abnormal PHN granulocyte. These defects affect only a portion of the granulocytes, thus suggesting that the disorder is a clonal stem cell abnormality.
In a seven months old infant with a history of obstructive bronchitis, hypsarrhythmia was found to be the cause of symptoms mimicking pertussis with recurrent apnoea. Morphological cerebral abnormalities could not be detected. Clonazepam showed a prompt and persistent therapeutic effect.
15alpha-Hydroxydehydroisoandrosterone and 15alpha-hydroxypregnenolone were isolated from hydrolyzed extracts of human late pregnancy urine and identified by means of the isotope dilution technique. In two separate determinations the excretion rate of 15alpha-hydroxydehydroisoandrosterone was found to be 1.7 and 3.2 microgram per day while that of 15alpha-hydroxypregnenolone was 1.7 and 2.9 microgram per day. It is postulated that 15alpha-hydroxydehydroisoandrosterone might serve as a precursor of 15alpha-hydroxylated estrogens already isolated from late pregnancy urine. Similarly, 15alpha-hydroxypregnenolone might be an endogenous precursor of 15alpha-hydroxyprogesterone.
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The hypothesis that pathologic immune mechanisms, characterized by production of brain autoantibodies, operate in schizophrenia, was the basis for this study. Binding of serum globulin substance by human brain septal region obtained at autopsy was measured by radioimmunofixation assay in 27 schizophrenic probands, 28 first-degree relatives, 12 patients with primary affective disorder (depression), and 117 normal controls. Schizophrenic individuals tended to have higher levels of brain-serum affinity than controls. Age and sex did not appear to affect results. Within families, elevation of serum-binding activity showed intra sib-pair resemblance, distinguished healthy relatives from probands and ill relatives and relatives of probands with positive sera from relatives of probands with negative serum activity. Serum activity distinguished well relatives from normal controls and was independent of clinical state. This suggests that brain-serum affinity may be compatible with characteristics of a genetic marker of vulnerability to schizophrenia. Within sib-pairs, concordance rates for elevated serum activity and for subtype diagnosis, mode, and age of illness onset were positively related. This finding supports clinico-genetic disposition in a subgroup of schizophrenic persons. To determine distribution patterns of antigenic components, selected schizophrenic and normal sera were tested against human liver and mouse brain, thymus, and liver. Wide tissue cross-reactivity was observed in schizophrenic, but not in normal sera, a finding consistent with overlap of serological reactions affecting specific tissues in autoimmune processes. The assay employed in the present study and investigation of inheritance of brain-serum affinity have not previously been reported.
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Transfer factor was prepared from the leukocyte lysates of four donors with known skin test reactivity. After ultrafiltration and double-gel filtration on polyacrylamide gels, fraction IV of the preparation was found to have biologic activity. This fraction contained one major and occasionally one minor ultraviolet-absorbing and zero to one ninhydrin-detectable spots on thin-layer chromatography. The major ultraviolet spot was identified as hypoxanthine. Hypoxanthine was demonstrated to be responsible for the high 260 nm/280 nm ratio of preparations with biologic activity in vivo. It was not determined if hypoxanthine is required for transfer factor activity. In addition, an orcinol-negative preparation also had biologic activity.
Glucocorticoid binding and alkaline phosphatase activity in the small intestine of the fetal rabbit were studied to investigate the relationship of glucocorticoid receptors and the development of the tissue. In the cytosol fraction, the binding of (3H)dexamethasone involves a macromolecule with high affinity (Kd = nM) for the hormone and a limited number of binding sites (saturable at a hormone concentration of 10 nM). That the binding reaction involves a protein and sulfhydryl groups was demonstrated by the absence of binding of the steroid in the presence of Pronase and sulfhydryl blocking reagents. In sucrose density gradients, the complexes have sedimentation coefficients of about 4S and 7S at low ionic strength, but only 4S at high ionic strength (0.4m KCl). The binding protein is thermolabile, and is stabilized by complexing with the hormone. The ability of different steroids to compete with (3H)dexamethasone for the binding sites correlates well with their glucocorticoid potency. During development of the fetal rabbit small intestine, the total number of glucocorticoid-binding sites in the cytosol increases in parallel with the increases in the tissue weight until term. However, the concentration of the binding sites (pmol/mg cytosol protein) is maximum at day 25 of gestation, followed by a decrease to the adult level within a few days after birth. Alkaline phosphatase activity is first detectable on day 25 of gestation and increases rapidly thereafter. These observations suggest that there may be a temporal relatioship between the development of the fetal rabbit small intestine, as reflected in the alkaline phosphatase and the levels of glucocorticoid receptors in the cytosol.