Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to N Wright.
A 39-year-old woman who developed acute renal failure following intra-abdominal sepsis was treated with gentamicin. Her serum concentrations reached potentially toxic levels. Combined haemoperfusion and haemodialysis removed approximately 70% of the given drug and the patient made a complete recovery.
A comparison was made between the history of drugs taken by self-poisoned patients and the drugs detected in the urine from the same patients by laboratory screening procedures. The results coincided exactly in less than half of the patients, and the major tendency was to exaggerate the number of substances taken. It is concluded that drug histories are unreliable and that corroborating evidence should be sought.
Ten patients were treated with tiamenidine, an antihypertensive agent which is chemically related to clonidine, for 12 months. The drug was then abruptly stopped and observations made of blood pressure, plasma renins and urinary metanephrines. Transient withdrawal systolic hypertension occurred in 1 patient, and although plasma renins rose there was no consistent evidence of excess catecholamine activity during the post-treatment period.
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A culture system was developed and evaluated as an improved diagnostic procedure for human infections of New and Old World cutaneous leishmaniasis. Needle aspirates of 55 suspect lesions from 40 human cases were made by injecting and withdrawing sterile saline from the outer margin of a lesion. Aspirates were inoculated and cultured in an insect cell culture medium, Schneider's Drosophila Medium, supplemented with 30% fetal bovine serum. Paralleled cultures in a blood-based medium, NNN, were used as a basis of comparison for sensitivity. Promastigotes were observed in 37 of 55 (67%) of the Schneider's Medium cultures on an average of 6.0 days, as compared to only 8 of 55 of the NNN cultures on an average of 11.6 days.
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Serial chest radiology and echocardiography were performed in seven patients undergoing chronic haemodialysis who developed pericarditis. Echocardiography was helpful in making an early diagnosis of a pericardial effusion in the absence of specific clinical or radiological signs of an effusion. It also enabled changes in the thickness of a pericardial effusion to be detected, which was of value when clinical features suggestive of cardiac tamponade occurred during dialysis, and showed that the effusion could increase in size despite the use of regional heparinisation for dialysis. Resolution of a pericardial effusion could be defined accurately using echocardiography, whereas this was not possible clinically or radiologically. It is concluded that serial echocardiography is a good method of monitoring a pericardial effusion in dialysis patients.
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In the male rat the volumes of the several zones of the adrenal cortex were measured using a point-counting technique at various ages. The resulting growth curves were fitted by the Gompertz method, and the specific growth rate calculated for each zone at 14 days of age. Also at 14 days the flash labelling index was measured in contiguous bands each three cells in thickness across the cortex; maximum indices were found in the outer cortical layers. Calculations of the birth rate for each zona were compared with the growth rates. In the zona glomerulosa, the birth rate exceeded the growth rate, giving a cell migration rate of 4 cells/1000 cells/hour. In the zona reticularis there was a net cell gain of 5 cells/1000 cells/hour; in this zone, for every 100 cells born by cell division, nearly 2000 were added by cell migration. The results support the migration hypothesis of adrenocortical cytogenesis.
The cell proliferation kinetics of the germinative compartment in psoriasis have been re-investigated with tritiated thymidine and vincristine techniques. The mean cell cycle durations calculated from an extended fraction of labelled mitoses experiment were Tc=56 h, t1=43 h, ts=7-7 h and t2=5-6 h. Combination of the results of the FLM experiment with the experimental labelling index and the experimental birth rate suggests a growth fraction of unity and an exponential age distribution for the germinative population. An exponential age distribution is supported by the presence of several layers of germinative cells and the direction of the mitotic axes during cell division.
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The activities of the melatonin-forming enzymes hydroxyindole-O-methyl transferase (HIOMT) and N-acetyl transferase (NAT) were determined in pineals of mature female Coturnix quail receiving implants of melatonin (10 mug, 1 mug, 0.1 mug) weekly for 4 weeks. Both HIOMT and NAT were significantly decreased by implants of 10 and 1 mug melatonin compared to vehicle and intact controls. Oviductal weights tended to be higher with increasing quantities of melatonin. These results suggest that melatonin exerts a feedback inhibition upon its synthesizing enzymes which may be of particular importance during the rapid sexual maturation of this species.