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Biomedical subjects

S Lacey

Publications and source records attributed to S Lacey.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Hemorrhagic complications in a rapidly growing, congenital hemangiopericytoma.

A 3-week-old infant had a massive hemangioma-like vascular neoplasm that had enlarged rapidly since being noted at birth. Less than a day after this initial evaluation the tumor underwent spontaneous ulceration and the infant had a near-fatal hemorrhage. Histologically, the tumor was a spindle cell neoplasm most consistent with the diagnosis of congenital hemangiopericytoma. Local excision appears to have been curative after almost two years of follow-up. The case is instructive in pointing out the importance of considering nonhemangioma vascular neoplasms in the evaluation of newborns with vascular tumors.

Female↗

Pseudomonas pickettii infections in a paediatric oncology unit.

Over a 3-month period, seven patients in a paediatric oncology unit developed Pseudomonas pickettii septicaemias. The outbreak was difficult to recognize since the cases occurred at widely spaced intervals and problems were experienced with the identification of the isolates. Many of the isolates were initially misidentified on the basis of a short sugar set used in the laboratory for identification of the non-fermenting Gram-negative bacilli. Moreover, the organisms had varying sensitivity patterns. The source of the organisms proved to be vials of 'sterile' distilled water which had been used for flushing the patients' indwelling Hickman lines. No further cases occurred once the use of this water was discontinued.

Child↗

Leprosy control activities of the International Federation of Anti-leprosy Associations.

The International Federation of Anti-leprosy Associations (ILEP) founded in 1966, consists of 22 autonomous nongovernmental organizations raising funds from the general public in the North for anti-leprosy work in the South. ILEP Member associations support over 800 field projects in 92 countries, in addition to over 130 research and other projects with a total annual expenditure of about US+ 60 million. 72% of the resources are spent on leprosy-control activities, 12% on training, 10% on research and 6% on socioeconomic activities. About 55% of resources are devoted to activities of national/regional leprosy programmes. ILEP-supported projects had detected over 100,000 patients in 1988. ILEP Member associations introduced WHO-recommended multidrug therapy (MDT) quite early, and the coverage for MDT in ILEP-supported projects has increased from 8% in 1984 to 35% in 1988 (271,000 patients in 1989 out of 769,000 on treatment). ILEP Member associations are currently supporting approaches towards integration of leprosy control with other services, urban leprosy programmes and social and physical rehabilitation. Thanks to their flexibility, their sense of innovation and their commitment to the worldwide anti-leprosy campaign, ILEP Members are well placed to meet the challenge of making MDT available to all leprosy patients by the year 2000.

Communicable Disease Control↗

cDNA cloning, sequencing and chromosome mapping of a non-erythroid spectrin, human alpha-fodrin.

Several overlapping cDNA clones encompassing 2760 nucleotides of the alpha-subunit of a human non-erythroid spectrin (termed fodrin) were isolated from a human lung fibroblast cDNA library. DNA and RNA blot analyses indicated that a single copy alpha-fodrin gene encodes a 9-kb transcript. The cDNA clones were sequenced, and all were found to contain long open reading frames. The overlapping regions were identical except for a 60-nucleotide inframe insertion at position 1133 in the composite sequence. This result suggests that at least two distinct transcripts exist in fibroblast cells. The chromosomal location of human alpha-fodrin was assigned to 1p34-1p36.1 by hybridization to somatic cell hybrids, and it is thus distinct from that of human alpha-spectrin which has been mapped to 1q22-1q25. Alignment of the composite 919 amino acids of the predicted protein sequence of human alpha-fodrin with that of human alpha-spectrin indicated that alpha-fodrin has a similar 106-amino-acid repeating structure, which is homologous with alpha-spectrin repeats 7-15. Repeats 10 and 11 are anomalous in sequence and structure from other repeats. A comparison of nucleic acid and amino acid homologies between alpha-spectrin and the alpha-fodrin of several vertebrates indicated that human non-erythroid alpha-fodrin and the common alpha-subunit of erythroid and non-erythroid cells of non-mammalian vertebrates are closely related (90%-96% amino acid homology), whereas alpha-fodrin is only distantly related to the erythroid-specific alpha-spectrin subunit of mammals (55%-59% amino acid homology). These data suggest that mammalian erythroid alpha-spectrin evolved by duplication and rapid divergence from an ancestral alpha-fodrin-like gene.

Amino Acid Sequence↗