Juvenile mood disorders and office psychopharmacology

Mood disorders afflict pediatric patients, cause significant impairment, and interfere with normal development. Increasingly, pediatricians are called on to assess and collaborate with mental health practitioners in medicating children and adolescents with mood disorders. Approaching the juvenile with a primary emphasis on clarifying the diagnoses, determining environmental antecedents and sequelae, and investigating suicide risk enables the pediatrician to institute appropriate treatment. Despite limited data from controlled studies, psychotherapy often is used for mild to moderate depression. Pharmacotherapy is indicated in cases unresponsive to psychotherapy and in severe or suicidal cases. First-line pharmacotherapy for depressed adolescents is usually an SRI followed by the atypical or TCA antidepressants. Bipolar disorder typically requires an aggressive medication regimen, including anticonvulsants, lithium, or a combination, as well as environmental modifications. With severe, difficult, or refractory cases, mental health consultation is recommended to clarify diagnoses and to provide psychotherapy and medication input.     

Multiple peaks in high-performance liquid chromatography of proteins. beta-Lactoglobulins eluted in a hydrophobic interaction chromatography system

The hypothesis of Geisler (Brain Res. 212 (1981) 198-201), in which the different spontaneous-rate classes of primary auditory neurons were accounted for by the different sizes of uniquantal EPSPs relative to the gap between resting membrane and threshold potentials, was represented with an expanded model which included relative refractory effects. The spike rates generated by the expanded model, when plotted vs. estimated sound level, are qualitatively similar to those of experimentally obtained rate-level curves. The hypothesis is also consistent with recent ultrastructural data which suggest that average quantal-release rates for any particular primary auditory neuron are inversely related to its spontaneous rate. The model's recovery processes following spike generation (hazard functions) are also similar to those observed experimentally.     

Late rectal sequelae following definitive radiation therapy for carcinoma of the uterine cervix: a dosimetric analysis

OBJECTIVE: The structure of the collagen scar during healing of a myocardial infarction is a determinant of the function of the remodeled tissue. We hypothesize that the passive deformations of both scar and normal tissue are related to the underlying collagen uncoiling as the tissue stretches, and that the unloaded tortuosity of the collagen may be a determinant of tissue stiffness at low ventricular pressure. Hence collagen uncoiling and tissue strain were measured during passive loading in normal tissue, and in healing infarct tissue. METHODS: Left ventricles of rats were infarcted by ligation of the left anterior descending artery for 2 weeks. Surface strains were measured during passive inflation in the scar region in one set of excised hearts, and other arrested hearts were fixed at different ventricular pressures, after which collagen tortuosity was measured in the infarcted and normal tissue. RESULTS: Passive loading strains were smaller in the scar in both the fiber and cross-fiber directions. Tortuosity decreased with load in normal and infarcted tissue, with fibrils tending to straighten more in the scar tissue at higher pressures (1.056 +/- 0.009 vs. 1.024 +/- 0.009 at P = 20 mmHg) with similar tortuosities at zero pressure (1.110 +/- 0.012 vs. 1.098 +/- 0.019). The decrease in tortuosity with strain was greater for the infarcted tissue. CONCLUSIONS: The greater stiffness of infarcted tissue at low pressure is not due to 'straightened' collagen fibers, and there may be a different three-dimensional structure of infarct vs. normal coiled collagen fibers which can affect the material properties of these tissues.     

Use of the polymerase chain reaction in the diagnosis of leprosy

A case is described in which a pericardial branch of a nongrafted left internal mammary artery communicated directly with the distal left anterior descending artery, following saphenous vein bypass grafting. This type of collateralization following coronary artery bypass surgery seems to be very rare, and perhaps could protect the myocardium from severe ischemia.     

Isolation of a genetic locus associated with metronidazole resistance in Helicobacter pylori

We examined the molecular mechanism of metronidazole resistance by constructing a lambda-Zap II phagemid expression library with genomic DNA from a metronidazole-resistance strain of Helicobacter pylori. Twenty-two clones were found to have elevated MTZ resistances in XLOLR strain of E. coli. Phagemids belonging to the twenty two clones were extracted and then retransformed into the XLOLR strain of E. coli. After MTZ selection, five clones could confer metronidazole resistance consistently. According to Southern hybridization and DNA sequencing, the five clones contained a same locus, recA. In addition, transforming the five clones into BL21 strain of E. coli produced a higher resistance to MTZ. Interestingly, electroporation of one of the five phagemid clones into two MTZ sensitive H. pylori yielded MTZ resistant strains. Comparing amino acid sequence in MTZ resistant with sensitive isolates revealed two point mutations at this locus. Above results suggest that mutation in recA may be associated with metronidazole resistance of H. pylori.     

Vasopressin receptor subtypes differentially modulate calcium-activated potassium currents in the horizontal limb of the diagonal band of Broca

Because many testicular toxicants cause damage to specific stages of spermatogenesis, the present study has investigated the utility of a model in which the testis is synchronized to contain only a few closely related spermatogenic stages. The susceptibility of different stages to 1,3-dinitrobenzene (1,3-DNB) toxicity was investigated in rats, the testes of which had been stage synchronized by a vitamin A depletion/repletion (VADR) procedure. 1,3-DNB (25 mg/kg, IP) or vehicle was injected 58, 61, or 78 d after vitamin A readministration, and testicular histopathology was evaluated 48 h later. At the time of sacrifice, testes in the three groups were synchronized to stages I-VI, VII-IX, or X-XIV+I. The data indicated that tubules in all stages of spermatogenesis, in both synchronized and unsynchronized animals, demonstrated histopathologic changes in response to 1,3-DNB. However, the lesion seen in synchronized animals was more severe and less stage specific than that seen in weight-matched, unsynchronized animals. This increase in degree of susceptibility could be partially explained by differences in toxicokinetics. Stage-synchronized testes could provide unique insights into stage-specific cellular and molecular events, especially for in vitro studies where the stage enrichment could be maximally exploited. However, results obtained from in vivo toxicity studies using animals subjected to VADR should be interpreted carefully in light of the confounding physiologic/metabolic perturbations potentially induced by the VADR procedure.     

Protein expression profiles in human breast ductal carcinoma and histologically normal tissue

Reference two-dimensional (2-D) gels are presented for human breast ductal carcinoma and histologically normal tissue. Whole biopsy fragments were analyzed, including epithelial and nonepithelial components. Thirty-five spots have been assigned by gel matching to the human liver SWISS-2DPAGE reference map and/or to the human primary keratinocyte IPG map from the Danish Center for Human Genome. N-terminal microsequencing was applied to confirm randomly chosen matching assignments and to identify six new spots. Protein expression profiles in ductal carcinoma and in normal breast tissue appeared to be similar, except for a pattern consisting of 32 spots, which were highly expressed in all carcinoma specimens, and less intense and occasionally undetectable in normal tissue. This difference was statistically significant. Assignment has been obtained for several spots, namely GRP94, GRP78, GRP75, mitochondrial HSP60, calreticulin, protein disulfide isomerase, peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase, collagen-binding protein 2, fructose bisphosphate aldolase, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, thioredoxin, cytochrome c oxidase VA subunit, tubulin beta isoform and macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF). The cancer- and tissue-specificity of the described pattern was assessed by matching to the Swiss-2DPAGE human liver, hepatoma, lymphoma, erythroleukemia reference maps. The pattern of 32 spots was found to be indicative of epithelial neoplasia.