Isolation and characterisation of nocardia from clinical specimens

Sixteen isolations of nocardia of which 12 were from pulmonary infections, one from wound infection, one from mycetoma and 2 from eye infections were studied from June, 1989 to May, 1990. The importance of Gram's stain findings of primary smear is being highlighted. The nocardia species were identified utilising the morphological characters including acid fastness and cultural and biochemical characters. Notable among the isolates were Nocardia brasiliensis, one each from mycetoma and pulmonary infection, which are rare in South India and Nocardia asteroides from a case of endophthalmitis probably of endogenous origin.     

Haloperidol and reduced haloperidol plasma concentrations after a loading dose regimen with haloperidol decanoate

1. Haloperidol and reduced haloperidol plasma levels were measured in schizophrenic patients who received both oral (10 mg, N=16 and 20 mg, N=4) and depot haloperidol treatment 2. Patients were of Asian ethnicity and were safely and effectively converted from oral to depot therapy using a loading dose regimen using a 100 mg weekly injection interval for 4 weeks, biweekly for one month and then monthly. 3. Significant correlations were found for plasma haloperidol and reduced haloperidol levels and reduced haloperidol/haloperidol ratios between oral and depot therapy in these non-smoking patients. 4. A loading dose regimen is needed due to the long elimination half-life of decanoate of 26 days otherwise steady-state condition will not occur until 34 months of therapy. 5. Patients were maintained on monthly depot treatment for 40 weeks after the loading dose regimen and only one patient relapsed during treatment despite dosage increases. 6. The formation of reduced haloperidol remained consistent for oral and depot haloperidol treatment.     

Hormonal studies and Doppler flow imaging of ovarian lipoid cell tumors: report of two cases

Ovarian lipoid cell tumors are very rare. We report two cases with abnormal menstruation, hirsutism, clitoromegaly and marked elevations of serum testosterone. Sonography revealed unilateral adnexal solid tumors. Flow velocity wave form study showed apparent flow within the tumor with the resistance index ranging from 0.42 to 0.49 in both cases. Unilateral oophorectomy and contralateral ovarian biopsy were performed. Frozen sections showed lipoid cell tumors without malignant change. During surgery, direct ovarian venipuncture showed a discrepancy in testosterone level in the bilateral ovaries of both patients and large ovarian-peripheral venous gradients in case 2. The testosterone concentration returned to normal postoperatively in both cases. Flow velocity wave form study and direct ovarian venipuncture are useful tools for evaluation of androgen-secreting tumors preoperatively and intraoperatively.     

Estimation of in vivo proton intrinsic and cross-relaxation rate in human brain

By using on-resonance binomial pulse saturation of the immobile component in tissues and by monitoring the time development of the longitudinal decay of the free water magnetization, it has been shown that it is possible to estimate physical model parameters not directly measurable by conventional methods. Since pulsed saturation is easy and safe to implement in a clinical MRI machine, it should be possible to estimate these parameters in vivo by the same means. In this article, we report the results of such estimates of the parameters of the principal components (gray and white matter) in brains of two normal volunteers.     

Methods to assess the development and recovery of locomotor function after spinal cord injury in rats

Recovery of comprehension and total language in 22 Wernicke's aphasics was correlated with lesion size and extent of involvement of certain structures on CT. Recovery rates and outcomes were separately examined using 0-3 months and 0-12 months poststroke language data. Quantitative measures of structural damage were regressed on total aphasia and comprehension outcome measures. Supramarginal and angular gyri appeared to be the most significant structures in recovery in addition to initial severity and lesion size. This was confirmed by using ANOVA to compare the extent of involvement in each postcentral structure among the poor, moderate, and good recovery groups. The superior temporal and middle temporal gyri are less involved in the good recovery group. Structures posteriorly adjacent to Wernicke's area are important for compensation in Wernicke's aphasia and in the accompanying comprehension deficit. Persisting Wernicke's aphasia usually involves the supramarginal and angular gyri in addition to the superior temporal area.     

The preparation of field electron/field-ion emitters by ion etching

A new technique is described for the fabrication and resharpening of field emitters. This technique employs an ion gun and uses methods analogous to those used to produce thin foils for the transmission electron microscope. In this way it has proved possible to produce reliably sharp emitters of both metal and semiconducting materials and the technique is particularly useful when dealing with those materials normally difficult to electropolish or chemically etch. Applications lie not only in field electron emission and field-ion microscopy, but may also be relevant to the development of high current electron sources for use in electron microscopy.