Basement membranes of small cardiac vessels in patients with diabetes and myxoedema: preliminary observations

A method of treating completely displaced supracondylar fractures of the humerus in children by 'straight lateral traction', as originally used by John Dunlop, is recommended. The results in 26 children, selected because manipulation had failed to achieve reduction, is examined, and indicates that this treatment is satisfactory for some problem fractures, leading usually to good results in terms of resolution of complications and return of function. It also avoids the ugly deformities of the elbow which follow reliance on a single form of treatment for all supracondylar fractures. Failure of anatomical reduction by the appliance is shown to be in the plane of elbow movement, where normal physiological mechanisms correct the bone by remodelling. Where there is epiphyseal damage, deformities may occur with any form of treatment.     

Current management of digitalis intoxication

Of the commonly used drugs, digitalis has one of the highest therapeutic-toxic ratios. Mortality is significantly increased in the 20% to 30% of patients on digitalis who are in a toxic state when admitted to the hospital. Successful use of digitalis depends on avoidance of its use in situations likely to result in toxicity; recognition of the signs, symptoms, and electrocardiographic findings of digitalis intoxication; and stopping digitalis completely as the initial treatment of digitalis intoxication.     

Kinetics of populations of enterocytes of experimental tumors of the large intestine in rats

To determine whether somatostatin, an inhibitor of glucagon and growth hormone secretion, might be useful as an adjunct to insulin the management of diabetic hyperglycaemia, seven insulin-requiring diabetic men were given somatostatin (100 microgram/h, IV) continuously for 3 days after their diabetes had been treated intensively by diet and insulin on a metabolic ward. During infusion of somatostatin and despite reduction in average insulin dose exceeding 50%, there was improvement in diabetic control as assessed by postprandial hyperglycaemia, 24-h glycosuria and the average daily serum glucose level and its fluctuation; when somatostatin was discontinued, but insulin doses held constant, diabetic control rapidly worsened. No adverse effects were observed. These results indicate that somatostatin plus insulin can be a more effective regimen than insulin alone in controlling diabetic hyperglycaemia. A longer acting and more selective somatostatin preparation may prove useful as an adjunct to insulin in the management of diabetes.     

Methicillin penetration into the cerebrospinal fluid of patients

Penetration of methicillin through the blood-liquor barrier in neurosurgical patients was studied. When administered in a dose of 2 gm the drug penetrated through the barrier in 1/3 of all observations within 1 to 3 hours. Increased liquor pressure in the patients resulted in prolongation of the antibiotic effect in the cerebrospinal fluid. The methicillin levels in the liquor were no sufficient for the growth inhibition of most methicillin sensitive staphylococci.     

Method of differential prognostication of pertussis morbidity

The authors present a method of differential prognostication of pertussis morbidity permitting to consider in prognostication the tendencies of individual subsets of the dynamic series which could be conditioned by individual causes. The general picture of the phenomenon to be prognosticated is obtained by superimposition of the values prognosticated by each of the segregated subsets.     

Differential reprogramming of somatic cell nuclei after transfer into mouse cleavage stage blastomeres

Mammalian somatic cell cloning requires factors specific to the oocyte for reprogramming to succeed. This does not exclude that reprogramming continues during the zygote and cleavage stages. The capacity or role of zygotic and cleavage stages to reprogram somatic cell nuclei is difficult to assess due to the limited development of somatic cell nuclei transplanted into cytoplasts of these stages. Alternatively, tetraploid embryos have been used to study reprogramming and can be assessed for their contribution to extra-embryonic lineages. When mouse cumulus cell nuclei transgenic for Oct4-green fluorescent protein (GFP) were injected into intact two- and four-cell stage blastomeres, manipulated embryos developed into blastocysts with expression of Oct4-GFP as observed in embryos produced by nuclear transfer into metaphase II oocytes. However, only the latter contributed to extra-embryonic tissues in day 10.5 conceptuses, with the exclusion of the somatic genome in cells originating from transfer into blastomeres already at 5.5 days post conception. Somatic nuclei transferred into cleavage stage blastomeres reinitiated expression of an embyronic-specific transgene, but lacked the extent of reprogramming required for contribution to postimplantation development, even when complemented by an embryonic genome.