Continuing Care in High Schools: A Descriptive Study of Recovery High School Programs

Data from 17 recovery high schools suggest programs are dynamic and vary in enrollment, fiscal stability, governance, staffing, and organizational structure. Schools struggle with enrollment, funding, lack of primary treatment accessibility, academic rigor, and institutional support. Still, for adolescents having received treatment for substance abuse, recovery schools appear to successfully function as continuing care providers, reinforcing and sustaining therapeutic benefits gained from treatment. Small size and therapeutic programming allow for a potentially broader continuum of services than currently exists in most of the schools. Recovery schools thus provide a useful design for continuing care, warranting further study and policy support.     

Screening High Risk Youths for Potential Problems:

Screening data, including results of the Problem Oriented Screening Instrument for Teenagers (POSIT) developed by the NIDA, on arrested youths processed in May 1993 at the Hillsborough County, Florida Juvenile Assessment Center are analyzed. High rates of potential psychosocial functioning problems were obtained. Relationships were found between the youths' POSIT results, their dependency and delinquency referral histories, self-reported alcohol and marijuana/hashish use and their claimed involvement in mental health or substance use treatment-for which problems they were seriously underserved. The service delivery and policy implications of our findings are drawn.     

Patent Evaluation: High Affinity Humanized Monoclonal Antibodies

Summary

Novelty: A monoclonal antibody, or fragment thereof, wherein at least the hypervariable region is from a monoclonal antibody having an affinity of at least 10¹¹ l/M, and at least the constant region (or, if no constant region, the variable region) is derived from human immunoglobulin. The high-affinity monoclonal is from sheep or another mammal that gives higher affinity than a rodent. An antibody of the invention may be used in therapy, particularly for the treatment of cancer, inflammation, immunomodulation, for passive immunotherapy in the treatment of viruses, and to combat bacterial infections.

Biology: Particular advantages of high affinity antibodies for therapy are: (i) affinity is related to biological response; (ii) higher affinity antibodies will result in more rapid binding of the antibodies to the target cells or more rapid immunoneutralisation, ie. better localisation of antibody will be achieved by reducing non-specific binding to other sites; (iii) higher affinity means less antibodies can be used per dosage, leading to more economically viable therapies.

Chemistry: A product of the invention may be prepared by a process comprizing immunization of a suitable animal, e.g. sheep, rabbit, cow, using an antigen and obtaining B cells secreting an antibody to the antigen. Secondly, high affinity monoclonal antibodies to the genes coding for them are obtained. Thirdly, these antibodies are humanized.     

High pressure injection injuries: a serious occupational hazard

High pressure injection equipment such as airless paint sprayers, high pressure grease guns, and fuel injection apparatus constitute a serious safety hazard resulting in significant morbidity. These devices are capable of delivering contaminants such as paint, solvents, and grease at pressures ranging from 600-12,000 psi. This allows the substance to penetrate through a minute skin wound and to spread widely through fascial planes and tendon sheaths and to produce significant vascular compression and systemic toxicity. High pressure injection injuries frequently result in amputation. Fifty-five suspected high pressure injection injury cases were evaluated. Twenty were determined to be actual injection injuries from equipment producing pressures in the range of 1,500-12,000 psi. The injected contaminants included latex paint, mineral spirits, and concrete sealer. Fourteen injuries involved digits. Digital amputation was necessary in three patients. Hospital admissions averaged 6.5 days. Successful management of these cases involves awareness of the impending problem and rapid referral of the patient to an emergency department and to a competent orthopedic or plastic surgeon.     

Diarylamidines: High potency inhibitors of acid-sensing ion channels

Acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs) are proton-gated cation channels that are predominantly expressed in the nervous system. ASICs are involved in a number of neurological diseases such as pain, ischemic stroke and multiple sclerosis but limited tools are available to target these channels and provide probes for their physiological functions. Here we report that the anti-protozoal diarylamidines, 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI), diminazene, hydroxystilbamidine (HSB) and pentamidine potently inhibit ASIC currents in primary cultured hippocampal neurons with apparent affinities of 2.8 μM, 0.3 μM, 1.5 μM and 38 μM, respectively. These four compounds (100 μM) failed to block ENaC channels expressed in oocytes. Sub-maximal concentrations of diminazene also strongly accelerated desensitization of ASIC currents in hippocampal neurons. Diminazene blocked ASIC1a, -1b -2a, and -3 currents expressed in CHO cells with a rank order of potency 1b > 3 > 2a ≥ 1a. Patchdock computational analysis suggested a binding site of diarylamidines on ASICs. This study indicates diarylamidines constitute a novel class of non-amiloride ASIC blockers and suggests that diarylamidines may be developed as therapeutic agents in treatment of ASIC-involved diseases.     

Health and Social Difficulties in High School Students using High Amounts of Alcohol and Drugs: Implications for Screening

The use of frequency-based criteria to detect harmful substance use in adolescents is rare despite its potential to identify young people at risk. We compared high school students who use high amounts of substances to students with lower levels (or nil) of use across health and well-being indicators to explore the feasibility of this kind of categorization. Based on survey questions from Youth'12, a cross-sectional adolescent health survey involving 3% (8,500) of New Zealand high school students, we selected criteria indicative of substance use that would warrant specialist alcohol and other drugs (AOD) treatment. Two sets of “high-use” criteria (e.g., drinking “alcohol most days a week or more”) for both older and younger adolescents were selected. Eleven percent of students met criteria for “high use,” with higher rates in males and older students. Rates of high use were similar across high-, medium- and low-deprivation neighborhoods. Binge alcohol use (9.2%) was the predominant form of “high use.” Students with “high use” reported poorer health outcomes across numerous areas including mental health, physical health, risk behaviors, and access to health care. Only 5% of “high-use” students had accessed an AOD service. The wide range of negative health outcomes associated with a high level of substance use suggests that brief screening focusing on the level of substance use may help in identifying young people at risk. Simple and brief processes may improve the uptake and implementation of screening in primary care and other settings, and further research in this area is recommended.     

High information kinetic studies: Non-isothermal programmed acid concentration kinetics

The increasing availability of electronic equipment for automatic experiment control and data acquisition, and the availability of computing facilities make high information kinetic studies feasible. This latter phrase is used to describe kinetic experiments in which stability determining factors (e.g. pH, ionic strength, etc.,) are programmed within an exp eriment rather than several tests being performed each at a different level of the stability determining factor. Thus much more information can be extracted from a single experiment, and this should ultimately lead to decreased experimental effort.

This paper describes a non-isothermal, programmed acid concentration kinetic experiment through which the two rate constants and activation energies associated with the acid and solvent catalyzed hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate were simultaneously determined. Zero and infinite time assays were also estimated from the data. Results from this experiment were in close agreement with those from traditional (isothermal, fixed acid concentration) kinetic experiments and with estimates from non-isothermal fixed acid concentration tests.

The mathematical model developed for this situation accounts for volume change due to acid addition, sampling and thermal volume expansion. With minor modification it is applicable to other situations (e.g. ionic strength programming).     

Hormesis and High Throughput Studies: Crump's Analysis Lacks Credibility

We recently reported results of an analysis of a large NationalCancer Institute (NCI) database on effects of chemicals in yeast,concluding that dose–response relationships in the low-doserange are more compatible with a hormetic dose–responsemodel than a threshold model (Calabrese et al., 2006). Crumpsuggests that our interpretation may be incorrect based on differencesin understandings of how response ratios were calculated. Sincethe original data were not available due to a computer malfunctionat the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), we describedthe methods used to construct the NCI database as reported byDr Simon, the Principal Investigator. A response was formedby averaging results from two optical density ratios, each ofwhich was formed by dividing the response in a well by the meanof eight control values on the plate. Crump stated that the unavailability of the original data makes     

高密度脂蛋白：影响血管内皮功能的双刃剑

在动脉粥样硬化病变的初始阶段,许多致动脉粥样硬化因素可损伤血管内皮,诱发内皮功能紊乱,内皮功能紊乱是动脉粥样硬化发病的重要机制。高密度脂蛋白(HDL)是由多种蛋白和脂质组成的功能复杂的脂蛋白。流行病学研究显示HDL与动脉粥样硬化呈负相关。HDL除参与胆固醇逆向转运、减少外周胆固醇堆积、防止泡沫细胞形成功能外,还可通过调节血管舒张功能、发挥抗氧化抗炎作用保护内皮功能,对抗动脉粥样硬化形成。但在冠心病患者体内存在失功能性HDL,其可能诱发内皮功能紊乱。本文就功能性HDL和失功能性HDL与内皮功能的关系进行综述。