What's in a name?

A case study is presented to illustrate how a new names reporting and partner notification law in New York may affect the privacy of HIV-positive people. This law is supposed to make partner notification and early treatment a priority, although there are no penalties associated with a person refusing to give the names of their sex or needle- sharing partners. Details of the law are discussed. AIDS activists and public health workers have many reservations about the effects the program will have on voluntary testing and the privacy of HIV-positive patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued a draft version of guidelines that they recommend for HIV/AIDS surveillance. The guidelines are briefly discussed.     

Immunological memory: What's in a name?

Immunological memory is one of the core topics of contemporary immunology. Yet there are many discussions about what this concept precisely means, which components of the immune system display it, and in which phyla it exists. Recent years have seen the multiplication of claims that immunological memory can be found in “innate” immune cells and in many phyla beyond vertebrates (including invertebrates, plants, but also bacteria and archaea), as well as the multiplication of concepts to account for these phenomena, such as “innate immune memory” or “trained immunity”. The aim of this critical review is to analyze these recent claims and concepts, and to distinguish ideas that have often been misleadingly associated, such as memory, adaptive immunity, and specificity. We argue that immunological memory is a gradual and multidimensional phenomenon, irreducible to any simple dichotomy, and we show why adopting this new view matters from an experimental and therapeutic point of view.     

What's a Genome Worth?

A recent study (Roberts et al.) explores considerations in estimating the current and potential clinical utility of whole-genome sequencing for individual patients.     

What's in a name? The MMPI-2 PTSD scales

The MMPI-2 post-traumatic stress disorder scales (PK and PS) were examined with a sample of 96 outpatient anxiety disorder and 97 outpatient traffic accident subjects. PK and PS correlated 0.96 and showed highly similar correlations with MMPI-2 validity, clinical, content and supplementary scales for both groups, which indicated that these scales are indices of MMPI first-factor variance. This was supported by separate principal components analyses for each group, in which PK and PS contributed the most variance to the first component. Although the groups showed different MMPI-2 mean profiles, neither PK nor PS contributed to discriminant function classification of group members. It is suggested that PK and PS are indices of general emotional distress and maladjustment; implications for their use in diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder were discussed.     

Natural Killer or Dendritic: What's in a Name?

Accumulating data suggest a potential for substantial overlap in phenotypic and functional characteristics between natural killer and dendritic cells. Thus, their identification, lineage commitment, and in vivo relevance may need a closer look.