Follow-up at 11 years of 46 children with severe unilateral hearing loss at 7 years

SUMMARY In the ongoing NCDS, 44 children of the 46 identified at 7 years as having a serious unilateral hearing loss were followed up at 11 years. Half of them had recovered normal bilateral hearing, the remainder still had serious deafness in one ear. Although at 7 years the 46 children as a group had shown backwardness in oral ability, speech and reading, at 11 years both the 'recovered' and the 'persistent' were similar to their age peers in scholastic attainment. Despite their original apparent difficulty it was encouraging to find that several children in both subgroups were noted as possessing outstanding academic ability. It is concluded that with prompt follow-up by an alerted school doctor, children with unilateral deafness at age 7 years are likely to progress satisfactorily in later childhood.     

The effect of intravascular transfusion for rhesus haemolytic disease on umbilical artery Doppler flow velocity waveforms

Summary. To test the hypothesis that an increase in fetal blood viscosity is associated with an increase in resistance to flow, the effect on Doppler flow velocity waveforms of percutaneous umbilical blood sampling and intravascular transfusion was studied in 20 patients undergoing a total of 35 procedures. All but four of the 22 transfusions were associated with a decrease in resistance to flow, as shown by a reduction in the umbilical artery systolic/diastolic ratio, and this also occurred on 10 of the 13 occasions when blood sampling only was performed. These findings suggest that acute changes in blood viscosity following intravascular transfusion arc not associated with an increase in resistance to flow as assessed by Doppler velocimetry. Umbilical blood sampling per se may be associated with a Immorally mediated reduction in placental vascular resistance to flow.     

Predictions of the conformation and antigenic determinants of the V-sis viral oncogene product homologous with human platelet-derived growth factor

In an extensive study involving unification of secondary structure prediction methods to predict peptide backbone angles, folding simulations, and interactive graphics we have calculated conformations for a 160 residue p28^sis protein fragment. We demonstrate that the state of the art is sufficient to aid artificial vaccine design.