A prospective study of human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 DNA detection by polymerase chain reaction and its association with acquisition and persistence of other HPV types

Human papillomavirus (HPV)-16 causes about half the cases of cervical cancer worldwide and is the focus of HPV vaccine development efforts. Systematic data are lacking as to whether the prevention of HPV-16 could affect the equilibrium of infection with other HPV types and thus alter the predicted impact of vaccination on the occurrence of cervical neoplasia. Therefore, the associations of HPV-16 detection with subsequent acquisition of other HPV types and with the persistence of concomitantly detected HPV types were examined prospectively among 1124 initially cytologically normal women. Preexisting HPV-16 was generally associated with an increased risk for subsequent acquisition of other types. HPV-16 did not affect the persistence of concomitant infections, regardless of type. These findings suggest that the prevention or removal of HPV-16 is not likely to promote the risk of infection with other types, a theoretical concern with current vaccination efforts.     

Immunofluorescent analysis of creatine kinase in cultured astrocytes by conventional and confocal microscopy: a nuclear localization.

The subcellular localization of creatine kinase (CK) was examined in primary cultures of astrocytes with immunofluorescent labeling methods and detection by both standard fluorescence microscopy and confocal laser-scanning microscopy. With conventional microscopy, the pattern of CK staining was uniform throughout the cell cytoplasm and appeared to stain the nuclear region intensely. Staining of CK in the nuclear region co-localized with the DNA-specific Hoechst nuclear stain. CK produced a diffuse cytoplasmic staining pattern that was different from the staining pattern produced by the cytoskeletal proteins glial fibrillary acidic protein and tubulin, both of which showed a filamentous cytoskeletal network that excluded the nucleus. To examine the structural details of CK in the nuclear region, serial optical sections were taken through the cell monolayer with a confocal microscope. The cells were immunostained for CK, and the CK-staining pattern was compared with the staining pattern produced by propidium iodide, which is specific for DNA in RNase-treated samples and stains total nucleic acid in untreated samples. CK staining was present within the nucleus in each section taken through the monolayer. The nucleolus did not stain for CK. The pattern of CK staining in the nucleus (and cytoplasm) was distinctly different from the staining pattern of either DNA or total nucleic acid. Nuclear CK appeared to have a granular, particulate pattern, which is suggestive of a nucleoplasmic distribution.     

Cryptococcosis complicating continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

We report a case of invasive cryptococcosis complicating continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis and its successful treatment. This form of infection has not been previously described.     

Discontinuing antiparkinson medication in chronic schizophrenics

In a double-blind study of 100 chronic schizophrenic patients, withdrawal of antiparkinson (AP) medication showed that 44% of the 75 patients who constituted the placebo group (versus none of the patients on active AP medication), complained strongly of debilitating extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS) and another 22.6% (versus 8.7% of the patients on active AP medication), displayed disturbing psychotic symptomatology related to EPS. The authors discuss their findings in relation to the widely held view that AP medication may be safely withdrawn from chronic schizophrenics.     

Mirror-view reverses somatoparaphrenia: dissociation between first- and third-person perspectives on body ownership

Right-hemisphere stroke can lead to the somatoparaphrenic delusion that parts of one's own body belong to someone else. To our knowledge, no previous study has experimentally assessed the sense of body part ownership in somatoparaphrenic patients when they see the body from a third-person perspective, as in a mirror. In alternating trials, we provided either direct first-person perspective vision of the arms, or indirect third-person perspective vision via a mirror in the frontal plane. We tested body ownership in these conditions in five patients with right-hemisphere lesions with left hemiplegia and neglect, including two patients with this somatoparaphrenic delusion. The somatoparaphrenic patients systematically attributed the ownership of their left plegic hands to someone else in direct view, but showed a statistically significant increase in ownership of the left hand in mirror view trials, as compared with the three control patients. Depending on the view offered (mirror or direct), judgements of ownership and disownership of the same limb could alternate within a few seconds. The patients did not particularly remark on these dramatic and repeated alterations between ownership and disownership. Conditions of direct- and mirror-view with simultaneous touch of the hand by the experimenter showed the same patterns of results as conditions without touch. This study provides the first experimental evidence that limb disownership can be altered using self-observation in a mirror, and in turn suggests dissociation between first- and third-person visual perspectives on the body. Furthermore, the fact that reinstatement of ownership by third-person perspective did not permanently abolish somatoparaphrenia suggests that the subjective sense of body ownership remained dominated by an impaired first-person representation of the body that could not be updated, nor integrated with other signals. More generally, our findings suggest that a neural network involving the perisylvian areas of the right hemisphere may be necessary for the integration of multiple representations of one's body and for a higher order re-representation of various bodily signals into a first-person sense of body ownership. We suggest that other areas, possibly including the occipital cortex, may be involved in the recognition of the body from a third-person visual perspective. We thus propose that somatoparaphrenia can be regarded as a neurogenic dissociation between the ‘subjectively felt’ and ‘objectively seen’ body. This recalls the developmental finding that young infants cannot link their ‘felt body’ with the view of themselves in a mirror.