Treatment adherence of youth and young adults with and without a chronic illness

The present study was undertaken to explore the psychosocial functioning of young people with chronic illness, their beliefs about treatment adherence, difficulties with adherence and concerns about living with their illness. A small correlational study was undertaken to compare the psychosocial functioning of young people, with and without chronic illness, aged between 12 and 24 years. Subjects were recruited from a metropolitan teaching hospital. Group 1 included 44 young people with chronic illness; Group 2 included 41 young people without chronic illness. Both groups were divided on the basis of age: younger (12-18 years, n = 24); older (19-24 years, n = 61) and sex (female = 43; male = 42). Subjects completed the Achenbach self-report questionnaire as a measure of psychosocial functioning, and a second questionnaire constructed for this study to explore treatment adherence. Psychosocial functioning scores were found to be similar on the majority of subscales. Young women with chronic illness were, however, found to have significantly higher internalizing scores than young women without chronic illness. A significant negative relationship was found for the chronic illness group between internalizing scores and treatment adherence. The findings highlight potential areas of difficulty in psychosocial functioning of some young people with chronic illness. They also suggest the existence of a subgroup of young people with chronic illness who experience more problems than their peers. More research is needed to generate evidence about this possible subgroup to determine predictors of psychosocial functioning and test the timing and efficacy of psychosocial interventions.     

Telenursing: clinical nurse consultancy for rural paediatric nurses

Videoconferencing is increasingly being accepted as a medium for health-care. Telenursing is in its infancy in Australia but has enormous potential for nursing care in remote areas. The Child and Adolescent Psychological Telemedicine Outreach Service (CAPTOS) began in 1997 and in its first evaluation recommended more support for paediatric nurses. CAPTOS telenursing began as a new initiative in late 2001. The telenursing project aims to link ward nurses to CAPTOS and local community teams, and to provide both clinical consultancy on nursing and interdisciplinary issues and locally based professional development. Telenursing supports nurses via site visits, videoconferencing sessions, an interactive Website and sabbatical opportunities. Telehealth works with existing services to enhance the nursing care of young people with a complex mixture of psychological and physical health problems.     

Autoantibodies in human chronic graft-versus-host disease after hematopoietic cell transplantation

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) are thought to have common immunopathologic features and previous studies have reported that 5.2 to 81% of patients with chronic GVHD after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant have antimitochondrial antibodies (AMA). We studied a total of 89 patients with chronic GVHD and 60 controls for AMA reactivity by ELISA and immunoblotting using recombinant PDC-E2, BCOADC-E2, and OGDC-E2, immunoblotting of beef heart mitochondrial proteins, and reactivity to nuclei, smooth muscle (ASMA), ribonucleoprotein JO-1, extractable nuclear antigen, nuclear proteins SSA/ SSB, ribonucleic P proteinase III, cardiolipin (ACA), liver kidney microsomal, thyroid microsomal, myeloperoxidase, and the reactivity of rheumatoid factor. A subset of 60 chronic GVHD sera were tested for reactivity to gp210 and LBR. Finally, liver tissue from patients with chronic GVHD and PBC was studied by immunohistochemistry to determine whether there was comparable abnormal apical staining of biliary epithelial cells using PDC-E2-specific monoclonal antibodies. Surprisingly, there were no AMA found in the sera from the 89 patients with chronic GVHD. Review of published data on AMA in GVHD suggests that previous results were primarily false positives. In contrast, sera from the patients with GVHD did have a variety of other autoantibodies and, in particular, 20/89 (22.4%) positive ANA, 23/89 (25.8%) positive ASMA, and 9/89 (10.1%) positive ACA. The other autoantibodies assayed were not statistically different from controls. Finally, abnormal biliary epithelial luminal staining of bile ducts was found, as expected, in liver tissue of patients with PBC but was absent in chronic GVHD.     

Calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor expression in the neurons and glia of developing rat cerebellum: an autoradiographic and immunohistochemical analysis

Quantitative autoradiography (using [125I]human alpha-calcitonin gene-related peptide as a ligand) and immunofluorescence (using monoclonal antibodies directed against a purified receptor) followed by confocal analysis were applied to analyse the distribution and cellular localization of the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor in the rat cerebellum during development. From late embryonic days to the end of the second postnatal week, during the time window of calcitonin gene-related peptide expression in climbing fibers, high levels of calcitonin gene-related peptide binding sites were found in the white matter, where immunolabeling was present in oligodendrocytes. Lower levels were found in the cerebellar cortex, where receptor immunolabeling was found in Bergmann glia in a presumptive cell surface location and, during the second postnatal week, also in the cytoplasm of Purkinje cells. From the end of the second postnatal week to adulthood, when calcitonin gene-related peptide is no longer present in climbing fibers, the number of calcitonin gene-related peptide binding sites increased in the molecular layer, where not only Bergmann glia but also Purkinje cell distal dendritic branchlets were immunolabeled in a presumptive cell surface location. Concomitantly, the number of calcitonin gene-related peptide binding sites sharply decreased in the white matter.The developmental expression of the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor and the previously described proliferating/differentiating effects of the peptide on glial cells suggest that calcitonin gene-related peptide and its receptor may promote a coordinated development of cerebellar glial cells, an effect driven mainly by the calcitonin gene-related peptide released by climbing fibers. As a result of glia-neuron interactions, an indirect effect on the differentiation of the cerebellar neuronal circuitry is also likely to occur.     

Risk of post-transfusion infection with the hepatitis delta virus. A multicenter study

Hepatitis delta virus is a defective virus that can replicate only in the presence of hepatitis B virus. To determine the prevalence, circumstances of transmission, and clinical importance of infection with hepatitis delta virus, we obtained data on 262 patients with post-transfusion hepatitis who were positive for the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) even though they had received blood screened for it. We also studied 94 HBsAg carriers who were receiving repeated blood transfusions for other diseases, and 103 HBsAg carriers with hemophilia who were receiving various forms of coagulation factors. Antibody to hepatitis delta virus was found in 9 of 262 patients (3.5 per cent) with post-transfusion hepatitis, 5 of 234 (2 per cent) with self-limited disease, and 4 of 28 (14.5 per cent) with fulminant disease (P less than 0.05). The absence of IgM antibodies to the hepatitis B core antigen indicated that three of the nine patients with both HBsAg and antibodies to hepatitis delta virus had been carriers of HBsAg at the time of transfusion, and the acute disease represented the combined effects of the two viruses. Antibody to hepatitis delta virus was found in 3 of 94 Italian carriers of HBsAg who were receiving repeated blood transfusions, in none of 24 Brazilian, East German, or Australian hemophiliac carriers infused with clotting factors prepared from single or mini-pool volunteer plasma, and in 27 to 100 per cent of 79 hemophiliac carriers from European and U.S. series who received coagulation factors manufactured from large pools of plasma. We conclude that infection with hepatitis delta virus is likely to be more severe than infection with hepatitis B virus alone and that screening for HBsAg provides a high degree of safety in preventing infection with hepatitis delta virus, but that the risk is considerably greater in patients who are already carriers of HBsAg. We recommend that HBsAg carriers be given only blood derivatives prepared from a single donor or mini-pool donors.     

Structure and Thermoelastic Behavior of Synthetic Rubber/Organoclay Nanocomposites

Nanocomposites of synthetic styrene‐co‐butadiene rubber and three types of organoclay fillers were prepared by melt‐compounding and characterized by small‐angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS), differential calorimetry and stretching calorimetry. The in‐rubber structure of the organoclay particles is characterized by different degrees of intercalation with interlayer distances ranging from 3.1–4.8 nm. In contrast to the pristine rubber, all nanocomposites exhibited irreversibility of both mechanical work and heat effects in stretching/contraction cycles at fairly low elongations. Moreover, at the same filler loading both the mechanical reinforcement effect and the magnitude of specific heat effects proved strongly dependent on the degree of intercalation. In the range of low elongations, significantly earlier onsets of the heat inversion phenomenon (compared to theoretically expected), as well as the overshoots of exothermal heat effects in contraction above the endothermal heat effects in stretching for nanocomposites, suggested the contribution of structural rearrangements at the rubber/filler interface by the mechanism of chain slippage operative in both stretching and contraction regimes. In the range of high elongations, the thermoelastic behavior of nanocomposites could be accounted for quantitatively by the model, which assumed explicitly the contributions of local strain amplification for the rubber matrix and of successive decay of nanoparticle clusters with increasing strain, generating the exothermal effects of external friction between nanoparticles.

Dependency on relative elongation of specific mechanical work (squares) and specific heat effects (circles) for the pristine rubber.     

Follow-up of participants in the Trois-Rivières Growth and Development Study: Examining their health-related fitness and risk factors as adults

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of daily physical education in primary school on some indices of fitness (PWC170/kg, handgrip strength, sit and reach flexibility, abdominal muscle endurance, and balance), cardiovascular health (lipid profile, waist-to-hip ratio), and anthropometry in the adult years. Four subsamples of participants in the Trois-Rivières Growth and Development Study were examined: experimental men (n = 32), experimental women (n = 36), control men (n = 30), and control women (n = 35), some 20 years after completion of primary school. During 6 years of primary school education, the experimental group received 5 h of physical education each week, whereas the control group received only the typical Provincial program of a single 40-min period per week. Experimental men and women showed a significant advantage over their respective control groups on the Flamingo balance test, but scores for the remaining physical and health-related fitness tests (PWC170, handgrip strength, total cholesterol, LDL-C, HDL-C, Apo B, triglycerides, blood pressures, waist-to-hip ratio and percentage of body fat) did not differ between experimental and control subjects. It is concluded that participants in a daily physical education program during primary school do not display any advantage of physical fitness over control subjects as adults. This underlines the necessity of stimulating physical functions throughout the lifespan in order to maintain physical fitness. However, the better result of experimental subjects on the balance test suggests, perhaps, that the school physical education program may have had a more permanent effect on some components of motor skills. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 12:207–213, 2000. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Hepatitis C virus RNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells: Relation with response to interferon treatment

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to investigate the presence of positive and negative hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA strands in serumand peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of 20 patients with histologically proven HCV- related chronic liver disease. All patients completed a course of interferon (IFN) treatment (6 MU of IFN-α2b three times a week for 24 weeks) and were followed-up for 12 months after treatment was discontinued. Pre-treatment, end-treatment and 6-month follow-up serum and PBMC samples were examined. At enrollment, the positive strand of HCV-RNA was detected in serum of 18 patients (90%), the negative strand in none. Positive-stranded HCV-RNA was detected in PBMC of 15 patients (75%), 13 of whom also had detectable levels of negative-stranded HCV-RNA in PBMC. By the end of the treatment, 12 patients (60%) were responders. The pre-treatment HCV infection of PBMC, indicated by the presence of both RNA strands, was found in 8 (66.7%) responders compared to 5 (62.5%) non-responders (P=n.s.). End-treatment loss of PMBC HCV-RNA correlated significantly with the response since it occurred in all responders compared to 2 non-responders (P=0.02). However, end-treatment-negative serum and PBMC HCV-RNA did not predict the occurrence of a sustained response, which was observed at month 12 in 5 of 12 responders (P= n.s.). On the other hand, the persistent absence of HCV RNA in serum and PBMC at the end of the 6-month follow-up was significantly associated with the occurrence of a sustained response (P<0.0001). © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.