A case of lambda type tetramer Bence-Jones proteinemia.

A 50-year-old woman was found to have an extramedullary plasmacytoma of the thoracic vertebrae and a bone marrow plasmacytosis of 72%. In the serum of this myeloma patient, M-bow percipitin line was seen only with anti-lambda chain serum, but not with antisera against mu, alpha, gamma, delta, ipsilon and kappa chains. Gel filtration of the serum on the Sephadex G-200 column demonstrated the monoclonal lambda chain in the A-fraction along with transferrin and suggests a molecular weight of 88,000 and a tetrameric light chain. Bence-Jones protein has never been detected in the patient's urine.     

Effects of antidepressants on gamma-aminobutyric acid- and N-methyl-D-aspartate-induced intracellular Ca(2+) concentration increases in primary cultured rat cortical neurons

We investigated the effects of antidepressants on the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) increases induced by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) or N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) in primary cultured rat cortical neurons using fluorescence imaging. Acute treatment with imipramine inhibited GABA- and NMDA-induced increases in [Ca2+]i in a concentration-dependent manner. Doses of 30 microM clomipramine, desipramine, amoxapine and maprotiline also inhibited both the GABA- and NMDA-induced [Ca2+]i increases significantly. Both inhibitory effects of the five major antidepressants on the GABA- or the NMDA-induced [Ca2+]i increases were well-correlated. Imipramine could inhibit significantly high-K+-induced [Ca2+]i increases. Our previous study has already shown that the GABA-induced [Ca2+]i increase involves a similar pathway to high-K+-induced Ca2+ influx. In conclusion, imipramine and several other antidepressants have acute inhibitory effects on the GABA-, NMDA- and high-K+-induced [Ca2+]i increases, suggesting that these inhibitory effects are not related to specific receptors. One possibility is that these effects may be commonly mediated via part of the high-K+-induced [Ca2+]i pathway.