Wheeze in preschool children and its relation with doctor diagnosed asthma.

OBJECTIVE--To describe the characteristics of wheeze and its relation with doctor diagnosed asthma in children aged 5 years and under. DESIGN--Questionnaire survey of population based random sample of children registered on Leicestershire Health Authority's child health index for immunisation; questionnaire completed by parents. SUBJECTS--1650 white children born in 1985 to 1989 who were surveyed in 1990. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--Age distribution, severity, precipitants, seasonal characteristics, and diurnal variation of wheeze, family history of asthma/atopy, and their association(s) with doctor diagnosed asthma. RESULTS--There were 1422 replies (86.2%). Two hundred and twenty two (15.6%) were reported to have wheezed and of these 121 (8.6%) had formally been diagnosed as having asthma. More than 80% of the former had recurrences of wheeze and 40% (72) had three or more episodes in the preceding 12 months. Age, number of episodes per year, the severity of shortness of breath with attacks, and precipitants other than colds were the major factors determining the probability that a wheezy child will be diagnosed as having asthma. The data also suggest that despite the strong association of symptom based criteria with the label asthma, asthma was not diagnosed by these same severity criteria in one quarter of cases. CONCLUSIONS--Clinical and physiological follow up studies of children identified as asthmatic by the above criteria during the preschool years should validate or refute the predictive value of these measures of wheeze severity.     

Hodgkin disease: CT of the thymus

The computed tomography (CT) scans in two groups of patients with Hodgkin disease were reviewed to determine the frequency of thymic enlargement. In 50 CT scans from 50 patients with evidence of thoracic disease on CT scans who were examined for primary staging, the thymus was enlarged in 15 of 50 (30%). Fifty CT scans were obtained from 44 patients at the time of 50 separate episodes of known or suspected relapse. Relapse occurred in the mediastinum in 12 episodes, lung parenchyma in five, and both sites in one. Thymic enlargement thought to be due to involvement by disease was present in seven of 18 (38%). Mediastinal disease was associated with thymic enlargement in all but one patient in whom a thymic cyst developed after radiation therapy. Differentiation of thymic enlargement from enlarged superior mediastinal lymph nodes was easily made in all but two patients. Thymic enlargement in the absence of lymph node enlargement may indicate a different disease, since isolated Hodgkin disease of the thymus is uncommon. Primary thymic tumor should be considered initially, whereas after treatment, rebound hyperplasia of the thymus may be the cause of enlargement.     

Differential effects of exercise and housing condition on murine natural killer cell activity and tumor growth.

Acute exercise and exercise conditioning have been shown to affect the activity of natural killer (NK) cells as well as the growth of experimentally induced tumors in animals. Since psychosocial factors are also known to alter NK activity and tumor growth, isolation, a known psychosocial stressor of mice, was also investigated to see if housing condition could alter exercise-induced changes in NK cell activity and tumor growth. NK cell activity and concentration of asialo GM1 (ASGM1) positive splenocytes were measured in male C3H mice inoculated i.v. with CIRAS 3 tumor cells. Mice were housed individually or in groups of four and trained to run for eight weeks on a rodent treadmill; controls remained sedentary throughout the experimental period. At four weeks into the training protocol, mice were injected with the tumor cells and continued to run for four weeks after tumor exposure. There was a significant effect of physical activity (p less than 0.019) but not of housing on splenic NK cytotoxicity against tumor targets in vitro. When the data were analyzed by presence or absence of lung metastases, only those animals without visible lung tumors had significantly higher NK activity as a function of exercise relative to sedentary controls. There were no significant differences in the frequency of ASGM1+ splenocytes between trained and untrained animals, irrespective of presence or absence of lung tumor colonies. There was a significant effect of housing (p less than 0.02), but not of physical activity, in mice with successful tumor takes with greater numbers of group housed animals (29/59) with tumor relative to individually housed animals (13/60).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Solitary bronchioloalveolar carcinoma: CT criteria

The computed tomographic (CT) scans of 30 patients with solitary bronchioloalveolar carcinoma were reviewed. Common features at CT included the peripheral or subpleural location of a pulmonary mass (25 cases), pseudocavitation (18 cases), heterogeneous attenuation (17 cases), irregular margins forming a star pattern (22 cases), and pleural tags (21 cases). Using these CT criteria, four independent observers attempted to identify cases of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma from a larger sample of lung cancers and benign lesions by categorizing a series of test cases into four probability categories. Although the bronchioloalveolar carcinomas were correctly ranked in the two highest probability categories 75% of the time (in 45 of 60 cases), there was considerable overlap with other lung lesions, particularly with adenocarcinoma and large cell undifferentiated carcinoma. However, even though the typical features of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma are not invariable or highly specific, they are characteristic enough to suggest the diagnosis.     

Relationship between the cytolysins tenebrosin-C from Actinia tenebrosa and equinatoxin II from Actinia equina.

The chemical, physical and biological properties of the cytolysin tenebrosin-C from Actinia tenebrosa have been compared with those of equinatoxin II from Actinia equina. The two proteins are indistinguishable by reverse-phase and cation-exchange HPLC and capillary zone electrophoresis, and give similar peptide fragments upon cyanogen bromide cleavage (as judged by the chromatographic behaviour, ultraviolet absorption spectra, amino acid composition and N-terminal amino acid sequences of the peptides). Their cardiac stimulatory activities are identical, and their haemolytic activities are similar, with equinatoxin II having slightly greater activity. These data indicate that the two molecules are either identical in all 179 amino acid positions, or differ by no more than one or two residues. These findings are discussed in the context of the taxonomic relationship between the two species of sea anemone.