Pemphigus of the anal canal

Summary and Conclusions Pemphigus vulgaris is a rare bullous mucocutaneous disease in which the high mortality rate has been reduced in recent years by early vigorous corticosteroid therapy. Localized anal involvement is exceedingly uncommon. A proven case of pemphigus is reported with oral and anal involvement. This case was complicated by a painful anal fissure which was removed surgically and healed without incident.     

One year's treatment of non-specific ulcerative colitis with intestinal extract

To test the hypothesis that non-specific ulcerative colitis is due to the absence or a deficiency of an intrinsic factor normally present in the intestinal mucosa, oral treatment with extracts of hog's small intestinal mucosa was undertaken in seventy-one patients. A total of twenty-seven of these patients have been followed for one year or longer. Symptomatic and sigmoidoscopic evidences of improvement were shown in twenty-four cases. After remission of symptoms, withdrawal of the intestinal extract or substitution of a placebo resulted in relapse, with remission occurring again upon resumption of treatment. It is probable that sustained improvement can be maintained only by continued administration of the extract.     

Albumin infusion in humans does not model exercise induced hypervolaemia after 24 hours

We rapidly infused 234 ± 3 mL of 5% human serum albumin in eight men while measuring haematocrit, haemoglobin concentration, plasma volume (PV), albumin concentration, total protein concentration, osmolality, sodium concentration, renin activity, aldosterone concentration, and atrial natriuretic peptide concentration to test the hypotheses that plasma volume expansion and plasma albumin content expansion will not persist for 24 h. Plasma volume and albumin content were expanded for the first 6 h after infusion (44.3 ± 1.9–47.2 ± 2.0 mL kg^?1 and 1.9 ± 0.1–2.1 ± 0.1 g kg^?1 at pre-infusion and 1 h, respectively, P < 0.05), but by 24 h plasma volume and albumin content decreased significantly from 1 h post-infusion and were not different from pre-infusion (44.8 ± 1.9 mL kg^?1 and 1.9 ± 0.1 g kg^?1, respectively). Plasma aldosterone concentration showed a significant effect of time over the 24 h after infusion (P < 0.05), and showed a trend to decrease at 2 h after infusion (167.6 ± 32.5^?1 06.2 ± 13.4 pg mL^?1, P = 0.07). These data demonstrate that a 6.8% expansion of plasma volume and 10.5% expansion of plasma albumin content by infusion does not remain in the vascular space for 24 h and suggest a redistribution occurs between the intravascular space and interstitial fluid space.