11C-glucose metabolism in manic and depressed patients

The authors used positron emission tomography (PET) and 11C-labeled glucose to study 15 unmedicated patients with affective disorders and 7 control subjects. Diagnoses of affective disorders were based on DSM-III criteria, and symptomatology was evaluated by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Blood counts of 11C in both unipolar and bipolar patients did not differ from those in controls after oral administration of 11C-glucose. By contrast, brain counts of 11C in unipolar depressed patients were significantly lower, whereas those in bipolar manic patients were significantly higher, than in normal controls.     

The study of a case of single coronary artery using stress 201thalium single photon emission computed tomogram

A 48-year-old female, who had been having episodes of chest discomfort and oppression lasting for several minutes for 15 years was diagnosed as having a single left coronary artery by coronary angiography. The electrocardiogram taken during a chest pain attack demonstrated the depression of the ST-segment in leads II, III, aVF, and V4-6. The chest pain was relieved, and the ischemic change in ECG was improved by sublingual nitroglycerine. 201Thalium single photon emission computed tomography under stress indicated poor uptake in both the anterior and infero-posterior myocardium, which was compatible with the change in ECG either during the attack or during exercise. The anterior myocardial ischemia was reduced by propranolol and the chest pain was successfully relieved by propranolol. The chest pain in this case might have partly been due to the myocardial ischemia in the anterior and infero-posterior myocardium, under stress, which could have been the steal phenomenon to lateral myocardium due to the anatomical anomaly, besides other possible mechanisms for chest pain proposed in the case of single coronary artery. Our findings suggested that 201Thalium stress single photon emission computed tomography is a useful method for detecting the myocardial ischemia in patients with single coronary artery and those suffering from chest pain without any coronary stenosis.     

Further characterization of memory T cells existing in a case of CD8 deficiency

CD8 deficiency is a rare primary immunodeficiency caused by a defect of ZAP-70, which plays a pivotal role in T cell activation. We previously reported the existence of memory phenotype-CD4+ T cells in a case of CD8 deficiency, which demonstrates that activation signals through ZAP-70 are not essential to the phenotypic conversion of T cells from "naive" to "memory." In this study, we further characterized CD45RO+ T cells in a CD8 deficient patient. We showed that the patient's CD45RO+ T cell population had a wide variety of T cell receptor Vbeta-chain gene usage, and contained few clonally expanded T cells, while many clonally expanded T cells were present in the memory T cell population of age-matched healthy children. These results suggest that various kinds of antigens were involved in the differentiation of the patient's T cells, and that the differentiation into memory T cells was not accompanied by profound T cell proliferation. Moreover, our findings confirmed that the patient's CD45RO+CD4+ T cells had acquired effector-cytokine producing ability, indicating that there exists an alternative activation pathway which is independent of ZAP-70 for the acquisition of effector-cytokine producing ability.