The importance of two-step tuberculin skin testing for newly employed healthcare workers.

At the time of hire, 4059 of 6522 healthcare workers required a 2-step tuberculin skin test; 114 workers (2.8%) demonstrated a boosted reaction after the second step. Boosted reactions were significantly associated with male sex and older age. A verbal history of previous tuberculin skin test results was not a reliable indicator of baseline tuberculin skin test status at the time of hire.     

Prognostic value of Doppler ultrasound blood flow measurements in the anterior cerebral artery of premature infants

The relationships between doppler-sonographic determination of systolic, diastolic flow velocity and pulsation index in the A. cerebri anterior and developmental outcome at 12 month of age were studied by means of multivariate variance and discriminance analysis. The study involves 92 preterm infants, in whom flow measurement were performed in the first 3 days and the second week of life. The influence of additional perinatal risk factors like Apgar score, blood gas values and type of intensive care were taken in consideration: Doppler-sonographic flow parameters were found to be necessary coefficients of statistically significant discriminant functions, which differentiate between infants with normal or delayed psycho-motoric development or cerebral palsy. However, in comparison to the other risk factors their weight for differentiation is low. Parameters of immediate postnatal adaptation like apgar score and blood gas values decide quality of developmental outcome in infants with as well as without ultrasonographically proven neonatal brain damage. In infants with neonatal ventricular hemorrhages only a distinct influence of immaturity was observed additionally.     

Personality and sexual anomalies

Test properties of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) were examined in a sample of 419 sex offenders and controls in three different settings. The offender group included sexual aggressives, pedophiles, incest perpetrators and miscellaneous cases. Nineteen of the 20 scales of the MCMI had alpha reliability over 0.60 and for 13 scales it was over 0.80. The scales showed satisfactory discriminant validity from age but 9 scales showed a moderate influence of intelligence scores and education. Criminal history did not influence scale results. The scales unfortunately did show significant correlations with MMPI validity scales. Although the scales were not susceptible to naive lying, they were influenced by social desirability especially. Four factors were extracted in principal axes factor analysis that accounted for 91.2% of the total variance. The first factor explained 58.2% of the variance and was labeled general psychopathology. The other three factors suggested psychotic tendencies, extraversion and the bipolar dependency-antisocial tendencies. When the groups were compared, almost all scales significantly differentiated them. When the MMPI F-K Scale was forced to enter a stepwise discriminant analysis first, five scales still were significant; Narcissistic, Schizoid-Asocial, Alcohol Abuse, Paranoid, & Dependent-Submissive scales. The MCMI taps important dimensions in sex offenders but suffers from validity problems.     

Cardiomyopathy associated with Leigh's disease

Summary Clinical and postmortem findings in a female infant, suffering from Leigh's disease and cardiomegaly are described. The cardiac enlargement was due to symmetrical thickening of both ventricular walls and the septum. On light microscopy a widespread fibre disarray with a slight predilection for the ventricular septum was observed. Ultrastructural changes included an extreme reduction in the number of myofibrils and an excess of mitochondria. Abnormalities of the mitochondrial structure with tubular and myelinic transformation of the cristae suggested that a mitochondriopathy is responsible for the cardiomegaly in Leigh's disease.Dedicated to Prof. Dr. Waldemar Hort on the occasion to his 60th birthday     

Dissolution processes and surface alteration. 4. Determination of the "effective" surface

A method is described for measuring the "effective" surface of a drug by means of dissolution parameters using the Paddle-model or a resorption-model respectively. The obtained values were compared with the specific surface which was determined by BET-technique. The "effective" surfaces obtained by means of the dissolution parameters are smaller than those determined BET-technique.     

MYC inhibition induces metabolic changes leading to accumulation of lipid droplets in tumor cells

The MYC genes are the most frequently activated oncogenes in human tumors and are hence attractive therapeutic targets. MYCN amplification leads to poor clinical outcome in childhood neuroblastoma, yet strategies to modulate the function of MYCN do not exist. Here we show that 10058-F4, a characterized c-MYC/Max inhibitor, also targets the MYCN/Max interaction, leading to cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, and neuronal differentiation in MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma cells and to increased survival of MYCN transgenic mice. We also report the discovery that inhibition of MYC is accompanied by accumulation of intracellular lipid droplets in tumor cells as a direct consequence of mitochondrial dysfunction. This study expands on the current knowledge of how MYC proteins control the metabolic reprogramming of cancer cells, especially highlighting lipid metabolism and the respiratory chain as important pathways involved in neuroblastoma pathogenesis. Together our data support direct MYC inhibition as a promising strategy for the treatment of MYC-driven tumors.     

Design and Evaluation of a Self-Care Educational Activity as a Student Learning Experience

Objective. To design an educational activity and evaluate its effectiveness on increasing third-year pharmacy students’ knowledge and confidence to recommend self-care products to patients.Design. Faculty members created a self-care activity, the Amazing Self-Care Race, for educational use in a pharmaceutical care laboratory course. Student teams worked competitively to complete 15 stations focused on self-care. A complex, real-world case was presented at each station. Student recommendations were presented to a facilitator. Prior to and following the activity, students were invited to complete an online anonymous survey instrument.Assessment. Eighty-six students completed presurvey and postsurvey instruments to assess their knowledge and perceived confidence to recommend a self-care product to a patient prior to and following participation in the Amazing Self-Care Race. Students demonstrated a significant increase in their ability and confidence to recommend self-care products following the activity (p<0.001).Conclusion. The Amazing Self-Care Race is an effective educational activity that increases student knowledge and confidence in self-care therapeutics. The activity helped students to develop self-care skills, enabled them to learn through doing, encouraged them to synthesize information while making self-care recommendations, and helped them to develop confidence by thinking on their feet.