Vesicular pityriasis rosea: response to erythromycin treatment

Pityriasis rosea (PR) is a relatively common disease although its aetiology has not yet been identified. It occurs worldwide and there is no racial susceptibility factor. It usually affects teenagers and young adults between 10 and 35 years of age. Typical PR is much easier to diagnose than the rare atypical forms. We report a rare case of vesicular PR in a black woman who had vesicular lesions limited to her palms and soles in addition to regular typical lesions. We devised an efficient oral erythromycin treatment for this patient.     

The recognition of emotional expression in prosopagnosia: decoding whole and part faces.

Prosopagnosia is currently viewed within the constraints of two competing theories of face recognition, one highlighting the analysis of features, the other focusing on configural processing of the whole face. This study investigated the role of feature analysis versus whole face configural processing in the recognition of facial expression. A prosopagnosic patient, SC made expression decisions from whole and incomplete (eyes-only and mouth-only) faces where features had been obscured. SC was impaired at recognizing some (e.g., anger, sadness, and fear), but not all (e.g., happiness) emotional expressions from the whole face. Analyses of his performance on incomplete faces indicated that his recognition of some expressions actually improved relative to his performance on the whole face condition. We argue that in SC interference from damaged configural processes seem to override an intact ability to utilize part-based or local feature cues.     

Cardiac surgery for patients aged 65 years and older: a long term survival analysis.

Between January 1973 and December 1984, 562 patients aged greater than or equal to 65 had cardiac surgery at Papworth Hospital. Most had mitral or aortic valve replacements (coronary artery bypass grafting was not introduced for this age group at Papworth until 1977). The overall operative mortality, defined as death within thirty days or death before leaving hospital, was 7.3%. There were no early deaths in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. Questionnaires sent to general practitioners in East Anglia traced 86.0% of the patients who survived to leave hospital. The longer term survival rates for all patients were 88.0%. (95% confidence interval (CI) 85 to 91) at one year and 74.4% (95% CI 69 to 79) at five years. The rates for those patients who survived the initial few months were 96.3% (95% CI 94 to 98) at one year and 81.5% (95% CI 77 to 86) at five years and these rates were no different from those in the general population aged greater than or equal to 65.     

环孢菌素A阻断人HL－60抗药性细胞于G_1期而诱导敏感细胞凋亡

进一步研究了抗三尖杉酯碱的ＨＬ－６０细胞（ＨＲ２０）抗细胞凋亡的机制及该抗性和抗药性的关系。结果表明，环孢菌素Ａ（ＣｓＡ）２０，１０μｇ·ｍｌ￣（－１）诱导ＨＬ－６０细胞发生凋亡，而阻断ＨＲ２０细胞于Ｇ＿１期，就不能诱导细胞发生凋亡。低浓度的ＣｓＡ明显增加柔红霉素在ＨＲ２０细胞内的积聚，其逆转抗药性作用与阻断细胞周期运行无关。ＣｓＡ１０μｇ·ｍｌ￣（－１）处理ＨＲ２０细胞，可引起５０ｋＤａ的蛋白质高度磷酸化。结果提示：环孢菌素Ａ阻断抗三尖杉酯碱的ＨＬ－６０细胞于Ｇ＿１期，而诱导敏感的ＨＬ－６０细胞发生凋亡，其阻断作用与抗药性无关     

Models of face recognition and delusional misidentification: a critical review

The "two-route model of face recognition" proposed by Bauer (1984) and adopted by Ellis and Young (1990), has become a widely accepted model in studies of face processing disorders, including both prosopagnosia and the delusional misidentification syndromes. We review the origin and application of the two-route model of face recognition in examining both the neuroanatomical pathways and the cognitive pathways to face recognition. With respect to the neuroanatomy, we conclude that face recognition is subserved by a single pathway, the ventral visual pathway, as there is no evidence to suggest that the dorsal visual pathway is capable of visual recognition or of providing an affective response to familiar stimuli. We demonstrate how operation of the ventral visual pathway and its connections to the amygdala can parsimoniously account for the findings in the literature on prosopagnosia and delusional misidentification syndromes. In addition, we propose a cognitive model of face processing stemming from the work of Bruce and Young (1986). Our model involves two pathways subsequent to the system responsible for face recognition: one pathway to a system containing semantic and biographical information about the seen face, and a second pathway to a system responsible for the generation of an affective response to faces that are familiar. We demonstrate how this cognitive model can explain the dissociations between overt and covert recognition observed in prosopagnosia and the Capgras delusion.     

Quantitative culture of endocervical Chlamydia trachomatis.

We examined the number of Chlamydia trachomatis inclusions produced in the initial passage of cell cultures of endocervical specimens from 1,231 women with positive chlamydial cultures who attended a sexually transmitted diseases clinic. Youth, white race, oral contraceptive use, and concurrent infection by Neisseria gonorrhoeae were associated with high chlamydial inclusion counts. Youth, white race, and oral contraceptive use were independent determinants of a high chlamydial inclusion count in women without concurrent gonorrhea but not in women with gonorrhea. Results of our study suggest that the degree of chlamydial excretion from the infected cervix may be influenced by characteristics of the patient being tested and may affect the ability to detect C. trachomatis in different patient groups.