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.     

Treatment of the anemia of rheumatoid arthritis with recombinant human erythropoietin: clinical and in vitro studies

Two anemic patients with rheumatoid arthritis were treated with recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) for 5 months. Both patients showed significant increases in hematocrit, red cell volumes, and marrow erythroid and megakaryocyte progenitor cells. No significant toxic effects from EPO were observed. These data indicate that EPO may be effective in overcoming the pathogenetic factors that limit erythropoiesis in rheumatoid arthritis.     

Polycythemia vera. II. Hypersensitivity of bone marrow erythroid, granulocyte-macrophage, and megakaryocyte progenitor cells to interleukin-3 and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor.

Polycythemia vera (PV) is a clonal disease of the hematopoietic stem cell characterized by a hyperplasia of marrow erythropoiesis, granulocytopoiesis, and megakaryocytopoiesis. We previously reported that highly purified PV blood burst-forming units-erythroid (BFU-E) are hypersensitive to recombinant human interleukin-3 (rIL-3). Because these cells may be only a subset, and not representative of marrow progenitors, we have now studied partially purified marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells. Dose-response experiments with PV marrow BFU-E showed a 38-fold increase in sensitivity to rIL-3 and a 4.3-fold increase in sensitivity to recombinant human erythropoietin (rEpo) compared with normal marrow BFU-E. In addition, PV marrow colony-forming units-granulocyte-macrophage (CFU-GM) and CFU-megakaryocyte (CFU-MK) also showed a marked hypersensitivity to rIL-3 and to human recombinant granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rGM-CSF). Dose-response curves with rGM-CSF and blood BFU-E showed a 48-fold increase in sensitivity. No effect of rIL-4, rIL-6, human recombinant granulocyte-CSF (rG-CSF), or macrophage-CSF (rM-CSF) was evident, nor was there any effect of PV cell-conditioned medium on normal BFU-E, when compared with normal cell-conditioned medium. Autoradiography with 125I-rEpo showed an increase in Epo receptors after maturation of PV BFU-E to CFU-E similar to that shown with normal BFU-E, but no increase of specific binding of 125I-rIL-3 by PV CD34+ cells was seen compared with normal CD34+ cells. These studies show that PV marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells are hypersensitive to rIL-3 and rGM-CSF, similar to PV blood BFU-E. While the mechanism does not appear to be due to enhanced binding of rIL-3, the hypersensitivity of PV progenitor cells to IL-3 and GM-CSF may be a key factor in the pathogenesis of PV.     

The effect of temporal adverbials on past tense production by children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often fail to produce past tense forms in obligatory contexts, although the factors affecting such inconsistency are not well understood. This study examined the influence of accompanying temporal adverbials (e.g., just, already) on the past tense production of these children. METHOD: Fifteen preschool-aged children with SLI, 15 typically developing children matched for age (TD-A) and 15 younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU) participated in the study. The children responded to probes that obligated the use of past tense forms. The verbal context provided by the experimenter for half of the items included a temporal adverbial. RESULTS: Overall, the SLI and TD-MLU groups produced past tense less frequently than the children in the TD-A group, and there were no significant differences between the SLI and the TD-MLU groups. However, both the SLI and the TD-MLU participants produced past tense forms less frequently when temporal adverbials were included than when they were absent. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the tendency to use past tense by the children with SLI and their younger MLU-matched peers may not have been independent of other types of temporal information.     

Increasing incidence of coeliac disease in Sweden.

Changes in the incidence of coelic disease was studied among children born in Göteborg, Sweden, between 1970 and 1988. A total of 188 patients with coeliac disease were found. Of these, 83% were less than 2 years old at the time of their first duodenal biopsy and 74% of them have so far been verified according to the criteria of the European Society for Gastroenterology and Nutrition (ESPGAN). The cumulative incidence at 2 years of age/1000 liveborn infants increased significantly from 0.31 in the first birth cohort to 2.93 in the last. This increase could only partly be explained by improvements in detection. Weight for age at diagnosis was generally considerably below the reference value, but was slightly less affected towards the end of the period. The increase in incidence of coeliac disease is the first reported since the middle 1970s and makes the disease one of the most common chronic diseases among Swedish children.     

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