Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Harmatz.
Approximately 150,000 new cases of colon cancer are diagnosed each year, and the mortality rate continues to be greater than 50% of those diagnosed. Screening for colon cancer should be part of the routine health maintenance program of the primary physician. Use of history, physical examination, and sigmoidoscopy is part of a complete program. Colonoscopic removal of polyps reduces cancer risk.
Several hepatobiliary disorders may be associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). These various disease states can be diagnosed before, concomitant with, or after the diagnosis of IBD is made. This article describes these disorders, clinical features, evaluation, and possible treatment.
Endoscopic laser therapy has become an important and widely used tool in gastroenterology. It has become important for outpatient palliative therapy for ablating obstructing gastrointestinal neoplasms. This method has often circumvented the need for major palliative surgical resections. Caution must be applied to laser therapy for potentially curable malignant neoplasms because, with vaporization of the target tissue, no tissue specimen is available to assure that local or invasive residual carcinoma is excluded. Therefore, in good surgical candidates, surgical resection of potentially curable cancers is always recommended. In the future, however, the combination of refined endoscopic ultrasonography and laser fluorescence techniques may lead to earlier detection, more precise localization, and even curative ablation of gastrointestinal malignancy.
A computerized data base for collecting information on patients with pressure ulcers was developed following a review of selected literature including Allman (1986), Bergstrom (1987), Barbenel (1977), Reichert (1986), Black (1987) and others. The data base was piloted, revised, and used for data collection on 103 patients admitted to two hospitals. Standardized data allowed for correlations of spinal cord injury (SCI) and location of pressure ulcers. Sacral ulcers were more prevalent with patients who had SCI at C4-T1 while ischial ulcers were more common with SCI at T11-L1. Some of the other correlations differ from prior research and warrant further investigation with a larger sample size from multiple institutions.
hr-t mutants of polyomavirus are defective in virus growth as well as in cell transformation, and have genetic alterations that invariably affect both the middle and small T proteins. We have examined the growth properties of three site-directed mutants that either eliminate or alter the middle T without affecting the small T protein. Mutant 808A encodes large and small T proteins but no middle T; it grew poorly in NIH 3T3 cells. In contrast, mutants 1387T and 1178T which express altered middle T along with normal large and small T proteins grew nearly as well as wild-type virus. Thus, although the altered middle T proteins encoded by 1387T and 1178T are defective for cell transformation, they retained the ability to induce expression of a cellular permissivity factor(s) required for virus production. At the biochemical level, the induction of permissivity by middle T was manifested primarily in terms of phosphorylation of VP1 on threonine and in efficient encapsidation of viral DNA to form infectious virus. The natural role of middle T involves regulation of phosphorylation events, and can be enacted, at least in part, independently of interactions with pp60c-src.