It is known from former studies that psychiatric patients have a mortality rate higher than that of the general population. This cannot be explained by causes of death that may be specific of psychiatric illness (as suicide for example). The objective of our project is to find if there is such an over mortality in our population, to evaluate to what factors it is related and specially what are the causes of death.

Ambulatory Care↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Sudeck's dystrophy of the hand. MR imaging.

We report on Sudeck's dystrophy in a 69-year-old woman who complained of recurrent pain and local inflammation in the right hand. Magnetic resonance (MR) using T1- and T2-weighted images before and after intravenous administration of gadolinium diethylene-triamine pentaacetic acid demonstrated soft-tissue swelling, bone signal intensity changes in some carpals and metacarpals, and small effusions in the adjacent joints. MR imaging provides simultaneous assessment of bone and soft-tissue involvement, proving its value in the diagnosis of this entity.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The construction and cloning of synthetic genes coding for artificial proteins and expression studies to obtain fusion proteins.

Synthetic genes coding for artificial proteins with predefined and nutritionally valuable amino acid compositions have been constructed and cloned in bacterial plasmid vector pKK233-2. The genes were constructed from three easily interchangeable 'cassettes' encoding either essential, non-essential or branched-chain amino acid residues. A potential hairpin loop structure in the mRNA around the region of the ribosome binding site was probably the reason for blockage of translation from this vector. Two selected genes, AHB (containing one copy of each cassette) and A6 (consisting of six copies concatemerized A cassette) were cloned into pUR300, a beta-Gal fusion vector and expressed as fusion proteins beta-Gal-AHB and beta-Gal-A6.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The impact of clinical types of disease manifestation on the risk of early postoperative recurrence in Crohn's disease.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Surgery for Crohn's disease is frequently followed by symptomatic recurrence, which in up to 40% requires reoperation within 6 years. Whilst there is evidence that postoperative medical prophylaxis can be efficient, the results of clinical trials are inconsistent regarding the achieved benefit for the patient. Several parameters have been claimed to indicate an increased intrinsic risk of early surgical recurrence. METHODOLOGY: Patient charts of 287 patients who had undergone abdominal surgery for Crohn's disease were reviewed. Mean follow-up was 4.4 years. Recurrence-free intervals were calculated by the Kaplan-Meier method. A uni- and multivariate analysis was conducted to assess the impact of possible indicators of the need of repeated surgery. RESULTS: Patients with fistulizing type of symptoms, extraintestinal manifestations, corticosteroid treatment or male gender experienced significantly earlier reoperation. Recurrent disease, histologic evidence of inflamed resection margins, patient's age at the time of primary diagnosis and operation and the presence of epitheloid granulomas did not show significant influence on recurrence-free intervals. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the natural course of disease after intestinal resection in patients with one or more of these risk factors tends towards earlier recurrence requiring surgical intervention. The risk factors identified in this trial may be useful for patient stratification for randomized trials on the efficacy of medical prophylaxis.

Adult↗