Biomedical subjects

C Ireland

Publications and source records attributed to C Ireland.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1997

Multiple centrosomal microtubule organising centres and increased microtubule stability are early features of VP-16-induced apoptosis in CCRF-CEM cells.

Microtubular reorganisation contributing to apoptotic morphology occurs in normal and neoplastic cells undergoing apoptosis induced by cytotoxic drugs [1-3]. The aim of this study was to correlate the changes in the microtubules (MTs) with behavior of the centrosome in apoptotic cells, and to see whether post-translational changes in tubulin occurred with the emergence of apoptotic MT bands. Apoptosis was induced in the human T-cell leukaemia line (CCRF-CEM) by treatment with 17 microM etoposide over a 4 h period. The time course of changes was assessed using flow cytometry (FCM) and immunocytochemistry in cells labelled for a centrosomal antigen (CSP-alpha) or alpha-tubulins. One hour following treatment we observed multiple centrosomal microtubule organising centres (MTOCs) associated with the nucleus and the transient appearance of a subset of stable MTs detected with an antibody specific for acetylated alpha-tubulin, as the bands of MTs which lobulate the nucleus are formed. The altered properties of the MTs thus reflect changes in function as apoptosis progresses.

Antigens↗

PubMed1997

Benchmarking in home care.

Recognizing that continuous quality improvement will be imperative for success in the future, six visiting nurse associations of northwestern Pennsylvania used benchmarking as a tool to improve their respective agencies' performance. The agencies benchmarked three areas: continuity of care, patient rehospitalization, and nosocomial infection rate.

Continuity of Patient Care↗

PubMed1996

Time to talk: counselling for people with dysphasia.

In this small-scale qualitative study, 20 dysphasic people, including some with severe language impairments, were offered up to 20 sessions of individual counselling. The trained counsellors were a speech and language therapist and a teacher who had personal experience of dysphasia. The paper describes how the service was set up, and how it was evaluated through the use of interviews before, during and after the process of counselling. In general, participants valued the service and a number of positive outcomes were described. Negative reactions were largely due to problems with the setting, timing and organization of the counselling and to the presence of social problems which could not be addressed through counselling. A number of recommendations for setting up a counselling service for people with dysphasia can be drawn from this study. These are discussed in this paper, together with the issues arising from the collaboration between dysphasic and non-dysphasic researchers.

Adult↗

PubMed1986

Data quality in a distributed data processing system: the SHEP Pilot Study.

The Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program (SHEP) Pilot was a collaborative clinical trial that distributed to the clinics all data processing tasks except for randomization assignment codes and morbidity and mortality data. The clinics used customized programs to enter and verify data interactively, to maintain their own local master files, and to transmit the data electronically to the Coordinating Center. We measured quality control based on criteria from centralized as well as distributed models: the error rate for baseline forms was 0.5 per 1000 items. Ninety-eight percent of the forms were query-free, and a central reentry of the data in a 5% sample yielded a miskey rate of 2 per 1000 items. The potential problems of distributed data processing are vulnerability of the local master files and the time demands on Coordinating Center programmers for maintaining clinic computer systems. The advantages are the active involvement of clinic staff in their own quality control, the functional accessibility of the clinics to the Coordinating Center in controlling protocol decisions and data monitoring, and the level of accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of the data that can be achieved.

Aged↗

PubMed1986