Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C Slater.
We describe two brothers with identical inherited deletions of one single exon within the middle of the DMD gene; one brother has Becker muscular dystrophy diagnosed at 11 years of age, whereas the older brother is normal at 18. These results have implications for genetic counselling and prenatal diagnosis in families with Becker muscular dystrophy.
Skin biopsies of café-au-lait macules from 34 patients with a clinical diagnosis of classical neurofibromatosis were examined histologically and ultrastructurally to determine the presence or absence of macromelanosomes in the epidermal melanocytes and keratinocytes. Sixteen of the 34 patients had macromelanosomes. The presence of macromelanosomes varied with age and ethnic background; they were detected in nine of 12 Whites, six of 10 persons of mixed ancestry, and one of two Blacks. In these populations skin biopsy is useful in early diagnosis of neurofibromatosis. However, none of 10 persons of Indian stock had macromelanosomes. Their total absence in this group may be indicative of genetic heterogeneity.
A prospective clinical and microbiological survey of 213 children who presented to the teaching hospitals of the Cape Peninsula with meningitis was performed during a winter month. The predominant bacterium isolated was Neisseria meningitidis and this survey uncovered an outbreak of viral meningitis due to echovirus 4 of the Du Toit strain. In comparison with previous studies, the absence of fever in 20% of the cases of meningococcal disease and the isolation of N. meningitidis group B organisms which were resistant to sulphonamides are noted. Cases of N. meningitidis meningitis with initial clinical and cerebrospinal fluid findings indistinguishable from those in echovirus 4 meningitis are presented to emphasize the difficulties encountered in making a differential diagnosis. We recommend that in endemic areas all children with meningitis should be observed in hospital for at least 48 hours until the diagnosis of N. meningitidis has been excluded bacteriologically.
The demand for health is estimated for black and white males in the pre-retirement years using data from the first wave of 1966 National Longitudinal Survey of men aged 45-59. This survey includes direct measures of the wage rate and family assets. Findings for whites generally corroborate Grossman's initial estimates of the demand for health. In contrast to whites, blacks show a much stronger wage effect and a significant positive effect of wife's education, with no other factors being significant. The issue of reverse causality between the wage and health is addressed via a simultaneous equations health-wage model. Contrary to expected, but consistent with previous findings, the structural model yielded an even larger wage effect.
An alpha-tubulin gene of Leishmania enriettii has been identified in genomic Southern blots by hybridization with a heterologous alpha-tubulin gene from Drosophila melanogaster. A clone containing this gene has been isolated from a plasmid library of size-selected L. enriettii DNA. It was identified by hybridization with the D. melanogaster tubulin gene. The cloned DNA fragment was characterized by restriction analysis and partial DNA sequence analysis. The cloned DNA fragment is 2 kb in length, bounded by Pst I sites, and appears to contain the entire coding region of the alpha-tubulin gene.
The plasmid-determined mer operon, which provides resistance to inorganic mercury compounds, was subject to a 2.5-fold decrease in expression when glucose was administered at the same time as the inducer HgCl2. This glucose-mediated transient repression of the operon was overcome by the addition of cyclic AMP. Permanent catabolite repression of the operon was observed in the 1.6- to 1.9-fold decrease in expression in mutants lacking either adenyl cyclase (cya) or the catabolite activator protein (crp). The effect of the cya mutation on mer expression could be overcome by the addition of cyclic AMP at the time of induction, In addition to these effects on the whole cells of a wild-type strains, we examined the effect of catabolite repression on the expression of the mercuric ion [Hg(II)] reductase enzyme, assayable in cell extracts, and on the Hg(II) uptake system, assayable in a mutant strain which lacked reductase activity. There was a two- to threefold effect of repression on the Hg(II) reductase enzyme assayable in vitro after induction under catabolite repressing conditions (either with glucose or in the crp and cya mutants). We did not find a similar repressing effect on the induction of the Hg(II) uptake system, which is also determined by the mer operon.
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The rise in ischemic heart disease in the U.S. after 1920 has been described in the literature both as a 20th century epidemic and as an artifact of the decline of competing causes of death, particularly the infectious, parasitic and diarrheal diseases. Shifting medical terminology and occasional major revisions in cause of death codes have aggravated efforts to resolve the debate. Through regression analysis and ordinary and cause-deleted life tables we trace the course of the disease. The accumulated evidence points to a major epidemic but one largely confined to males. Reversals in patterns are now beginning.
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Health promotion has become an official health policy of this country, and it is being pursued through efforts to change individuals' health-related behavior. This approach is based on the assumption that it is in fact an individual's behavior that most directly determines his or her health status. But how good is the evidence that supports this assumption? Specifically, is the evidence sufficient for this assumption to outweigh the long-standing finding that social and economic conditions have a strong relationship to health status? The major support for the behavior approach derives from the coronary heart disease risk-factor studies and the Alameda County Study. In a series of reports over time, the relationship between individuals' health practices and their health status generally, as well as that between heart disease and cancer specifically, have been established by these studies. These observations, however, have not been confirmed when deliberate efforts have been made to change those practices. The evidence in support of the importance of social and economic conditions to health status has been documented through a long series of studies in this country, which have found a direct relationship between individuals' socioeconomic status and their health status. This relationship, however, has not in this country been tested by intervention. Only a few studies have examined the interrelationship between these two approaches to health promotion, but the evidence to date has failed to suggest that either one is the mediator of the other. We must, therefore, conclude that pursuing a policy of health promotion based on either approach to the exclusion of the other would indeed be short-sighted health policy.