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Biomedical subjects

G E Allen

Publications and source records attributed to G E Allen.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Treatment of chronic varicose ulcers with pulsed electromagnetic fields: a controlled pilot study.

To evaluate the efficacy of pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) in healing of chronic varicose ulcers, 19 patients with this condition were included in a double-blind controlled clinical trial. All patients received standard ulcer therapy throughout the duration of the study and were randomly divided into two groups to receive either active or inactive PEMF therapy. Active therapy was provided by the use of a pait of helmholtz coils on a twice weekly basis over a five week period and inactive therapy was provided on an identical regimen with identical coils wound so that no magnetic field was produced when an electric current was passed through them. The clinician and patients were unable to distinguish the active or inactive coils. No statistically relevant difference was noted between the two groups in the healing rates of the ulcer, change in the lower leg girth, pain or infection rates. However there was a trend in favour of a decrease in ulcer size and lower leg girth in the group treated with active PEMF. As PEMF is a novel treatment for chronic varicose ulcers, more work needs to be done to establish treatment parameters and its usefulness in the treatment of this condition.

Aged

Eugenics and American social history, 1880-1950.

Eugenics, the attempt to improve the human species socially through better breeding was a widespread and popular movement in the United States and Europe between 1910 and 1940. Eugenics was an attempt to use science (the newly discovered Mendelian laws of heredity) to solve social problems (crime, alcoholism, prostitution, rebelliousness), using trained experts. Eugenics gained much support from progressive reform thinkers, who sought to plan social development using expert knowledge in both the social and natural sciences. In eugenics, progressive reformers saw the opportunity to attack social problems efficiently by treating the cause (bad heredity) rather than the effect. Much of the impetus for social and economic reform came from class conflict in the period 1880-1930, resulting from industrialization, unemployment, working conditions, periodic depressions, and unionization. In response, the industrialist class adopted firmer measures of economic control (abandonment of laissez-faire principles), the principles of government regulation (interstate commerce, labor), and the cult of industrial efficiency. Eugenics was only one aspect of progressive reform, but as a scientific claim to explain the cause of social problems, it was a particularly powerful weapon in the arsenal of class conflict at the time.

Attitude to Health

Human serum parvovirus associated vasculitis.

A 48 year old man had a severe symmetrical arthritis of knee and ankle joints accompanied by an extensive purpuric rash of both legs and several areas of skin necrosis. No other system was clinically involved. Human serum parvovirus-specific IgM was present in a blood sample taken 2 weeks after the onset of the clinical illness indicating recent infection with this virus. The patient was treated with complete bed rest, and the application of saline soaks to both legs. He had a recurrence of the rash 5 weeks after onset, but otherwise made a complete recovery. Purpura with skin necrosis has not previously been reported in association with this virus.

Arthritis

Surface IgM on lymphocytes from pregnant women.

Surface IgM on peripheral lymphocytes from pregnant women were passively acquired from autologous serum. These cytophilic IgM antibodies occurred as relatively large molecules, suggesting that they were in the form of complexes or aggregates. The lymphocytes involved were mainly B cells. It was postulated that the present findings could be a mechanism for the modulation of lymphocyte surface receptors by serum factors during pregnancy.

Female

Increase in IgM-bearing lymphocytes in peripheral blood of pregnant women.

Lymphocytes from peripheral blood of pregnant women were studied with the use of markers for membrane-bound immunoglobulins (B cells) and receptors for sheep erythrocytes (T cells). It was found that there was a significant increase in the number of IgM-bearing lymphocytes during pregnancy. This returned to normal levels after parturition.

Animals