Fifty years of confidential enquiries into maternal deaths in the United Kingdom: should anaesthesia celebrate or not?
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Anesthesia, Obstetrical↗
Biomedical subjects
John McClure
Publications and source records attributed to John McClure.
Schizophrenia, theory of mind, and persecutory delusions.
INTRODUCTION: There is already a substantial body of evidence supporting Frith's (1992) theory that theory of mind (ToM) is impaired in people with schizophrenia. However, a specific relationship between impaired ToM and paranoid delusions, while intuitively reasonable, has only been demonstrated in two studies to date. METHODS: A total of 25 participants with schizophrenia were classified as paranoid or nonparanoid and compared with 38 healthy controls on a variety of ToM tasks. These tasks included verbal and nonverbal, and first and second order ToM tasks. RESULTS: Participants with schizophrenia performed significantly more poorly than healthy controls on both the first and second order verbal ToM tasks but not on the nonverbal ToM tasks. However, the ToM deficit was only observed for those participants with schizophrenia who had persecutory delusions. There was also a strong relationship observed between the severity of persecutory delusions and length of illness. CONCLUSIONS: This study represents only the third demonstration of a specific link between paranoid delusions and ToM impairment. Reasons why previous findings on this issue have been so inconsistent are considered. Further research is needed to explore the relationships among paranoia, ToM, and length of illness.
Journal Article↗
Theory of mind in schizophrenia: a critical review.
INTRODUCTION: Frith's (1992) neuropsychological theory of schizophrenia posits a number of fundamental cognitive impairments underpinning the characteristic symptoms of this disorder. One of these is an impairment in the ability to correctly interpret and predict the mental states of other people, so-called theory of mind (ToM). There is already a substantial body of evidence that ToM is impaired in people with schizophrenia. Our aim was to critically review this literature. METHOD: A narrative review of the research literature was completed. Electronic searches of both Medline and PsycInfo were conducted to locate relevant articles. The bibliographies of relevant articles were scrutinised and in some cases researchers were contacted directly. RESULTS: A total of 30 studies that all examined some aspect of ToM in people with schizophrenia were located. These were summarised and key issues on this topic were identified. CONCLUSIONS: There is considerable evidence that ToM is impaired in people with schizophrenia. However, this is perhaps the only unequivocal finding on the topic to date. Issues that demand further clarification include: Is the deficit a state or a trait? How to measure ToM in schizophrenia research, and whether certain symptoms or groups of symptoms are associated with the ToM deficit. These issues are considered and the evidence evaluated. Some priorities for future research are suggested.
Journal Article↗
Surface scanning soft tissues.
We investigate and report a method of 3D virtual organ creation based on the RGB color laser surface scanning of preserved biological specimens. The surface attributes of these specimens result in signal degredation and increased scanning time. Despite these problems we are able to reproduce 3D virtual organs with both accurate topology and colour consistency capable of reproducing pathological lesions.
Color↗
Lectin histochemistry of normal human gastric mucosa.
Information about the saccharides expressed in gastric mucosa is mostly limited to the glycan content of gastric mucins and there are only a few studies of the glycoprofiling of the constituent cells and their components. Knowledge of the glycan expression of normal gastric mucosa is necessary for the interpretation of the significance of changes of expression in disease. lectin histochemical study of normal human gastric (body) mucosa was performed using 27 lectins chosen to probe for a wide range of oligosaccharide sequences within several categories of glycoprotein glycans. here were marked differences in staining reactions in the various microanatomical structures of the mucosa, particularly between pits and glands with the former more closely resembling the surface epithelium. A notable feature was the degree of difference in the staining between a substantial sub-population of cells within the neck region and the epithelium of both the pits and glands. These neck cells resembled the pit cells with some lectins, glandular cells with some others and neither with some other lectins. Overall, the differences between the pit, gland and neck epithelia were diverse and numerous, and could not be explained by altered activity of a small set of glycosyltransferases. Widespread alterations of glycans must have occurred (affecting terminal and internal parts of their structures) and the very different glycotypes of the pit, neck and gland epithelia are, therefore, suggestive of the existence of three cell lineages within normal gastric epithelium.
Cell Lineage↗
Lectin histochemistry of normal human lung.
This study aimed to identify and specify the glycotypes of cell populations in normal human lung including types I and II pneumocytes, alveolar macrophages and mast cells, and also in the larger tissue structures of lung, including blood vessels and bronchi/bronchioles, using lectin- and immuno-histochemistry on paraffin-embedded tissue from 11 normal cases. The alveolar macrophages were anti-CD68 positive whereas the cells lining the alveolar walls were positive for cytokeratins. The alveolar macrophages in normal lung tissues showed a broad spectrum of staining for different subsets of N-linked saccharides, N-acetylgalactosamine, N-acetylglucosamine, terminal beta-D-galactose and sialyl groups. This study showed that some lectins could be used as specific markers for some cell types i.e. Galanthus nivalis and Narcissus pseudonarcissus lectins for macrophages, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus lectin-II for capillary endothelium, Dolichos biflorus agglutinin for bronchial epithelial cells, Lycopersicon esculentum, Phytolacca americana or Triticum vulgaris (succinylated) for type I pneumocytes and Hippeastrum hybrid or Maclura pomifera lectins for type II pneumocytes. Patchy staining of type I pneumocytes by peanut agglutinin indicated the possibility of two distinct populations of these cells or a pattern of differentiation that is unapparent morphologically.
Carbohydrate Metabolism↗
Evaluation of the mechanical properties of human liver and kidney through aspiration experiments.
A proper mechanical characterization of soft biological tissues of the human body has a strong impact on several medical applications such as surgical planning, virtual reality simulators, trauma research, and for diagnostic purposes. Adequate experimental data are needed to describe quantitatively the mechanical behaviour of those organs. We present a technique for the acquisition of such data from soft tissues and its post processing, based on a continuum mechanics approach, to determine some parameters of the tissue's mechanical properties. A small tube is applied to the target organ and a weak vacuum is generated inside the tube according to a predefined pressure history. A video camera grabs images of the deformation profile of the aspirated tissue, and a pressure sensor measures the correspondent vacuum level. The images are processed and used to inform the fitting of uniaxial and continuum mechanics models. Whilst the aspiration test device is suitable for in vivo applications, under sterile conditions during open surgery, we hereby present first results obtained by testing cadaveric tissues.
Biomechanical Phenomena↗
Statistical adjustment of signal censoring in gene expression experiments.
MOTIVATION: Numerical output of spotted microarrays displays censoring of pixel intensities at some software dependent threshold. This reduces the quality of gene expression data, because it seriously violates the linearity of expression with respect to signal intensity. Statistical methods based on typically available spot summaries together with some parametric assumptions can suggest ways to correct for this defect. RESULTS: A maximum likelihood approach is suggested together with a sensible approximation to the joint density of the mean, median and variance-which are typically available to the biological end-user. The method 'corrects' the gene expression values for pixel censoring. A by-product of our approach is a comparison between several two-parameter models for pixel intensity values. It suggests that pixels separated by one or two other pixels can be considered independent draws from a Lognormal or a Gamma distribution. AVAILABILITY: The R/S-Plus code is available at http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/~microarray/software.
Algorithms↗
Children's views of hospitalization: an exploratory study of data collection.
Identifying children's views of their experience of hospitalization is essential to the development of appropriate services. Previous research has mainly concentrated on specific paediatric populations or negative aspects of their experience. This study had two aims. First, to investigate a broader range of experiences in a general paediatric population, and second, to determine the most effective way of obtaining the information. School-aged children (n = 213) from the paediatric wards of two district general hospitals completed one of four questionnaire types. The themes identified were generally positive and mainly related to the children's physical surroundings. A verbal structured questionnaire was found to be the most efficient at obtaining the children's views, whereas a visual structured questionnaire was the only method which recognized the children's sequence of feelings before, during and after hospitalization.
Adolescent↗