PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

M Hepburn

Publications and source records attributed to M Hepburn.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

Persistence of murine myeloid leukaemic cells in long-term bone marrow cultures.

Patterns of growth in long-term bone marrow culture were compared for a number of murine myeloid leukaemias. A leukaemic pattern of haematopoiesis was maintained in culture for a period of at least 15 weeks for one of the lines. However in the other five murine myeloid leukaemic lines studies, the leukaemic cells appeared not to survive in culture and normal haematopoiesis was established. Transplantation of cells from these established cultures at weeks 7 or 11 into syngeneic recipients revealed that leukaemic cells were present. Thus leukaemic cells seem to persist in long-term bone marrow cultures even in morphologically normal cultures.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

Social problems.

It has long been established that social deprivation adversely affects health, including that of the pregnant woman and her baby; it is therefore justifiable to use medical resources in the treatment of social problems. Antenatal inpatient care was originally seen as potentially beneficial for women without major medical problems, but such a philosophy is not reflected in current practice. Current antenatal outpatient services do not address the needs of women with social problems who, viewing such services as hostile, may fail to attend. Special services such as help with drugs problems or HIV counselling or screening may be rejected from fear of prejudice and consequent repercussions. Such prejudice often arises because staff do not fully understand the issues involved. Antenatal care for women with social problems should consider women in the context of their families and social environment and should be provided by a small number of familiar staff forming part of an integrated multidisciplinary team in close and regular contact. Antenatal admission, if it is the woman's wish, should be viewed as justified in the management of social problems; conversely, women should not be pressurized into admission or made to feel guilty if unable to comply. Outpatient antenatal services should be conveniently sited in the community close to other relevant services and should be flexible, not only in terms of organization and format, but also in the roles of the participants. They should be comprehensive, but with special services in addition to, not instead of, routine care, and provided by a team of appropriately trained staff. In the provision of antenatal care for women with social needs, no single format will be universally applicable or desirable, and the precise design and content of the service should be variable according to local requirements and should take account of the women's wishes as well as their needs. Ultimately it will only be if the women perceive the service as being in their interests and as meeting their needs that they will use it; only if they choose to use it, will it have any chance of success.

Community Health Services↗
PubMed1987

Transplantation and morphological studies of primary and passaged murine radiation-induced myeloid leukaemias.

Myeloid leukaemia can be induced reproducibly in CBA/H male mice following X-irradiation. After serial passage of the leukaemic cells into syngeneic recipients, they grow faster and require fewer cells for a take. Transplantation of primary leukaemias requires high cell doses unlike passaged lines derived from them. Passaging at low cell doses retains their primary-like growth and morphological properties. It would seem that these low cell dose passages may be a more useful model which can be used for investigating the biology and therapeutic responses of myeloid leukaemia than routinely passaged cell lines.

Animals↗
PubMed1986

An audit of the detection and management of small-for-gestational age babies.

The detection and management of small-for-gestational age babies (SGA) was assessed in a case record review of 1302 randomly selected pregnancies. Of the 129 babies with birthweights below the 10th centile for gestational age, 34 (26%) were identified antenatally. For every two correctly identified SGA babies there were three false positive predictions. In-patient monitoring and early elective delivery occurred both in the correctly identified pregnancies (24%) and in the false positives (12%). The management of suspected pregnancies bore no apparent relation to test results and appeared arbitrary. Mortality and morbidity, as measured by nursery admission for greater than 48 h and retention in the nursery after the mother's discharge, were higher in SGA babies than in the hospital population as a whole. The number of ill babies was small, however, reflecting the heterogeneous aetiology of small size for gestational age. Moreover, antenatal detection had little influence on these measures of outcome. It is concluded that tests for detection of SGA babies remain imprecise in practice, gestational weight alone correlates poorly with fetal well-being, and the need remains for sensitive tests to detect babies with genuine morbidity.

Birth Weight↗
PubMed1984

Merits of an individualized approach to fetal movement counting compared with fixed-time and fixed-number methods.

The most commonly employed methods for maternal counting of fetal movements take no account of variation in the level of activity between fetuses. This may result in false alarms or prolonged counting in pregnancies in which perceived movements are infrequent. A new counting method is described in which an individualized hourly rate of perceived movements is first calculated for each patient; then, the time taken to feel this number is recorded each day for the remainder of the pregnancy. The new system is associated with a substantially lower false alarm rate than a system of counting for an hour and continuing for a second hour if the level is low. In comparison with the Cardiff 'count-to-10' method, the amount of time spent counting each day was more uniform and was halved overall. Although this system is more complicated to initiate these clear advantages suggest that it should be subjected to large-scale feasibility trials.

Female↗