Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R Paton.
District nursing is facing a period of significant change, and it is up to the profession to enure this is a positive thing. A trip to Sweden gave one nurse the chance to learn from a different system, and to see the strengths of our own.
The interactions of ciprofloxacin and teicoplanin were investigated against methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Staph. epidermidis isolated during a clinical trial of the efficacy of this combination. In-vitro studies of the combination of ciprofloxacin and teicoplanin found no evidence of any antagonism between these two drugs in terms of inhibition of bacterial multiplication, as determined by Fractional Inhibitory Concentration Indices, and lethality. Clinical use of teicoplanin plus ciprofloxacin as empirical therapy in 29 febrile neutropenic patients revealed an overall response rate of 75%. Response rate for staphylococcal infections, which accounted for 53% of isolated pathogens, was 80%. No serious adverse drug reactions were seen. Our results show that both in vitro, and in the treatment of febrile neutropenic patients, teicoplanin plus ciprofloxacin is an effective anti-staphylococcal combination.
Entrapment of the popliteal vessels is reported to be rare. Lack of knowledge of this entity may result in a low reported incidence. To help wider appreciation and early recognition of this condition, we report five cases of popliteal vessel entrapment and discuss the associated features.
Zidovudine-resistant Escherichia coli were isolated from faecal samples from 6 out of 11 AIDS patients receiving zidovudine. Resistance appeared to be due to the loss of thymidine kinase activity which is required for the phosphorylation of zidovudine to its active form. No zidovudine resistant enterobacteria were isolated from 30 control faecal samples. Hence, clinically, there appeared to be a high correlation between the development of zidovudine-resistance in E. coli and exposure to zidovudine (chi 2: 11.77, P less than 0.001). However the development of zidovudine resistance does not appear to be associated with cross-resistance to other antimicrobial agents as the zidovudine-resistant E. coli did not display a high degree of resistance to other antibacterials.
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Aircraft disinsection with aerosol insecticides during flight has generally been held to be inadvisable because it was assumed that the insecticides would be rapidly removed by the cabin air-conditioning system. We have developed protocols to deliver 2% d-phenothrin at a dose of 35 g per 100 m3 in various aircraft, and trials undertaken on Boeing 747 and 767 aircraft showed that their air-conditioning systems do not preclude effective disinsection. Mortality levels of 100% for Culex quinquefasciatus and Musca domestica test insects were recorded under normal operating conditions during routine scheduled passenger flights with disinsection procedures undertaken at "blocks-away" or at "top-of-descent". As a result, "top-of-descent" disinsection has been introduced as the recommended procedure for aircraft landing in Australia.
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A 62 year old male presented with polymyalgia rheumatica and an abdominal aortic aneurysm. The aneurysm was resected and histological examination disclosed necrotizing giant-cell arteritis. This association seems to be unique.
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Large simulations of bacterial colonies require huge amounts of computational time, the only way to achieve the necessary level of performance is with parallel computers and a suitably designed implementation that maps the problem onto the hardware. For real problems this mapping can be a non-trivial problem requiring careful consideration of the constraints in both the system being modelled and the hardware that executes that model. Here we describe an implementation of a system for modelling bacterial evolution that encompasses many physical scales. This system is composed entirely of individual entities all playing out a complex series of interactions. These individuals exist at the scale of the population of bacterial and at the gene product scale. This paper reports that it is possible to map a dynamic problem such as this onto fixed resources, for the most part making use of implicit multiplexing of resources provided by the OS and partitioning the problem to reduce communication time. Through this an efficient simulation can be created, making maximal use of the available hardware without constraining the model to require excessively specific resources.