Biomedical subjects

T Craig

Publications and source records attributed to T Craig.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1992

Vocal cord dysfunction during wartime.

Vocal cord dysfunction (VCD) often masquerades as asthma. The diagnosis is rarely suspected, but should be considered in cases of asthma that present atypically or that fail to respond to standard therapy. The frequency of VCD would be expected to increase during times of stress, including periods of war, since it is thought to be a conversion reaction. A high level of suspicion for VCD is essential to make the diagnosis so as to avoid unnecessary, potentially toxic medications and to direct the patient to prompt psychiatric care, which along with speech therapy, is the cornerstone of care.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Training general practitioners to teach psychiatric interviewing skills: an evaluation of group training.

Group teaching in problem-based interviewing based on video and audiotape feedback of the doctor's own consultations significantly improved the ability of experienced general practitioners to teach psychiatric skills to their trainees. When the GPs were randomly allocated to one of three further training experiences--video feedback of their tutorial sessions, discussion about how to teach and no further teaching, there were very few differences between the groups. The greatest impact on improving teaching skills was brought about by watching their own consultations in a group feedback setting.

Clinical Competence↗

PubMed1990

Analysis of the molecular basis of calmodulin defects that affect ion channel-mediated cellular responses: site-specific mutagenesis and microinjection.

The ability of microinjected calmodulin to temporarily restore an ion channel-mediated behavioral phenotype of a calmodulin mutant in Paramecium tetraurelia (cam1) is dependent on the amino acid side chain that is present at residue 101, even when there is extensive variation in the rest of the amino acid sequence. Analysis of conservation of serine-101 in calmodulin suggests that the ability of calmodulin to regulate this ion channel-associated cell function may be a biological role of calmodulin that is widely distributed phylogenetically. A series of mutant calmodulins that differ only at residue-101 were produced by in vitro site-specific mutagenesis and expression in Escherichia coli, purified to chemical homogeneity, and tested for their ability to temporarily restore a wild-type behavioral phenotype to cam1 (pantophobiacA1) Paramecium. Calmodulins with glycine-101 or tyrosine-101 had minimal activity; calmodulins with phenylalanine-101 or alanine-101 had no detectable activity. However, as a standard of comparison, all of the calmodulins were able to activate a calmodulin-regulated enzyme, myosin light chain kinase, that is sensitive to point mutations elsewhere in the calmodulin molecule. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that the structural features of calmodulin required for the transduction of calcium signals varies with the particular pathway that is being regulated and provide insight into why inherited mutations of calmodulin at residue 101 are nonlethal and selective in their phenotypic effects.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

PubMed1988

Functional abdominal pain, psychiatric illness, and life events.

Patients undergoing appendicectomy, attending a gastroenterology clinic or admitted to hospital after self-poisoning have been examined using the same reliable measures to establish whether life events and psychiatric illness preceded abdominal pain. Life events involving threat were experienced more commonly by those with organic and functional abdominal illness, compared with community comparison subjects. The greatest difference was with severe events, especially those involving the break-up of close relationships, which preceded the development of functional abdominal pain as often as they occurred before self-poisoning, and significantly more frequently than before the onset of organic gastrointestinal illness. Abdominal pain of recent onset, for which no organic cause is found, is often preceded by environmental stress, whether it presents to the surgeon or the physician. Those presenting in the clinic were older than those undergoing appendicectomy and had experienced more long lasting interpersonal difficulties. Many had psychiatric illness, but for the remainder the stress might either have caused colonic pain directly or led to consultation for abdominal pains that had not previously presented to a gastroenterologist.

Abdomen↗

PubMed1987

The incidence of schizophrenia in Nottingham.

Attempts were made to identify, and include in a two-year follow-up study, every patient living in the catchment area of the Mapperley group of psychiatric hospitals in Nottingham (population 390,000) who made their first-ever contact with the psychiatric services for a potentially schizophrenic illness during a two-year period (1 August 1978 to 31 July 1980). Screening was based upon symptoms rather than diagnosis, covering both in-patient and out-patient services; a consensus diagnosis using ICD-9 was made by the project team. The Nottingham Psychiatric Case Register was used in a retrospective Leakage Study which added nine cases to the 99 identified by the screening procedures. Incidence rates are given for both broad and narrow concepts of schizophrenia, and for DSM-III diagnosis. The Nottingham incidence rates are similar to those reported from other UK centers, and are near the middle of the range found in the other collaborating centres in the WHO study on Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorders. At entry to the study, 27 patients were out-patients, and 11 were never admitted to hospital at any time in the two-year follow-up period. Reasons for believing that the Nottingham administrative incidence may be close to the incidence in the community are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1979

Quasi-elastic light-scattering spectra of swimming spermatozoa. Rotational and translational effects.

The electric field autocorrelation functions of light scattered from normal swimming bull spermatozoa are shown to be dependent on the mean head rotation frequency and not on the translational speed of the cells, as previously believed. This result was obtained from numerical generation of functions in which spermatozoa were modeled as Rayleigh-Gans-Debye ellipsoids having semiaxes a = 0.5 micrometer, b = 2.3 micrometer, and c = 9.0 micrometer. The magnitude of c required to achieve agreement with the experimental data is larger than the half-length of the head region of the cell. This implies that the midpiece, which also lies along c, contributes to the scattering power. Details regarding swimming trajectory and head orientation are included in the model. Analyses of the calculated functions and comparisons with experimentally determined ones suggest that at a scattering angle of 15 degrees the electric field autocorrelation function can be fit a simple Lorentzian whose half-width is inversely proportional to the scattering vector and the mean head rotational frequency.

Animals↗

PubMed1978

Swimming speed distributions of bull spermatozoa as determined by quasi-elastic light scattering.

88 semen samples from 39 bulls have been investigated by the quasi-elastic light scattering technique. Normal, defective, and dead cells each yielded characteristic autocorrelation functions. The form of these functions indicates that the swimming speed distribution of normal cells is a gamma distribution with two degrees of freedom while that for defective or circular swimmers is a gamma distribution with one degree of freedom. The resulting analysis of the experimental autocorrelation functions yields the fraction of the sample that is normal, the fraction that is defective, and the average speed of each group. The average helical swimming speed of normal cells was found to be 384 micron/s, while the average trajectory speed of the circular swimmers was found to be 103 micron/s. The overall quality of the semen samples as determined by light scattering is compared to quality determination on the same samples by technicians from the artificial insemination industry.

Animals↗