PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

V Kothari

Publications and source records attributed to V Kothari.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

The UKPDS risk engine: a model for the risk of coronary heart disease in Type II diabetes (UKPDS 56).

A definitive model for predicting absolute risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in male and female people with Type II diabetes is not yet available. This paper provides an equation for estimating the risk of new CHD events in people with Type II diabetes, based on data from 4540 U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study male and female patients. Unlike previously published risk equations, the model is diabetes-specific and incorporates glycaemia, systolic blood pressure and lipid levels as risk factors, in addition to age, sex, ethnic group, smoking status and time since diagnosis of diabetes. All variables included in the final model were statistically significant (P<0.001, except smoking for which P=0.0013) in likelihood ratio testing. This model provides the estimates of CHD risk required by current guidelines for the primary prevention of CHD in Type II diabetes.

Adult↗

Cross-cultural healthcare challenges: an insight into small American community hospitals.

The healthcare industry in the United States is faced with many strategic challenges, because of the nation's growing culturally diverse population. Growing cultural diversity now calls for better trained medical staff that is capable of handling language, religious and cultural differences. In the rural communities, where cultural diversity is rapidly becoming a demographic fact, small hospitals with limited resources are especially confronted with medical challenges for which they seem to be least prepared. Based on an exploratory research that includes a study of small town hospitals, this paper provides insights into cross-cultural problems facing healthcare professionals in small communities. The paper highlights also the ways in which hospitals are responding to such challenges.

Cultural Diversity↗

Evidence for the presence in sera from chronic myelogenous leukemia patients of an activity that enhances the number of normal bone marrow-derived granulocyte/monocyte committed stem cell colonies.

In serum from chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients an activity has been demonstrated, which recruits more CFU-GM (cells committed to granulocyte-macrophage lineage) from normal human bone marrow into clonal proliferation as shown by standard agar colony forming assay, in the presence of supramaximal levels of colony stimulating activity. All sera from CML patients at diagnosis (before therapy) were tested and found to be significantly (P less than 0.001) positive for the recruitment activity. This observation led us to believe that younger or more pluripotent CFU-GM which were hitherto non-responsive to colony stimulating activity become responsive in the presence of CML sera. We investigated whether more pluripotent stem cells (CFUs) are stimulated to proliferate in the chronic phase of CML than at diagnosis (before therapy). An activity was detected which recruits more spleen colony forming cells (CFUs) from normal Swiss mouse bone marrow into the cell cycle as shown by a significant increase (P less than 0.001) in the thymidine suicide index. However both these activities were either lowered or undetectable in normal (blood groups AB) serum. These results indicate that CML sera may contain enhanced levels of early growth factors which stimulate proliferation of pluripotent stem cells resulting in an increased CFU-GM pool in CML. It is suggested that this activity may be responsible for the myeloid hyperplasia associated with CML in the chronic phase.

Bone Marrow Cells↗

Growth factors in chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Transforming growth factors (TGFs) are implicated in malignancy, therefore qualitative and quantitative differences of these growth factors in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in chronic phase has been investigated in this report. Induction of anchorage independent growth of BALB/c 3T3 and NRK-49F fibroblasts was used as an assay to detect TGF-beta activity in sera, serum free leukocyte and stromal conditioned medium of CML patients as well as normal subjects. The data shows that enhanced levels of transforming growth factor (type beta like activity) are detectable in the sera of chronic myelogenous leukemia patients. We believe that the enhanced levels of TGF-beta type activity may have a role in myeloid hyperplasia characteristic of CML patients in chronic phase of the disease.

Animals↗