House-dust mite allergy and eosinophilia in patients with asthma in Rangoon (Yangon).

Skin tests were done by prick and intradermal techniques, using house dust mite (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) antigen on 35 patients with early onset asthma, 33 with late onset asthma, 43 with asthma and frequent cough with sputum production (chronic bronchitis) and 30 control subjects. Absolute blood eosinophil and sputum eosinophil (as percentage of leukocytes) counts were performed on each patient. Positive skin tests to house dust mite antigens were significantly more frequent in each of the patient groups (35-75%) than in control subjects (0%), but were not significantly different among the three groups of asthmatics.

Isotopic exchange in 59Fe labeled rice-based meals.

The process of isotopic exchange between extrinsic 59Fe tracer and native nonheme Fe in a rice-based meal was studied by performing Sephadex G-50 column chromatography of soluble supernatant of (1) 59Fe-labeled meal after in vitro pepsin digestion and (2) duodenal aspirate obtained from a human subject fed a similarly labeled meal. The elution patterns of radioactivity and chemically determined nonheme Fe differed markedly when the supernatant of in vitro digested meal at pH 1.8 was analyzed, whereas the patterns were similar when pH was adjusted to 6.

Iron absorption from Southeast Asian rice-based meals.

Non-heme iron absorption from three Burmese meals was measured using the method of adding extrinsic radioiron tracer to label the non-heme iron in the whole meals. Thirty-one healthy Burmese subjects were divided into three groups, each of which was given one type of meal. The absorption of reference ferrous ascorbate was also measured in all subjects and used to calibrate the observed absorption values when comparing different groups.

Chloroquine-resistant malaria in Burma.

Two field trials to detect chloroquine-resistant malaria were conducted according to WHO recommendations in a malaria free area near Rangoon. Peripheral blood smears were examined for asexual forms of P. falciparum on day one through to day seven, on day 14, 21, and 28 after a standard dose of 1500 mg.