Are you my nurse? Life and death in the hospice fast lane.

From its small-scale, community-based roots, hospice care in America has evolved into a competitive, highly-regulated industry. Hospice nurses today often find themselves challenged by increased patient caseloads, faster-paced work environments, and ever-growing documentation demands. This article addresses these issues through the lived experience of the author, a registered nurse who has worked "at the bedside" with terminally ill patients for over two decades.

Effects of removing food on maintenance of drinking initiated by pairings of sipper and food.

Two experiments evaluated the effects of removing food presentations on the maintenance of drinking induced by experience with sipper - food pairings. In Exp 1, ethanol drinking was induced in non-deprived Long-Evans rats by Pavlovian conditioning procedures employing an ethanol sipper as conditioned stimulus (CS) and food pellet as unconditioned stimulus (US). The Paired/Ethanol group received presentations of the ethanol sipper CS followed immediately by the response-independent presentation of the food pellet US.

Metabolic alterations of zinc and prostaglandins in both human and animal colonic tumor cells.

Objective: To understand the relationship between zinc and prostaglandin (PG) metabolisms in inducing colon cancer incidence in human and animals.

Methods: Human colonic tumor and normal cells were obtained from Departments of Surgery and Pathology at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA and US VA Medical Center, North Hills, CA. Rat colonic tumor and normal cells were isolated from the rats that received two injections of 50 mg/kg of Azoxymethan (AOM) in 2 weeks and then kept 30 weeks in the animal facility.

Verapamil preferentially potentiates in-vitro cytotoxicity of vincristine on malignant lymphoid cells.

Verapamil has been shown to overcome acquired drug resistance to vincristine in P388 leukemia both in vitro and in vivo. To study the selectivity of this action, the effect of addition of verapamil on the cytotoxicity of vincristine was studied using lymphocytes from eight patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), lymphoblasts from a T-acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) cell line (GM 3639), and peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from eight normal healthy volunteers. Using the differential staining cytotoxicity (DiSC) assay, we demonstrated that verapamil at 1 microM concentration potentiated the in-vitro cytotoxicity of vincristine on CLL and GM 3639 cells in concentrations of 0.

Zinc, calcium, and magnesium metabolism: effects on plasmacytomas in Balb/c mice.

The effects of different amounts of dietary zinc on the Zn absorption rate and on Zn, calcium and magnesium concentrations in tissues of MOPC 104E tumor-bearing Balb/c mice were determined. The Zn absorption rate was inversely related to the amounts of Zn in their diets and was lower than that of nontumor-bearing control mice fed a laboratory mice chow. Zn concentrations of tumor-bearing mice were also low compared with control mice but tumor Zn concentrations, regardless of the concentrations of Zn in the diets, were higher than those of normal tissues of the host other than the pancreas.

Effect of different levels of dietary zinc on longevity of BALB/c mice inoculated with plasmacytoma MOPC 104E.

The effect of different levels of Zn intake on survival was studied in 6 groups of 4-week-old BALB/c mice inoculated with MOPC 104E tumor cells. The first 3 groups received either a Zn-deficient (0.5 microgram Zn/g), a Zn-supplemented (1 mg Zn/g), or a control diet (37.

Presence of a serum hemagglutinin (lectinlike factor) in cystic fibrosis homozygotes and heterozygotes.

A lectinlike activity was discovered in serum from 25 patients with CF, 70 obligate heterozygotes (parents), and 18 of 27 siblings (67%) of 675 controls, 4.2% were found to have a positive test for the CF-lectin, approximating the 5% estimated prevalence of CF heterozygotes. The CF-lectin can be detected by dextran-enhanced agglutination of mouse RBCs and confirmed by agglutination inhibition with D-fructose.

Impaired cellular interactions involving lymphocytes from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and ataxia-telangiectasia.

Abnormal cellular interactions between T and B lymphocytes were identified in patients with CLL and AT. The system employed utilized the detection of a newly recognized lymphokine, NIF-T. This mediator is produced by T lymphocytes as a result of the interaction between T and B cells.

Structural and replicative forms of mitochondrial DNA from human leukocytes in relation to age.

The structure and replication of human leukocyte mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was investigated in healthy young adult males (23--37 years old), middle-aged males (42--52 years old) with secondary polycythemia, and elderly males (80--89 years old) who exhibited different degrees of age-related disease syndromes. The distribution of the various cell types within the white cell population was within normal limits in all samples. Total mtDNA was isolated in ethidium bromide--CsCl gradients and examined by electron microscopy after spreading by the aqueous and formamide techniques.

Factor XIII deficiency in BALB/c mice with plasmacytoma.

These studies examined the fate of Factor XIII (fibrin-stabilizing factor) in mice with plasmacytoma (MOPC-300, MOPC-384, MOPC-467, and J-558). Plasma Factor XIII levels in these mice decreased progressively with tumor expansion. No plasma inhibitors of Factor XIII activity could be detected.

Detection of fibrin degradation products. A simplified technic.

An agglutination inhibition technic using CrCl3-treated erythrocytes for the quantification of circulating fibrin degradation products in patients with thromboembolic and fibrinolytic states is described.

Kappa and lambda receptor sites on single lymphocytes.

Light chain receptors on human circulating lymphocytes of thirty-three normal individuals were visualized by the immunocyto-adhesion reaction in which human (anuclear) erythrocytes coated with κ chains and chicken (nucleated) erythrocytes coated with λ chains (or vice versa) were used. 4·4 (±2·3)% of the lymphocytes had κ and 4·15 (±2·4)% had λ receptors, when the lymphocytes were sensitized with antisera to either κ and λ chains. When both antisera were used simultaneously only 5·3 (±3)% were found to have receptors and the majority of cells carried both κ and λ receptors.