Complementary medicine in intensive care: ethical and legal perspectives.

Complementary medicine continues to increase in popularity in the general community. As a result it is likely that requests for the administration of complementary medicine to intensive care patients will be more frequent in the future. It is therefore prudent for intensive care clinicians to address this issue and develop an approach that is consistent.

Cytokine dysregulation in the post-Q-fever fatigue syndrome.

The post-Q-fever fatigue syndrome (QFS) (inappropriate fatigue, myalgia and arthralgia, night sweats, changes in mood and sleep patterns) follows about 20% of laboratory-proven, acute primary Q-fever cases. Cytokine dysregulation resulting from chronic immune stimulation and modulation by persistence of Coxiella burnetii cells or their antigens is hypothesized. We studied cytokine release patterns of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) stimulated with various ligands in short-term culture, from 18 patients with active QFS, and 27 controls: six with resolving QFS, five who had had acute primary Q-fever without subsequent QFS, eight healthy Q-fever vaccinees and eight healthy subjects without Q-fever antibody.

Vaccine prophylaxis of Q fever. A follow-up study of the efficacy of Q-Vax (CSL) 1985-1990.

Objectives: To examine the efficacy of various batches of a formalin-inactivated whole cell Coxiella burnetti vaccine (Henzerling strain, Phase 1 [Q-Vax, CSL]) in the prevention of Q fever among abattoir workers.

Design And Setting: The study was a retrospective cohort survey of all employees at three South Australian abattoirs to determine the incidence of Q fever among vaccinated and unvaccinated employees during the period 1985 to 1990.

Results: There were two cases of Q fever among 2555 vaccinated employees of the three abattoirs, compared with 55 cases among 1365 unvaccinated employees.