Digital necrosis in a woman over eighty.

Chronic vascular disorders of the upper limbs are not frequently encountered in women; in addition, advanced age of onset tends to suggest the presence of common diseases such as arteriosclerosis or microembolization. Nonetheless, diagnosis is not always straightforward and in some cases both-laboratory and instrumental findings can do no more than arouse a diagnostic suspicion. We present a case of acro-localized disorder, which proved difficult to diagnose and which we believe may be attributed to a slowly progressing form of scleroderma of the extremities which, in our case, determined positivity of anticentromere autoantibodies.

[Vascular manifestations in systemic sclerosis (scleroderma)].

Progressive systemic sclerosis (PSS), a disease still of unknown origin, is a generalized autoimmune disorder characterized by immunological abnormalities, microvascular dysfunction, and tissue fibrosis. The mechanism leading to selective microvascular injury in PSS is not completely known, however it is now clear that neuropeptides, vascular endothelium, and disturbances in the regulation of fibroblast function are the three major contributors to the increased fibrosis of skin and internal organs. Thus, endothelial cell and fibroblast dysfunction may be linked through the paracrine activity of soluble endothelial cell products: the cytokine cascade (IL-1, TGF-beta-1, PDGF, TNF, etc.

[The success of maternal feeding with very low birth weight premature infants, singletons and twins: a 10-year experience].

Unlabelled: There are very few reports about the feasibility of maternal milk feeding in very low birthweight preterm infants (VLBW), especially in twins. Therefore we conducted a cohort retrospective study to evaluate the feeding patterns of the 226 VLBW discharged from our neonatal intensive care unit from 1987 to 1996. Their gestational age was 30 +/- 2.

Asymmetries of facial motility during the dissimulation of emotion.

The asymmetrics of facial expression were estimated in a sample of 14 experimental subjects with the Facial Action Coding System during voluntary control of facial mimicry while viewing videotapes. The subjects were instructed to express facially the emotion experienced or to dissimulate their true emotion with a facial expression opposite (incongruous) to what they actually felt. Only during dissimulation did facial mimicry show an asymmetric distribution toward the lower left side of the face.