J Pediatr Health Care
March 2018
Introduction: Functional abdominal pain (FAP) refers to a common set of symptoms that characterizes abdominal pain for which there is no identifiable organic disease process. FAP is associated with functional disability, but understanding of its pathogenesis is incomplete. The condition appears to stem from an interaction between physical and psychological mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBilingualism is common worldwide and increasingly prevalent, but there is little information about bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder. The goal of the study was to compare expressive and receptive language skills in monolingual English and bilingual English-Spanish children with autism spectrum disorder. A review of the multidisciplinary evaluations done in toddlers who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at a university-affiliated center between 2003 and 2010 was performed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 1938, as a New York University/Bellevue Hospital intern, I recorded notes on the 384 cases I saw during my 1-month ambulance duty. Although I intended to use them to follow up the clinical course of patients I admitted to Bellevue, the long hours and pressure of work made this ambitious goal unachievable. Sixty years later, after retirement from academic medicine and medical practice at New York University School of Medicine, I found the long-lost notes among my papers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Respir Crit Care Med
November 1996
The pathogenesis of emphysema is considered to be an imbalance of protease and antiprotease activity in the lower respiratory tract leading to uninhibited degradation of lung interstitium by elastolytic enzymes. An increased amount of the serine protease neutrophil elastase (NE) is though to play a major role in this degradation. Because the expression of NE is limited to neutrophil precursors in the bone marrow, we hypothesized that nicotine, which is readily absorbed from lung and distributed to tissue, including bone marrow, would increase expression of the NE gene and protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe investigated in 39 healthy smokers (20 female, 19 male) and 38 healthy nonsmokers (18 female, 20 male): the impact of smoking and smoking-related factors on the concentration of serum ceruloplasmin, transferrin, transferrin available iron-binding capacity (AIBC), and serum antioxidant activity (AOA); the relative contribution of serum ceruloplasmin and AIBC to serum AOA; the association and possible interactive effects of serum ceruloplasmin, AIBC, and smoking with serum AOA; and the relation of pulmonary function in healthy smokers to serum AOA, ceruloplasmin, and AIBC. We found that: as compared with healthy nonsmokers, healthy smokers had higher serum ceruloplasmin concentration, similar serum transferrin and AIBC concentration, and lower serum AOA; ceruloplasmin, AIBC, and smoking acted additively, accounting for about 60% of the variability of serum AOA; the impact of AIBC on serum AOA was significantly greater than that of ceruloplasmin; and pulmonary function in the smokers was not significantly related to serum AOA, ceruloplasmin, or AIBC. Our findings suggest that: serum AIBC has a greater role in serum AOA than has previously been attributed to it; suppression of the AOA of serum constituent(s) other than those we measured may account for the significantly lower serum AOA in healthy smokers than in healthy nonsmokers; and normal air flow in healthy cigarette smokers is unrelated to serum AOA, ceruloplasmin, or AIBC concentration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Dermatol
October 1984
Since proteolytic processes are prominent in psoriasis, sera of forty-five psoriatics were examined for alpha 1-antitrypsin (alpha 1-AT) phenotype and eighteen sera, for alpha 1-AT content and function. Five sera (11.1%) had heterozygous phenotypes (2 MZ and 3 MS), a prevalence of Z and S variants similar to that reported in nonpsoriatic populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBronchoalveolar lavage fluid of smokers and nonsmokers contains significant concentrations of ceruloplasmin, the major serum inhibitor of lipid peroxidation, with limited superoxide dismutase activity. This suggested that ceruloplasmin may protect the lower respiratory tract against oxidant(s) in cigarette smoke and air pollutants. We investigated (1) serum ceruloplasmin concentration and antioxidant activity (percentage inhibition of autoxidation of ox-brain homogenate) in healthy male and female smokers and nonsmokers, and (2) the capacity of ceruloplasmin to prevent suppression of the elastase inhibitory capacity of alpha 1-proteinase inhibitor by the oxidant chloramine T and by cigarette smoke solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman neutrophil elastase degraded tropoelastin approximately 9 times faster than it did solubilized elastin and approximately 19 times faster than it did lung elastin. When bound to alpha2-M, the enzyme retained approximately 6 per cent of its activity toward tropoelastin and solubilized latter observations suggest that alpha2-M--bound elastase, cleared slowly from lung extracellular tissue space, may participate normally in the turnover of soluble precursor (s) of elastin and may contribute to the development of emphysema in alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymorphonuclear leukocyte lysosomal esterolytic activity on the synthetic substrate, t-butyloxycarbonyl-L-alanine p-nitrophenyl ester was observed to correlate well with polymorphonuclear leukocyte granule elastase activity measured on the natural substrate, elastin, bound to rhodamine. In addition, the effect of highly specific, irreversible chloromethyl ketone elastase inhibitors on leukocyte lysosomal elastase activity was similar, using t-butyloxycarbonyl-L-alanine p-nitrophenyl ester or elastin-rhodamine as substrate. Whether polymorphonuclear leukocyte lysosomal granules contain two different enzymes, a true elastase with esterase activity and a similar esterase without elastase activity, as found in the human pancreas, is, as yet, unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm Rev Respir Dis
June 1975
A neutral protease has been identified in polymorphonuclear leukocyte lysosomal granules that, with elastase, degrades casein and is inhibited by alpha1-antitrypsin. In the present studies, protease inhibitors were used to delineate the elastase and neutral protease activities against casein, because these polymorphonuclear leukeocyte lysosomal enzyme activities may have a role in lung tissue damage in alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency. The highly specific, irreversible elastase inhibitor, N-acetyl-L-analyl-L-alanyl-L-alanine chloromethyl ketone (Ac-Ala-Ala-AlaCH2Cl) inhibited approximately 40 to 50 per cent of the caseinolytic activity of polymorphonuclear leukocyte lysosomal granule preparations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Colloid Interface Sci
February 1969