Paternal age and genetic load.

The incidence of base substitutions in humans increases with the age of the father, which shows up as an increased incidence of mutational disorders in the children of older fathers. There is a less obvious implication: an extended period of high average paternal age in a population will lead to increased genetic load. We mention some societies that have had high average paternal age for many generations.

Group differences in proneness to inflammation.

All humans are primarily descendants from a diaspora out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago although there are some indications of admixture with local populations of archaic humans outside Africa. The burden of infectious disease is greater in tropical Africa than elsewhere on earth in historic times, and it was less outside Africa, especially in the New World where passage through the Beringian filter kept many Old World parasites from entering the New World with humans. As a consequence we expect that the immune system, especially susceptibility to inflammation, will be "tuned up" in people with recent tropical African ancestry, intermediate in people of European and Asian ancestry, and perhaps "tuned down" in people of Native American ancestry.

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution.

Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years.

A genetic legacy from archaic Homo.

The roles of fossil human populations in the origin of modern humans have been enigmatic. Earlier (archaic) human populations were biologically similar and were in recurrent temporal and geographic contact, making interbreeding between ancient populations likely. Regardless of the taxonomic status of these populations, adaptive alleles may have introgressed from archaic populations into modern humans.

Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence.

This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence. Ashkenazi literacy, economic specialization, and closure to inward gene flow led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial ability. As with any regime of strong directional selection on a quantitative trait, genetic variants that were otherwise fitness reducing rose in frequency.

Compliance alert: CMS enacts significant changes to final EMTALA regulations--effective November 10.

Action: On September 9, 2003, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued final rules seeking to clarify hospital obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The new rules clarify several areas of EMTALA, but also raise significant new compliance questions for hospitals, especially with respect to on-call panels and what it means for a person to come to the emergency department.

Impact: As always, hospitals must comply with the new regulations or face possible Medicare decertification action by CMS, civil monetary penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, and civil liability to patients and others.

Genetic diversity and genetic burden in humans.

We discuss categories of genetic diversity in humans. Neutral diversity, population differences in frequencies of genetic markers that we think are invisible to natural selection, provides a passive record of population history but is otherwise of little interest in human biology. Genetic variation related to disease can be separated into mutational noise and variation due to selection, either ongoing selection else effects of a past environment.

Expression of PKC-beta or cyclin D2 predicts for inferior survival in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

We sought to determine whether identification of poor-risk subgroups of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) using immunohistochemical stains would have practical utility with regard to prognosis and therapeutic decisions. Tissue microarray blocks were created using replicate samples of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue from 200 cases of de novo DLBCL. The sections were stained with antibodies to proteins that are expressed by activated or proliferating B cells including MUM1, FOXP1, bcl-2, survivin, protein kinase C-beta (PKC-beta), cyclin D2, cyclin D3, and Ki-67.

Resection of the inferior superior turbinate: does it affect olfactory ability or contain olfactory neuronal tissue?

Background: One approach to the sphenoid sinus involves resection of the inferior portion of the superior turbinate. There is general agreement from anatomic investigations that this area contains olfactory mucosa. This study will determine if olfactory tissue can be found in the superior turbinate mucosa of patients with chronic sphenoiditis and what effect its removal has on a patient's olfactory ability.

Genes, germs, and schizophrenia: an evolutionary perspective.

Literature on schizophrenia and other mental illnesses has emphasized the compatibility of evidence with genetic causation without adequately considering alternative hypotheses of disease causation. Although some studies from the mid-20th century reported associations between certain pathogens and schizophrenia, only recently has the possibility of infectious causation of schizophrenia again become an active focus of research. Infectious causation of schizophrenia is still, however, generally regarded as less well demonstrated than genetic causation.