Consultation about violent students.

Violence in the schools is a growing problem. Psychiatrists consulting to schools can play an important role in helping school-based professionals with early identification, diagnostic evaluations, program planning, and prevention. They can also serve as educators and child advocates and help to coordinate and to organize a team approach.

Patient reading ability: an overlooked problem in health care.

Health care workers often assume that patients who have completed a certain grade in school can read at that level. This study examines the relationships between patient reading ability, the last grade completed, and the reading ability necessary to comprehend commonly used written materials. We tested 528 patients during regular visits to seven outpatient clinics serving a predominantly indigent population.

Higher plasma Na+,K+-ATPase inhibitory activity in essential hypertensive patients.

The ability of plasma to inhibit 86 rubidium uptake in rat aorta and to displace [3H]-ouabain from hog brain Na+,K+-ATPase was used as a measure of plasma Na+,K+-ATPase inhibitory activity in seven normotensive and eight hypertensive subjects. Rat aortae rings were incubated in oxygenated plasma containing 86 rubidium (2 microCi/mL) for 30 mins at 37 degrees C and uptake measured and expressed as mumol/kg wet weight/min. Plasma was extracted with a mixture of chloroform and methanol (2:1) and the extract separated by silicic acid column followed by thin layer chromatography and fractions assayed for ouabain displacement using digoxin as a standard.