The impact of cultural identity, parental communication, and peer influence on substance use among Indigenous youth in Canada.

Heavy drinking and smoking have been found to be among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality within Indigenous youth in North America. The focus of this study was to examine the relative roles of cultural identity, parent-child communication about the harms of substance use (SU), and perception about peers' opinions on heavy drinking and cigarette smoking among Indigenous youth. Strong Indigenous cultural identity, parent-child communication about SU, and affiliation with peers who do not use and/or who disapprove of substance use were all expected to reduce risk for heavy drinking and smoking.

Medical Rapid Response in Psychiatry: Reasons for Activation and Immediate Outcome.

Rapid response teams are used to improve the recognition of acute deteriorations in medical and surgical settings. They are activated by abnormal physiological parameters, symptoms or clinical concern, and are believed to decrease hospital mortality rates. We evaluated the reasons for activation and the outcome of rapid response interventions in a 222-bed psychiatric hospital in New York City using data obtained at the time of all activations from January through November, 2012.

Sensitivity to seizure-like activity in Drosophila following acute hypoxia and hypercapnia.

Human seizure disorders represent a heterogeneous collection of neuropathies, many of which are poorly understood. To investigate the etiology of seizure disorders, we have used a group of Drosophila mutants known as the bang-sensitive (BS) paralytics. The BS mutants exhibit seizure-like activity (SLA) following a wide variety of insults including mechanical shock, electrical shock, high frequency light and cold temperatures.

Giant cell tubulitis with immune complex deposits in a patient with lupus nephritis.

We report a case of acute tubulointerstitial nephritis with giant cell tubulitis and tubular basement membrane immune complex deposits in a patient with membranous lupus nephritis. The patient, who had no prior evidence of lupus nephritis, developed acute kidney failure and mild proteinuria after cardiac valve replacement surgery. Giant cell tubulitis with tubular basement membrane immune complex deposits has been described in 4 patients after cardiac surgery, 3 of whom received cefuroxime, suggesting the possibility of a drug hypersensitivity reaction.

Vaccine-induced early control of hepatitis C virus infection in chimpanzees fails to impact on hepatic PD-1 and chronicity.

Unlabelled: Broad T cell and B cell responses to multiple HCV antigens are observed early in individuals who control or clear HCV infection. The prevailing hypothesis has been that similar immune responses induced by prophylactic immunization would reduce acute virus replication and protect exposed individuals from chronic infection. Here, we demonstrate that immunization of naïve chimpanzees with a multicomponent HCV vaccine induced robust HCV-specific immune responses, and that all vaccinees exposed to heterologous chimpanzee-adapted HCV 1b J4 significantly reduced viral RNA in serum by 84%, and in liver by 99% as compared to controls (P=0.

IgA-dominant acute poststaphylococcal glomerulonephritis complicating diabetic nephropathy.

Two pathological patterns of acute poststaphylococcal glomerulonephritis are well defined and include (1) an acute proliferative and exudative glomerulonephritis closely resembling classical acute poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis in patients with Staphylococcus aureus infection and (2) a membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis in patients with Staphylococcus epidermidis infection secondary to ventriculovascular shunts. In this study, we report a novel immunopathologic phenotype of immunoglobulin (Ig) A-dominant acute poststaphylococcal glomerulonephritis occurring in patients with underlying diabetic nephropathy. Five patients with type 2 diabetes presented with acute renal failure occurring after culture-positive staphylococcal infection.

A method for the absolute quantification of cDNA using real-time PCR.

Real-time PCR is an extremely powerful technique, however, often its results are open to interpretation since there is no convention for data presentation. This anomaly has arisen because many applications rely on non-standard calibration genes, which themselves often change in value during experimental manipulation. We present a novel method for absolute quantification of cDNA species using a combination of extremely accurate double-stranded DNA quantification and a plasmid reference curve.

Cancer immunotherapy: an embarrassment of riches?

There is clear evidence that certain forms of immunotherapy can be successful against certain cancers. However, it would appear that cancerous cells of various origin are exceptionally adept at subverting the immune response. Consequently, it is probable that the most efficacious therapy will be one in which multiple responses of the immune system are activated.