Factors Influencing Prescribing Perceived Utility of Drugs: Experiences from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Introduction: Pharmaceutical expenditures have increased dramatically in most developed and developing countries in recent decades. Healthcare system policymakers have expressed concerns about the inappropriate, irrational, or harmful prescribing of drugs.

Objectives: The attitudes of physicians towards prescribing generic drugs and predictors of perceived utility of drugs were investigated in the present study.

Parvovirus B19 outbreak in a developmental center.

Of 49 employees serving developmentally disabled persons, 13 (27%) were found to have parvovirus B19 infection on the basis of serum positivity for parvovirus B19 IgM by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Two employees had severe peripheral symmetric polyarthropathy lasting longer than 6 months. Infection control measures are described.

Coexpression of truncated human cytomegalovirus gH with the UL115 gene product or the truncated human fibroblast growth factor receptor results in transport of gH to the cell surface.

The gH glycoprotein of herpesviruses is located on the cell surface in viral-infected cells but is retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) when expressed separately from a recombinant expression vector. These observations suggested the requirement for either a viral function or a viral-induced cellular function which facilitates surface expression of gH. gL fulfills this role in the herpes simplex virus (HSV)-infected cell (J.

Primary chimpanzee skin fibroblast cells are fully permissive for human cytomegalovirus replication.

Cytomegaloviruses generally display a host range restricted to differentiated cell types from the species they infect. For human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) this has meant that with few exceptions tissue culture systems have relied on the use of primary foreskin fibroblast (HF) cells or primary human embryonic lung cells to study gene expression and virus replication functions. We have observed that primary skin fibroblast (CF) cells derived from the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) support the replication of a laboratory strain (Towne) of HCMV.

Mechanism of glucocorticoid-induced increase in pancreatic amylase gene transcription.

To determine the mechanism(s) responsible for glucocorticoid-induced increases in amylase content in pancreatic acinar AR42J cells, we examined the effects of dexamethasone on amylase protein biosynthesis, steady-state mRNA levels, and gene transcription. Dexamethasone treatment led to a dose-dependent increase in amylase synthesis which was one-half maximal at 2 nM and maximal at 100 nM where a 6-fold increase was achieved. This dexamethasone-induced increase in amylase synthesis was detectable after 12 h, one-half maximal after 19 h, and approached maximal after 72 h.