Exploring the experiences of adults adjustment when living with a primary brain tumour.

Background: Brain tumours are the ninth most common cancer in the UK, and account for 3% of all new cancer cases.

Aim: To understand the impact of living with a primary brain tumour and identify adjustments that patients make in order to cope with their condition. This also encomapsses the impact of interventions like support groups in terms of care and therapeutic value.

The Effectiveness of a Community Intensive Therapy Team on Young People's Mental Health Outcomes.

Background:   UK-wide concerns about availability, cost, efficacy and inappropriate use of psychiatric inpatient provision for adolescents have led to the development of new models of intensive community based care.

Method:   This paper describes the Fife Intensive Therapy Team (FITT) model and provides an analysis of HoNOSCA (Health of the Nation Outcomes Scale for Children and Adolescents) data for 57 patients to evaluate the effectiveness of the service.

Results:   Following intervention by the FITT, a substantial and significant reduction in HoNOSCA scores was recorded.

Inflammatory gene expression in response to sub-lethal ricin exposure in Balb/c mice.

The toxin ricin has been shown to cause inflammatory lung damage, leading to pulmonary oedema and, at higher doses, mortality. In order to understand the genetic basis of this inflammatory cascade a custom microarray platform (1509 genes) directed towards immune and inflammatory markers was used to investigate the temporal expression profiles of genes in a Balb/c mouse model of inhalational ricin exposure. To facilitate examination of those genes involved in both inflammatory cascades and wound repair the dose which was investigated was sub-lethal across a 96-h time course.

Monoclonal antibody-mediated targeting of CD123, IL-3 receptor alpha chain, eliminates human acute myeloid leukemic stem cells.

Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) initiate and sustain the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) clonal hierarchy and possess biological properties rendering them resistant to conventional chemotherapy. The poor survival of AML patients raises expectations that LSC-targeted therapies might achieve durable remissions. We report that an anti-interleukin-3 (IL-3) receptor alpha chain (CD123)-neutralizing antibody (7G3) targeted AML-LSCs, impairing homing to bone marrow (BM) and activating innate immunity of nonobese diabetic/severe-combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice.

Immune response to two different dosing schedules of the anthrax vaccine precipitated (AVP) vaccine.

A pilot study compared the immune response of regular (0, 3, 6, 32 weeks) and extended (0, 10, 13, 32 weeks) schedules of the UK anthrax vaccine (anthrax vaccine precipitated, AVP). Concentrations of antibodies to protective antigen (PA) were higher (p<0.05) among recipients of the extended (n=7) versus regular schedule (n=6) at week 32, and 2 weeks after the second and third vaccinations.

A T-cell-dependent humoral immune response is preserved during the administration of the nerve agent pre-treatment pyridostigmine bromide in a murine model.

Immune regulation, either via the autonomic nervous system or by a proposed "non-neuronal" cholinergic system, suggests that the immune system may be susceptible to perturbation by compounds affecting cholinergic function. Here, the current UK and US nerve agent pre-treatment, pyridostigmine bromide (PB) and the related anti-acetylcholinesterase (AChE) compounds physostigmine (PHY) and BW284c51 were tested for their ability to affect mouse splenocyte function in vitro. In addition, PB, at a dose equivalent to that received during pre-treatment for nerve agent poisoning, was tested for its effect on a T-cell-dependent humoral response to antigen in vivo in the mouse.

An in vitro investigation of the effects of the nerve agent pretreatment pyridostigmine bromide on human peripheral blood T-cell function.

The current pretreatment against nerve agent poisoning deployed by the UK and US armed forces is the acetylcholinesterase (EC 3.1.1.

What happens when donepezil is suddenly withdrawn? An open label trial in dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease with dementia.

Background: This open label study was designed to assess the effects of donepezil treatment, its withdrawal and subsequent recommencement on cognitive functioning, behaviour and parkinsonian symptoms in patients with probable dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and with Parkinson's disease who subsequently developed dementia (PDD).

Methods: Eight patients with DLB and 11 with PDD were treated with up to 10 mg of donepezil daily for 20 weeks followed by a 6-week withdrawal period. The primary outcome measures were the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the total Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale III.