Impact of personalized alcohol intake and cognitive feedback on alcohol use behavior in hazardous drinkers: A quasi-randomized trial.

Background: Worldwide, alcohol use is a major contributor to the burden of disease and mortality. A sizeable literature suggests that brief web-based interventions that incorporate personalized normative and/or health consequences feedback are effective at reducing alcohol intake. The relative efficacy of an intervention that also includes individualized feedback about brain health has not been examined, nor has the utility of integrating a smartphone app component.

Microembolism from aortic aneurysm and ventricular thrombus: a complication of intravenous streptokinase.

Two patients sustained the rare complication of skin infarction following administration of intravenous streptokinase for acute myocardial infarction. We report evidence that dissolution of thrombus from an unsuspected source and subsequent microembolization of the skin may be responsible for this complication. In patients known to have an aortic aneurysm or ventricular thrombus, careful consideration should be given to the use of intravenous streptokinase following myocardial infarction.

Vasculitis in patients with systemic sclerosis and severe digital ischaemia requiring amputation.

Objectives: To document the incidence of histological vasculitis in amputation specimens from patients with severe digital ischaemia secondary to systemic sclerosis (SSc), and to look for an association between anticardiolipin (aCL) antibodies and severe digital ischaemia in SSc.

Methods: This was a retrospective review of patients with SSc who underwent amputation for digital ischaemia over a three year period.

Results: Five of nine patients had histological vasculitis, four of whom had aCL antibodies, although these were not present in high titre.

False aortic aneurysm presenting as sciatic nerve root pain.

Neurological symptoms and signs are rarely the only presenting feature of abdominal aortic aneurysm. We present a patient presenting with sciatic nerve root pain due to a large false aneurysm in iliopsoas.

Clinically normal skin becomes sclerodermatous when transplanted into a sclerodermatous area.

A 56-year-old female with systemic sclerosis developed sclerodermatous change in clinically normal forearm skin 10 months after this was transplanted to the tip of her right index finger. This observation implicates local factors in the pathogenesis of the disease.

Relationships between skin temperature and perfusion in the arm and leg.

Relationships between skin temperature (Tsk) and perfusion have been studied to provide a basis for the use of Tsk in the non-invasive assessment of limb circulation in peripheral vascular disease. Raising the ambient temperature (Ta) from 20 to 30 degrees C increased the perfusion of the glabrous skin of the hands and feet without changing that of the skin of the forearm or calf. On a fractional basis the response in the hand and foot was the same.

The value of skin temperature measurements in forecasting the healing of a below-knee amputation for end-stage ischaemia of the leg in peripheral vascular disease.

In order to forecast the healing of a Burgess type below-knee amputation the skin temperature of the leg has been studied before operation in 39 instances using infra-red thermography in a 26 degrees C environment. Healing bore no relation to the mean skin temperature of the calf or that of the skin at the site of the anterior incision. However, when the skin temperature at the site of the incision for the long posterior flap was greater than 30.

Age-dependent changes in proteins of Drosophila melanogaster.

Several molecular theories of aging postulate that there are age-dependent changes in gene expression and that these changes contribute to the reduction in the viability of senescent cells. High-resolution, semiautomated, quantitative two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of many soluble proteins was used to test this hypothesis in Drosophila. Two-dimensional protein gel patterns were analyzed for each of three age groups of [(35)S]methionine-labeled adult male Drosophila melanogaster, which, except for their spermatocytes, consist entirely of fixed postmitotic cells.

Effect of dietary ascorbic acid on the incidence of spontaneous mammary tumors in RIII mice.

A study of the effect of different amounts of L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C), between 0.076% and 8.3%, contained in the food has been carried out with ten groups of RIII mice (seven ascorbic acid and three control groups), with 50 mice in each group.

Prevention of wound infection following vasectomy.

A prospective study on 90 patients undergoing vasectomy as day cases is reported. The use of a chlorhexidine gluconate bath or shower on day 1 and day 2 post-operatively reduced the wound infection rate from 37.8 to 6.

Wound infection following vasectomy.

Ninety-four patients undergoing vasectomy as day cases were studied prospectively. An overall infection rate of 32.9% was recorded and, apart from haematoma formation and the nasal carriage of organisms, no factors were found that increased the risk of infection.

The fate of the below knee amputee.

A retrospective study of 47 patients undergoing 51 below-knee amputations over a six year period on one unit is reported. An overall success rate of 84.4% was achieved and the factors influencing this are discussed.

Simplified computation of the multivariate permutation test for arbitrarily censored survival data.

This paper points out that the permutational covariance matrix of the multivariate generalization of Gehan's test on censored survival data enjoys the useful property that a generalized inverse may be explicitly computed. This leads to an exceedingly simple formula for the test statistic. The ease of the resulting calculations is displayed with a brief example from exercise stress testing.

Vascular plasminogen activator and deep vein thrombosis.

In attempts to determine the aetiology of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) it has been established that some patients with a history of lower limb DVT have a low level of vascular plasminogen activator (VPA) in their superficial hand veins and this combined with a poor VPA release is thought to predispose to thrombosis (1). Hand veins rarely develop thrombosis and so the level of VPA has been measured quantitatively in the more commonly at risk veins of the lower limb. In 6 limbs operated on for varicose veins, paired samples of vein from the groin and from the calf were examined.

Profile analysis of volcano field ionization mass spectra of urine from mice with sarcoma I transplanted by intraperitoneal inoculation.

A group of 20 inbred mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with sarcoma I cells. Urine specimens were collected before and after inoculation from this group as well as from a group of 20 mice for controls. Mass profiles of these groups were obtained by volcano field ion mass spectrometry and compared.

Effects of intake of L-ascorbic acid on the incidence of dermal neoplasms induced in mice by ultraviolet light.

We have carried out a study of large malignant skin tumors (squamous cell carcinomas) and other lesions in hairless mice (groups of 38-45) intermittently exposed to ultraviolet light over a period of 15 weeks, beginning when the mice were about 10 weeks old. The several groups were given a standard diet with 0%, 0.3%, 5%, and 10% added L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) throughout the study.

A simple quantitative assay of tissue plasminogen activator.

A simple method for the quantitative assay of tissue plasminogen activator is described. Human veins and uterus obtained at operation are disintegrated in a membrane disintegrator at -70 degrees C and a known weight of the powder, suspended in buffered saline and thoroughly mixed. Assay of the dilutions of this homogenate on isotope-labelled fibrin clots gives straight line plots of log weight against log activity of the dilution and the sample activity is calculated from this.

Normalization and reproducibility of mass profiles in the detection of individual differences from urine.

The mass profiles of urine samples and their reproducibility (coefficient of variation) obtained by field-ionization mass spectrometry (volcano source) depend upon the choice of normalization method. We compared six different normalization techniques in terms of improved reproducibility and sensitivity. Several simple procedures markedly improved reproducibility while preserving the high degree of sensitivity.

A comparison of the Sphygmetrics SR-2 Automatic Blood Pressure Recorder to the mercury sphygmomanometer in population studies.

The Sphygmetrics SR-2 Automatic Blood Pressure Recorder uses an infrasonic technique for detecting artery wall motion to estimate systemic arterial pressure and produces a permanent record of the results. It therefore is potentially useful in reducing observer bias in epidemiologic studies of blood pressure (BP). Two blood pressures were recorded in 21 men and 50 women using the SR-2 simultaneously with two auscultators using a biaural stethoscope and mercury syhgmomanometer.

Clinical importance of directional statistics for electrocardiographic differentiation of smoking habits.

Statistical methods for the analysis of directional data are of relatively recent origin and have not been generally applied in clinical investigations where they are appropriate. This study compares spherical means and standard deviations for directional polarcardiographic variables with the linear means and standard deviations of the same variables for a typical industrial cohort of male white collar workers. Normal subjects were classified by smoking status and by independent clinical evidence of the presence of CHD, and both directional and linear statistics are applied to compare the PCG variables in these groups.