The Auckland Breast Cancer Register: a special project of the Auckland Breast Cancer Study Group.

Aims: The Auckland Breast Cancer Register (ABCR) has been established in response to the need for a comprehensive database of breast cancer cases from the Auckland area.

Methods: The database records patient demographics, diagnosis, treatment options, prognosis and long-term outcome (annual follow up). Data from 1204 cases, recorded between June 2000 and June 2002 are reported.

Management of violence in the workplace: a New Zealand survey.

Objective: To estimate the rate of adverse events to staff, to survey the use of various preventative measures, and to assess any association between these factors and the reported event rate.

Method: An anonymous postal nation-wide survey of violence reported to managers of psychiatric units in New Zealand.

Results: The mean rate of adverse event per 100 full time equivalent staff was 16.

Cerebral protection by lidocaine during cardiac operations.

Background: Lidocaine improves outcome in animal brain injury models. Cardiac operations often cause postoperative neuropsychological (NP) impairment. We investigated cerebral protection by lidocaine in cardiac surgical patients.

Effects of nicotine on perceptual speed.

Two experiments investigating the effects of nicotine on performance in the inspection time (IT) procedure are reported. Experiment 1 compared ITs in smoking (0.8 mg nicotine cigarette), sham-smoking, and no-smoking conditions.

Smoking and Raven IQ.

Nicotine has recently been shown to enhance measures of information processing speed including the decision time (DT) component of simple and choice reaction time and the string length measure of evoked potential waveform complexity. Both (DT and string length) have been previously demonstrated to correlate with performance on standard intelligence tests (IQ). We therefore hypothesised that nicotine is acting to improve intellectual performance on the elementary information processing correlates of IQ.

Effects of smoking on simple and choice reaction time.

Twenty-nine subjects performed a reaction time task with four levels of choice-task complexity under non-smoking, sham smoking, and low, medium and high nicotine cigarette conditions. Nicotine reduced decision time, while sham smoking increased decision time. This effect was independent of subjects' habitual levels of cigarette consumption.

Effects of post-learning smoking on memory consolidation.

The effects of immediate post-learning smoking of low and medium nicotine delivery cigarettes were compared to those of smoking a denicotinised cigarette and a no-smoking control condition in a paired-associate learning task. Thirty-nine male smokers were tested for retention of the memorised material at 1 week post-learning. All subjects received all conditions in a repeated measures design.

Biochemical and genetic analysis of a child with cystic fibrosis and cystinosis.

We have studied a child with cystic fibrosis (CF), nephropathic cystinosis, and manifestations of Bartter syndrome, a finding reported previously in both of these diseases (CF and cystinosis). The chance of an individual inheriting a mutant allele for both CF and cystinosis from each of his parents by independent segregation is very small. Therefore, other mechanisms of inheritance were investigated, including whether his diseases were caused by a chromosome deletion or rearrangement that caused defects in both genes, whether his phenotype was caused by a new mutation or variant of either disease, or whether both diseases were inherited together due to inheritance of 2 copies of the same chromosome from one of the parents (uniparental disomy).

Lack of complementation in somatic cell hybrids between fibroblasts from patients with different forms of cystinosis.

Cystinosis is an autosomal recessive disease in which three clinical forms are recognized: infantile nephropathic, with renal tubular damage by 1 year of age and progressive glomerular insufficiency; intermediate, with tubular and glomerular insufficiency beginning at a later age; benign, with no kidney damage. Skin fibroblasts cultured from patients with all types of cystinosis show increased intralysosomal free (nonprotein) cystine; however, fibroblasts from heterozygotes have normal free-cystine values. To determine whether genetic complementation occurs between the different forms, somatic cell hybrids were constructed between cells from a patient with infantile nephropathic cystinosis and cells from patients with other types of cystinosis.

Prenatal diagnosis of cystinosis utilizing chorionic villus sampling.

The prenatal diagnosis of cystinosis is currently based on the increased amount of free-cystine present in amniotic fluid cells. Amniocyte cultures must be grown for at least 2 weeks to obtain sufficient cells for such measurements. Thus, the diagnosis cannot be made until close to 20 weeks gestational age by this method.

Lysosomal cystine storage in cystinosis and mucolipidosis type II.

Cultured fibroblasts from mucolipidosis II (ML-II) patients demonstrated an elevated cystine content which increased with time in culture compared to fibroblasts from cystinotic patients or normal controls under the same conditions. In both cystinotic and ML-II cells the increased levels of cystine could be derived either from endogenous proteolysis or from in vitro supplementation of the cultured cells with cysteine-glutathione mixed disulfide. Cystine was depleted from both cell types by cysteamine.

Renal cell culture using autopsy material from children with cystinosis.

Renal cell cultures were initiated using fresh autopsy material from two individuals with cystinosis, ages 5 and 8 yr. Cells obtained from collagenase treated autopsy material were grown in a selective kidney medium containing Coon's modified F12, 2.5% fetal bovine serum, transferrin, insulin, selenium, hydrocortisone, PGE1, and fibronectin.

Transformation of human cystinotic fibroblasts by SV40: characteristics of transformed cells with limited and unlimited growth potential.

Human skin fibroblasts derived from patients with nephropathic cystinosis were transformed with SV40 virions, cloned and permitted to enter the degenerative stage of growth termed "crisis," characteristic of SV40 transformed human cells. Nephropathic cystinosis is an autosomal recessively inherited metabolic disorder resulting in the intracellular accumulation of the amino acid cystine. A transformed cystinotic cell line which was recovered from the crisis stage was indistinguishable from its transformed precrisis parental cell strain in growth rate in media containing either 1% or 10% serum, cloning efficiency on plastic, in semisolid media, or upon confluent monolayers of normal skin fibroblasts, expression of SV40 T antigen, or production of virus.