The developing role of the renal diabetes nurse.

Diabetes as a chronic disease is often complicated in its management, particularly when combined with chronic and end-stage renal failure. Patients, carers and health care professionals are unfortunately often confused by either too little or conflicting advice provided by the two specialist teams. Within this context, the Renal Diabetes Nurse (RDN) role serves to bridge the gap by ensuring effective links and communication.

The effect of nigral implantation on sensitization to dopamine agonists in 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rats.

The implantation of fetal nigral tissue into the striatum of patients with Parkinson's disease is a promising approach to treatment which may produce clinical benefit partly by influencing drug responsiveness. The purpose of the present study was to determine the pharmacological mechanisms which drug response changes by measuring to what extent sensitization produced by repeated apomorphine treatment was attenuated by tissue implantation in rats with nigrostriatal lesions. Prior to implantation of nigral cell suspensions, the daily administration of apomorphine to rats with unilateral 6-hydroxydopamine lesions produced a progressive increase in the magnitude and duration of rotational behaviour.

Changes in apomorphine pharmacodynamics following repeated treatment in 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rats.

Rats with 6-OHDA lesions were repeatedly treated with apomorphine and dose-response relationships compared before and after treatment to better understand the pharmacological mechanisms which result in sensitization. A progressive increase in the magnitude and duration of rotational behavior was observed following repeated treatment and was associated with a nonparallel (upward) shift in apomorphine dose-response curves. These changes are inconsistent with simple shifts in drug potency, and instead are more consistent with changes in the ability of apomorphine to stimulate postsynaptic, striatal efferent pathways which result from repeated drug administration.

Rte-1, a retrotransposon-like element in Caenorhabditis elegans.

We have characterized a retrotransposon-like element (Rte-1) in C. elegans. It was identified while we were sequencing the pim related kinase-1 (prk-1) gene.

The telomeric 60 kb of chromosome arm 4p is homologous to telomeric regions on 13p, 15p, 21p, and 22p.

A telomere YAC clone containing the most distal 115 kb of chromosome arm 4p has been previously isolated. This clone is of particular interest as it spans a potential candidate region for the Huntington disease gene. The YAC was subcloned into a phage vector, and a high-resolution restriction map extending to within 13 kb of the telomere was constructed.