Acupuncture in the treatment of post viral fatigue syndrome--a case report.

This case report concerns the treatment of post viral fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome) with electroacupuncture. This condition is particularly difficult to treat whether using conventional or complementary therapy. Whilst the treatment did not cure the patient, it appears to have facilitated her return to work and markedly improved her symptoms.

Acupuncture for chronic venous ulceration.

Acupuncture was used to treat a 69-year-old man for bilateral ankle pain related to his rheumatoid arthritis. This led to a dramatic improvement in one of his chronic venous leg ulcers. There is very little recent literature on such cases, where acupuncture may be a useful additional treatment.

Acupuncture for back pain in a patient with Forestier's disease (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis/DISH).

Acupuncture was used to treat a 54-year-old man with low back pain and Forestier's disease. His symptoms were markedly improved with acupuncture where other treatments in the form of analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy had proved ineffective. There would appear to be no cases reported in the literature where medical acupuncture has been used to treat back pain in a patient with this condition.

Gypsy/Ty3-class retrotransposons integrated in the DNA of herring, tunicate, and echinoderms.

Eight new examples of retrotransposons of the Gypsy/Ty3 class have been identified in marine species. A 525-nt pol gene-coding region was amplified using degenerate primers from highly conserved regions and has extended the range of recognition of Gypsy/Ty3 far beyond those previously known. The following matrix shows the percentage AA divergence of the translations of this segment of the pol gene coding region.