Increasing resident recruitment into family medicine: effect of a unique curriculum in integrative medicine.

Introduction: Healthcare reform is highlighting the need for more family practice and other primary care physicians. The Integrative Medicine in Residency (IMR) curriculum project helped family medicine residencies pilot a new, online curriculum promoting prevention, patient-centered care competencies, use of complementary and alternative medicine along with conventional medicine for management of chronic illness. A major potential benefit of the IMR program is enhanced recruitment into participating residencies, which is reported here.

Integrative medicine in residency education: developing competency through online curriculum training.

Introduction: The Integrative Medicine in Residency (IMR) program, a 200-hour Internet-based, collaborative educational initiative was implemented in 8 family medicine residency programs and has shown a potential to serve as a national model for incorporating training in integrative/complementary/alternative medicine in graduate medical education.

Intervention: The curriculum content was designed based on a needs assessment and a set of competencies for graduate medical education developed following the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education outcome project guidelines. The content was delivered through distributed online learning and included onsite activities.

Increased recognition of Powassan encephalitis in the United States, 1999-2005.

Powassan virus (POWV) disease is a rare human disease caused by a tick-borne encephalitis group flavivirus maintained in a transmission cycle between Ixodes cookei and other ixodid ticks and small and medium-sized mammals. During 1958-1998, only 27 POWV disease cases (mostly Powassan encephalitis) were reported from eastern Canada and the northeastern United States (average, 0.7 cases per year).

Expression of multiple isozymes of granulocyte, monocyte, and macrophage esterases in polycythemic Friend erythroleukemia cells.

We examined the expression of cytochemical markers of myeloid and monocyte-macrophage differentiation in conjunction with ultrastructural studies of different malignant erythroleukemic cells isolated from mice infected with the Friend polycythemic virus complex (FLV-P). The amounts of fluoride-sensitive and resistant nonspecific esterase activity increased with the progression of malignancy. Isoelectric focusing resolved this enzyme activity into 13 isozymes in the most malignant Friend cell type tested.

Biological characteristics of type C viruses isolated from different Friend erythroleukaemic cells.

We have examined the expression of type C RNA viruses in different Friend erythroleukaemic cell types, distinguished on the basis of increasingly malignant characteristics, which arise during the ageing of mice inoculated with the polycythaemic Friend virus complex. Most early appearing Friend cells (type I) expressed ecotropic virus, but cells of later malignant types showed decreased and variable expression. In general, the more malignant cells released less ecotropic virus.