Airway and systemic inflammation and decline in lung function in patients with COPD.

Study Objectives: Patients with COPD experience lower airway and systemic inflammation, and an accelerated decline in FEV1. There is no evidence on whether this inflammation changes over time, or if it is associated with a faster decline in FEV1.

Patients And Design: A cohort of 148 COPD patients (100 men) was monitored daily for a median of 2.

Autologous transplantation with Philadelphia-negative progenitor cells for patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) failing to attain a cytogenetic response to alpha interferon.

Between October 1993 and March 1999, 29 patients with CML who were ineligible for allogeneic BMT underwent PBSC harvest using idarubicin, cytarabine and G-CSF. In 9/29 (31%) patients all collected stem cells were Ph-negative, and 15/29 patients' (52%) collections were substantially (>95%) Ph-negative. The proportion of patients from whom Ph-negative stem cells were obtained was similar between patients who had, or had not, received prior alphaIFN.

Is recruitment more difficult with a placebo arm in randomised controlled trials? A quasirandomised, interview based study.

Objective: To investigate whether including a placebo arm in a clinical trial of hormone replacement therapy influenced women's stated willingness to participate.

Design: Quasirandomised, interview based study.

Setting: 10 group practices in the Medical Research Council's General Practice Research Framework.

Effect of sciatic nerve crush on local and target tissue production of neurotrophin-3 transcripts in rats.

The effect of sciatic nerve crush in adult rats on neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) mRNA expression at the site of crush and in ipsilateral foot skin was studied using competitive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (cRT-PCR). Mid-sciatic nerve crush resulted in a significant reduction in the expression of NT-3 mRNA in nerve segments distal to the injury site at 3 and 7 days (approximate 60% decrease; P < 0.01).