Recipharm (France)

Background: Lifestyle impacts the health of kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) who are at risk of weight gain, post-transplantation diabetes mellitus and dyslipidaemia. Their capacity to self-care is key to adapting the lifestyle choices that impact their health. Aims: This qualitative study aimed to understand KTRs’ lifestyle choices in relation to their post-transplant life and explore the impact of support provided by healthcare professionals (HCPs) and significant others on KTR's self-care. Methods: The project involved 33 participants who were involved in one of five focus groups, or 15 one-to-one semi-structured interviews. The participants were KTRs who had received a transplant over 6 months or more ago, their significant others and healthcare professionals. Participants were all selected from one UK transplant centre. Purposive sampling ensured both a diversity of KTRs and a range of professionals participating, with data analysed using thematic framework analysis. Findings: The authors report on a number of selected themes. These themes draw from a larger, more extensive analysis and conceptual framework concerning health, wellbeing and lifestyle, and they identify how effective health communicative interactions and health literacy plays an integral role in developing KTRs’ self-care. Conclusion: Supporting KTR's lifestyle choices post-transplant involves building self-care capacity through effective health communication and health literacy.

As a temporary psychiatrist in a Veterans Affairs mental health outpatient clinic, the author notes that he was given enough time (an hour for each first visit with a new-to-the-doctor patient) to review records, reflect, and identify new windows of opportunity for patients. He also found that, as a temporary psychiatrist, it was easier to "think outside the box" and identify issues that might previously have been missed. A series of ten cases is presented to illustrate these points.

In the context of the Fascist racial press campaign (1937–43), one of the regime's most intense efforts took the form of the publication and distribution of a new illustrated magazine devoted entirely to the pursuit of a new racial consciousness among the Italian populace. La Difesa della Razza , published biweekly from August 5, 1938, to June 20, 1943, had a very large print run and was distributed extensively throughout Italy. Its foundation was closely linked with the publication of the so-called Manifesto of Racist Scientists , the chief goal of which was to establish a biological approach – as opposed to a political approach – to the “Jewish question” in Italy. The text of the Manifesto appeared for the first time in an unsigned article (“Fascism and the Race Problems”) in Il Giornale d'Italia on July 15, 1938, and was subsequently cited or reprinted by all the national newspapers. Ten days later, a Comunicato (Communique) of the National Fascist Party dated July 25, 1938, provided a version of how it had come about and listed the names of its supposed authors: ten scientists, for the most part young assistant lecturers. Both the version supplied in the Comunicato and the reconstruction attempted by De Felice, however, should now be revised because of information provided by a document that has since surfaced about which De Felice knew nothing.

Peritoneal disease can manifest at computed tomography (CT) as fluid accumulation within the peritoneal cavity (ascites) or soft-tissue infiltration of the various peritoneal ligaments and mesenteries. Beyond the commonly encountered cases of typical ascites and peritonitis, there is a wide spectrum of uncommon nonneoplastic conditions that may involve the peritoneal and subperitoneal spaces. For example, systemic or organ-based diseases that occasionally involve the peritoneum include eosinophilic gastroenteritis, amyloidosis, extramedullary hematopoiesis, Erdheim-Chester disease, sarcoidosis, and mesenteric cavitary lymph node syndrome. Tumorlike conditions that may affect the peritoneum include aggressive fibromatosis (desmoid), inflammatory pseudotumor, retractile mesenteritis, and Castleman disease. Atypical peritoneal infections include tuberculosis, actinomycosis, echinococcosis, Whipple disease, and mesenteric adenitis. Conditions involving the subperitoneal fat include epiploic appendagitis, mesenteric panniculitis, and segmental omental infarction, all of which have characteristic CT findings. CT is an excellent imaging modality for detection and characterization of peritoneal involvement from these unusual diseases.

We report the identification and characterization of the small subpopulation of alloantigen-specific T cells in vitro and in vivo. This subpopulation of T cells was distinguished by up-regulation of cell surface CD4 expression. These CD4high T cells were alloantigen specific in proliferation assays in vitro, and they expressed memory/activation markers, including CD44high and CD69high. Further studies demonstrated that these allospecific CD4high cells were also present (< or = 1% of CD4+ T cells) in vivo in BALB/c (H-2d) recipients of C57BL/6 (H-2b) skin allografts. CD4high T cells isolated from regional draining lymph nodes in these skin graft recipients reacted in a donor-specific fashion to C57BL/6 splenocyte stimulator cells in mixed lymphocyte culture. Adoptive transfer of CD4high, but not CD4normal T cells, just before skin engraftment in CD4 knockout mice, reconstituted rejection. The discovery that a small subpopulation of CD4high lymph node cells contained all of the alloantigen-specific T cells may allow study of tissue-specificity and subsequent alloantigen identification in transplantation.

In a search for proteins involved in signal transduction through the T cell receptor (TcR/CD3 complex), a recently developed highly efficient method for labeling of nucleotide binding proteins in permeabilized cells was applied. Here, we report that human CD3-gamma could be labeled by periodate-oxidized [alpha-32P] GTP (GTPoxi). In contrast to GTPoxi labeling of CD3-zeta (Peter, M. E., Hall, C., Rühlmann, A., Sancho, J. and Terhorst, C., EMBO J. 1992. 11:933), GTP-specific labeling of CD3-gamma reached a maximum when nucleotides were added 60 min prior to the cross-linking reaction. As CD3-gamma did not contain a known consensus sequence for nucleotide binding and since labeling kinetics of CD3-gamma coincided with those of cytosolic GTP-binding proteins, labeling may have been caused by a GTP-binding protein. This putative protein was not T cell specific because labeling of CD3-gamma could also be achieved when expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. In CHO cells, labeling by GTPoxi took place only when CD3-gamma was associated with CD3-epsilon, whereas labeling could not be established upon association of CD3-gamma with CD3-delta or TcR alpha. The observation that CD3-gamma was labeled without leaving the endoplasmic reticulum led to the hypothesis that the association of CD3-gamma with a GTP-binding protein might be involved in an early step of the TcR/CD3 complex formation or transport.

A procedure was developed to determine the percentage of skeletal muscle actin and cardiac actin present in different striated muscle tissues. The method was applied to 2 mg of actin mixtures isolated from various origins. All samples show simultaneous expression of both striated muscle isoactins, with the cardiac actin being the major form (congruent to 80%) in 11-day-old chick embryonic leg muscle, decreasing to approximately 50% values in the late fetal stage of chicken, mouse, and in fused mouse muscle cell cultures and becoming the minor species (less than 5%) in adult skeletal muscle tissues. We also find a significant amount (up to 20%) of the skeletal muscle isoform in adult heart (ventricle) of porcine, bovine, and human origin and no differences in muscle actin ratios in human atrium and ventriculum cells. Similarly, no significant variation in the actin ratios was observed between a normal heart and a heart from a patient with hereditary obstructive myopathy. For those cells and tissues where comparison with levels of mRNA was possible we mostly find a good correlation between the relative ratios of expression of cardiac and skeletal actin proteins and mRNAs.