Effect of visual attention on distortion product otoacoustic emissions

Effects of attention on afferent auditory information were studied by many researchers. Although researchers had used different auditory tests, yet OAEs are considered the most sensitive measurements for cochlear functions. Aim of this work was to study the effect of visual attention task on cochlear function by using DPOAEs. Eighteen normal hearing young adults were included. DPOAEs amplitude was measured in three conditions: before the visual attention task [VAT], during and after the end of the visual attention task. Statistically significant decrease in the DPOAEs amplitude during the VAT. While, there was no significant difference in DPOAEs amplitude before and after the VAT. Results of this work will help clinically in the accuracy of DPOAEs recording especially in young subjects. Moreover, this result may be also helpful in subjects with hearing loss of mild to moderate degree as their hearing level is critically detected by DPOAEs

Cellular content of dermal lesions in pregnant and non-pregnant lepromatous leprosy patients: an immuno-histological study

The role of both lepromatous leprosy [LL] and pregnancy on CMI expressed through sub-populations of T lymphocytes was studied in this work. Fifteen females, all suffering of LL, of which three were pregnant, were selected for this study. Skin biopsies were taken and tissue sections were immunohistologically stained with OKT 4 and OKT 8 monoclonal antibodies for the demonstration of helper/inducer and suppressor/cytotoxic T lymphocytes respectively in the lepromatous infiltrate. OKT 8 + cells predominated in both pregnant and non- pregnant cases and largely outnumbered the OKT 4 + cells, however, the increase in suppressor cells was much pronounced in the pregnant cases. The mean T helper/T suppressor ratio of the nonpregnant lepromatous cases was 0.48 +/- 0.07, whereas in all the three pregnant cases the T helper/T suppressor ratio was below 0.2. It can be concluded that pregnancy as an overburden on CMI has helped to aggravate the T cell imbalances resulting in much more impairment of CMI