Symptomatic fibroid uterus in a 15-year-old girl.

A 15 year-old gravida 1, abortus 1 black girl presented with chief complaints of menorrhagia, severe dysmenorrhea, and progressively worsening abdominal pain, which was caused by a very large uterine leiomyoma. The symptoms began 6 months earlier, shortly after a 10-week spontaneous abortion at age 14. A solitary 25-cm uterine leiomyoma was removed uneventfully with an abdominal laparotomy. In the English literature of the past 50 years, this case represents the sixth, and we believe, the largest, documented uterine fibroid among teenagers, which required corrective surgery.

Antiviral and antitumor peptides from insects.

Insects can rapidly clear microbial infections by producing a variety of immune-induced molecules including antibacterial and/or antifungal peptides/polypeptides. In this report, we present the isolation, structural characterization, and biological properties of two variants of a group of bioactive, slightly cationic peptides, referred to as alloferons. Two peptides were isolated from the blood of an experimentally infected insect, the blow fly Calliphora vicina (Diptera), with the following amino acid sequences: HGVSGHGQHGVHG (alloferon 1) and GVSGHGQHGVHG (alloferon 2). Although these peptides have no clear homologies with known immune response modifiers, protein database searches established some structural similarities with proteins containing amino acid stretches similar to alloferon. In vitro experiments reveal that the synthetic version of alloferon has stimulatory activities on natural killer lymphocytes, whereas in vivo trials indicate induction of IFN production in mice after treatments with synthetic alloferon. Additional in vivo experiments in mice indicate that alloferon has antiviral and antitumoral capabilities. Taken together, these results suggest that this peptide, which has immunomodulatory properties, may have therapeutic capacities. The fact that insects may produce cytokine-like materials modulating basic mechanisms for human immunity suggests a source of anti-infection and antitumoral biopharmaceuticals.

[Changes in the nervous system in amyloidosis]. / Izmeneniia nervnoi sistemy pri amiloidoze.

The author investigated different areas of the nervous system in five cases of primary and in seven cases of secondary amyloidosis--rheumatoid arthritis accompanied by amyloidosis. In nine out of the 12 cases studied, amyloid was found in the vascular walls and in the stroma of the peripheral, somatic and vegetative nervous system, by using light, polarization, fluorescent and electron microscopy. In cases of rheumatoid arthritis, apart from amyloid deposits, the connective tissue and vascular walls exhibited mucoid swelling, fibrinoid alterations and sclerosis, i.e., stages of the pathological process which are characteristic of this disease in particular and of collagen diseases in general.

[Social psychology study of group psychotherapy in neuroses]. / Sotsial'no-psikhologicheskoe issledovanie gruppovoi psikhoterapii pri nevrozakh.

Three groups of patients with neuroses (30 patients as a total) were examined in the process of group psychotherapy. The examinations revealed a close interconnection between some personality peculiarities on the one hand, difficulties in social functioning, disturbances in the somatic and emotional spheres, adequacy of understanding the disease cause, compensation and decompensation by the patients, level of the motivation for the treatment, and time course of all these factors in the process of the group psychotherapy on the other. A comparative analysis of the groups has confirmed the hypothesis that the efficacy of the treatment by the group psychotherapy method depends on the level of the socio-psychological development of the patients constituting one or another group.

[Changes in the nervous system in lupus crises]. / Izmeneniia v nervnoi sisteme pri volchanochnykh krizakh.

In 31 patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus, morphological examinations of the central and peripheral nervous system were carried out. In the nervous system, changes of the connective tissue, the vessels and the myelin membranes of the nervous fibres were discovered. Characteristic of the systemic lupus erythematosus were nuclear pathology and appearance of micronecroses in the cerebral tissue. The most pronounced changes in the nervous system were noted in 14 cases of autoimmune lupus crises. In these cases, the disease was distinguished for a high clinical and immunological activity.

[Morphological changes in the nervous system in rheumatoid arthritis]. / Morfologicheskie izmeneniia v nervnoi sisteme pri revmatoidnom artrite.

The central and peripheral nervous systems were subjected to morphologic study in 16 patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. The following pathological stages characteristic for collagenous diseases were revealed in the connective tissue and vascular walls: mucoid swelling, fibrinoid changes, sclerosis and amyloidosis. The intensity of acute degenerative changes in the connective tissue of the nervous system was largely dependent on the clinical and immunologic activity of the disease.

[Morphologic changes in the nervous system in systemic lupus eryethmatosus]. / Morfologicheskie izmeneniia v nervnoi sisteme pri sistemnoi krasnoi volchanke.

The central and peripheral nervous systems were examined morphologically in 31 cases of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The lesions of the connective tissue and the vessel walls in the central nervous system are the manifestations of the generalized involvement of the entire connective tissue system in SLE. Morphologic signs relatively specific for SLE, such as fibrinoid necrosis of the connective tissue and vessels, nuclear pathology, as well as myelin changes of pulpous membrnes of nerve fibers and formation of micronecroses in the brain tissue, were observed most frequently in autoimmune crisis conditions. In these cases, a high clinical and immunological activity of the disease was observed.