Computed tomography of the brain in eclampsia.

Computed tomography (CT) of the brain was performed on 44 women with eclampsia, 31 during pregnancy and 13 postpartum. All CT scans were done within 24 hours of eclampsia, including 12 within 1 hour of the convulsions and eight before the repetition of additional seizures, 2 minutes to 14 hours later. Control scans were performed on 15 hypertensive pregnant patients and on ten normotensive pregnant women after fetal death or just after delivery. Among the women with eclampsia, 26 CT scans were considered normal with no evidence of cerebral edema, three displayed signs of cerebral hemorrhage or thrombosis, six showed areas of focalized hypodensity located in the cortical lobes and the subcortical white matter, and nine were classified as cerebral atrophy with enlarged cerebral ventricles. We conclude that radiologic evidence of diffuse brain edema is probably not a common feature in eclampsia.

CpG and TpA frequencies in the plant system.

Higher plant nuclear sequences reveal avoidance of CpG and TpA doublets. Chloroplast sequences avoid the TpA doublet in all codon positions. The chloroplast genome is not methylated but codon positions II-III and untranslated regions avoid CpG. The mitochondrial genome, also unmethylated, avoids CpG in all codon positions. We therefore deduce that methylation is not sufficient to explain CpG avoidance in the higher plant systems. Other factors must be taken into account such as amino acid composition, codon choices and perhaps stability of the DNA helix.