Evidence for the in vivo safety of insulated foamy viral vectors.

Retroviral vector-mediated stem cell gene therapy is a promising approach for the treatment of hematopoietic disorders. However, genotoxic side effects from integrated vector proviruses are a significant concern for the use of retroviral vectors in the clinic. Insulated foamy viral (FV) vectors are potentially safer retroviral vectors for hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy. We evaluated two newly identified human insulators, A1 and A2, for use in FV vectors. These insulators had moderate insulating capacity and higher titers than previously developed insulated FV vectors. The A1-insulated FV vector was chosen for comparison with the previously described 650cHS4-insulated FV vector in human cord blood CD34+ repopulating cells in an immunodeficient mouse model. To maximize the effects of the insulators on the safety of FV vectors, FV vectors containing a highly genotoxic spleen focus forming virus promoter were used to elicit differences in genotoxicity. In vivo, the A1-insulated FV vector showed an approximate 50% reduction in clonal dominance compared with either the 650cHS4-insulated or control FV vectors, although the transduction efficiency of the A1-insulated vector was higher. This data suggests that the A1-insulated FV vector is promising for future preclinical and clinical studies.

EDI experts realistic and optimistic.

Recently, Healthcare Financial Management contacted five EDI experts to discuss a variety of issues related to EDI and the healthcare industry. Their answers to our questions, presented below, are both optimistic and realistic. Our experts feel that EDI can transform the healthcare industry into a model of efficiency, but their enthusiasm is tempered by the realization that politics, bureaucracy, budgets, and resistance to change can take a toll on even the most ardent of EDI supporters. Nevertheless, they believe that EDI can and will work. In the pages that follow, they discuss why, how, and when.

Ego development, authoritarianism, and social status: an investigation of the incremental validity of Loevinger's sentence completion test (short form).

This study presents two sets of analyses designed to evaluate the relation between a 12-item form of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of ego development (Short Form; SCT-S) and socioeconomic status (SES). The subjects were a large national random sample of adolescent and young adult men and women who were stratified into three artificial age cohorts. The first set of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that SES accounted for 8% to 13% of the variance in SCT-S scores. Incremental validity of the SCT-S in predicting social attitudes, beyond that predicted by SES, was generally supported for authoritarian aggression and partially supported in predicting masculine sex role expectations. Findings suggest that research on ego development with subjects over age 18 might use level of education as a rough index of SES. For younger subjects, parental factors and education are both important. This study also provides revised age-specific national norms for the SCT-S.

Ego development and intelligence in a psychiatric population: Wechsler subtest scores.

The relationship between Loevinger's measure of ego development and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales subtest scores was investigated in 91 adolescent and young adult psychiatric inpatients. Correlations with Verbal IQ and verbal subtests in general were positive and significant. The correlation with the Comprehension subtest was the highest and remained significant when Full Scale IQ was partialled. Post-conformists obtained the highest mean scores on Picture Arrangement; however, there was no difference among the lower stages on this subtest. The results lend support to a social reasoning component of ego development.