[Cardiac involvement of alcoholics and the effect of total abstinence].

Echocardiographic features of 221 alcoholics after total abstinence were investigated. At the time of admission, none demonstrated left ventricular (LV) enlargement. Noticeably, 26% patients out of the total showed LV wall thickening more than 1.4 cm in the interventricular septum. On the other hand, 19% of the alcoholics illustrated hypokinetic LV wall without chamber dilatation which was either less than 55% in ejection fraction or 30% in fractional shortening. Three months later, the LV wall thickness reduced significantly from 1.6 to 1.4 cm in average and the LV wall motion improved significantly from 27 to 31% in fractional shortening. In the cases with wall thickening, the change was well correlated with a decrease both in heart rate and in LV muscle volume, but not with a decrease in systemic blood pressure. No significant correlated factors could be detected in the hypokinetic cases.

Kinetics of 3H-serotonin uptake by platelets in infantile autism and developmental language disorder (including five pairs of twins).

The kinetics of 5-HT uptake by platelets was studied in cases of infantile autism and developmental language disorder (DLD) and normal subjects. Two patients of the autism group were twins, and the seven patients of the DLD group were members of four pairs of twins. The Vmax values (means +/- SD) for autism and DLD were 6.46 +/- .90 pmol 5-HT/10(7) cells/min and 4.85 +/- 1.50 pmol 5-HT/10(7) cells/min, respectively. These values were both significantly higher than that of 2.25 +/- .97 pmole 5-HT/10(7) cells/min for normal children. The Km values of the three groups were not significantly different. Data on the five pairs of twins examined suggested that the elevated Vmax of 5-HT uptake by platelets was determined genetically.