ABSTRACT
Whipple's disease is a rare systemic infectious disease caused by the actinobacterium Tropheryma whipplei. Spondylodiscitis is an extremely rare manifestation of the infection and has previously been described in only three case reports. We present a 55-year-old man with persistent lumbago and signs of systemic illness, but without any gastrointestinal symptoms or arthralgia. The signal response in the lumbar spine in magnetic resonance tomography, both native and after intravenous gadolinium administration, was compatible with spondylodiscitis at the L4/L5 level. Culture of a specimen obtained by radiographically guided disc puncture and repeated blood cultures remained sterile. Tropheryma whipplei was detected by PCR amplification in material obtained from the disc specimen, from a biopsy of the terminal ileum and from the stool. The histology of duodenum, terminal ileum, colon and disc material was normal and, in particular, showed no PAS-positive inclusions in macrophages. Long-term antibiotic treatment with sulphamethoxazole and trimethoprim was successful, with marked improvement of the low back pain and normalisation of the systemic inflammatory signs. The possibility of Whipple's disease must be suspected in the case of a 'culture-negative' spondylodiscitis even if there are no gastrointestinal symptoms and no arthralgia present.
Subject(s)
Discitis/diagnosis , Lumbar Vertebrae , Whipple Disease/diagnosis , Anti-Bacterial Agents , Diagnosis, Differential , Discitis/drug therapy , Drug Therapy, Combination/administration & dosage , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Low Back Pain/diagnosis , Low Back Pain/drug therapy , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Risk Assessment , Severity of Illness Index , Whipple Disease/drug therapyABSTRACT
Correlations were computed among the five personality scales of the NEO Personality Inventory, two measures derived from the Hassles Scale, and eight ways of dealing with stress measured by the Ways of Coping Questionnaire. Subjects were 66 undergraduate psychology students. Canonical correlation analysis suggests that multivariate procedures treating the data set as a whole can detect underlying patterns obscured by large sampling errors at lower levels of analysis.
Subject(s)
Adaptation, Psychological , Personality Inventory/statistics & numerical data , Stress, Psychological/complications , Adolescent , Adult , Defense Mechanisms , Female , Humans , Male , Problem Solving , Psychometrics , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
The structures of the title compounds have been determined by X-ray crystallography, using direct methods, and have been refined to conventional final residual factors of R = 0.063 and R = 0.046, respectively.
Subject(s)
Acetates/chemistry , Cellobiose/analogs & derivatives , Maltose/analogs & derivatives , Carbohydrate Conformation , Carbohydrate Sequence , Cellobiose/chemistry , Hydrogen Bonding , Maltose/chemistry , Models, Molecular , Molecular Sequence DataABSTRACT
An adaptive version of the integrate and fire-at-threshold model for the neural coding process is presented. The encoder transforms stimulus intensity information into sequences of identical membrane depolarization spikes, their times of occurrence defining a modulated point process. Several theoretical decoding schemes are then introduced and their performance analyzed. These implement simple, recursive parameter estimation algorithms and their output reproduces reliably; the encoded time-varying stimulus level.
Subject(s)
Models, Neurological , Neurons/physiology , Animals , Electric Stimulation , Mathematics , Membrane PotentialsABSTRACT
Cultures of human lymphocytes were exposed to the mitogen concanavalin A in a low-G environment generated by a fast rotating clinostat. DNA-synthesis was determined by incorporation of 3H-thymidine as the parameter for activation, cell ultrastructure was analyzed by electron microscopy, and cell movements were recorded by a cinecamera. The results were compared with 1-G controls. The cells cultured at low G show: (i) depression of activation by 50%, (ii) appearance of "mitochondria-rich" cells, and (iii) enhanced formation of pseudovilli and uropods. Our investigations in vitro at low and high G and reports on the effect of spaceflights on lymphocytes from cosmonauts and astronauts suggest that hypogravity depresses, whereas hypergravity enhances, lymphocyte activation by mitogens. This study is complementary to an experiment which will study the in vitro activation of lymphocytes in weightlessness during the first Spacelab mission.
Subject(s)
Gravitation , Lymphocyte Activation , Cell Movement , Cells, Cultured , Concanavalin A , DNA/biosynthesis , Humans , Lymphocytes/metabolism , Lymphocytes/ultrastructure , Mitochondria/ultrastructure , Thymidine/metabolismABSTRACT
Reports on postflight examination of lymphocytes from crew members of soviet and american spaceships show a depression of reactivity towards mitogens in vitro. The purpose of this communication is to present experimental evidence that gravity can interfere with lymphocyte activation. Lymphocytes were incubated in the presence of concanavalin A in a centrifuge at 2 and 4 g for four days. This environment causes a significant acceleration of the response to the mitogen. In addition, remarkable differences in the ultrastructure of cells grown at 1 g and 4 g are observed by electron microscopy. This investigation is related to the experiment "Effect of weightlessness on lymphocyte proliferation" experiment which will be performed during the first Spacelab mission.
Subject(s)
Hypergravity , Lymphocyte Activation , Lymphocytes/ultrastructure , Animals , Cells, Cultured , Concanavalin A/pharmacology , DNA/biosynthesis , Female , Lymphocytes/drug effects , Lymphocytes/metabolism , Male , Mice , Mice, Inbred Strains , Microscopy, Electron , Spleen/cytology , Thymidine/metabolism , VacuolesSubject(s)
Alcoholism/diagnosis , Personality Inventory , Substance-Related Disorders/diagnosis , Adult , Age Factors , Choice Behavior , Compulsive Behavior , Diagnosis, Differential , Female , Frustration , Humans , Impulsive Behavior , Internal-External Control , Male , Middle Aged , Narcissism , Personality Assessment , Psychosexual Development , Self Concept , Social Adjustment , Social Class , Social Isolation , Visual PerceptionABSTRACT
This study proposes and illustrates a method for estimating the degree to which a factor rotation to an hypothesized target represents an improvement over rotation to a random target. The original hypothesized target matrix is transformed so that the direction of targeted salients is randomly determined with the restriction that the new target is orthogonal to the original. When applied to a factor matrix of content and response style measures, the hypothesized target yielded a decidedly better fit to the data than did the random target.
ABSTRACT
The psychometric reliability of a factor, defined as its generalizability across samples drawn from the same population of tests, is considered as a necessary precondition for the scientific meaningfulness of factor analytic results. A solution to the problem of generalizability is illustrated empirically on data from a set of tests designed to measure facets of response styles and of personality dimensions. Parallel sets of measures based on personality scales defining each of seven factors were separakely factored. Independent sets of component scores derived from the orthogonal least squares fit to the oblique factor pattern matrix were computed, and these component scores were intercorrelated between the two sets, yielding factor reliabilities, whose values ranged from .66 to .86 (p < .0001, for each factor). A corresponding analysis based on scores derived from random binary data yielded nonsignificant factor reliabilities ranging from -.12 to +.07. It was recommended that such a test of factor generalizability be incorporated routinely into fador analytic investigations, particularly those employing Procrustes-type rotations.
