[A French questionnaire to assess quality of life of the aphasic patient: the SIP-65]. / Un outil francophone de mesure de la qualité de vie de l'aphasique: le SIP-65.

OBJECTIVES: To develop and demonstrate validity and reliability of a aphasic-adapted version of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP-136), a generic widespread questionnaire used to measure quality of life (QoL). DESIGN: Survey, outpatient oral interviews. POPULATION: Aphasic people from 20 to 80 years old, with a time from stroke or trauma of more than 12 months, living at home for more than six months, able to understand the questions with a Z-score profile at Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination above average for oral comprehension. METHOD: 1. Developments of the short version of the SIP-136, from a first sample of aphasic people; 35 patients were included with a mean time from stroke or trauma of 17 months. This first step consisted in excluding the least relevant items and/or subscales, rewriting some items to make them easier to understand, studying redundancy by multiple components analysis (MCA) and deleting some redundant items. 2. Validity compared with initial SIP-136 and reliability (inter-rater and test-retest) from a second sample of 55 aphasic people (mean time from stroke or trauma = 23 months). RESULTS: - 1. The first step of development led to a short version with eight subscales and 65 items (SIP-65) exploring physical, psychological and social components of QoL; it took about 16 min to fill it, less than half of the time necessary for the SIP-136. 2. Linear correlation of the responses between SIP-65 and SIP-136 was good: r = 0.97; p < 10(-6). SIP-65 demonstrated a good test-retest (r = 0.97; p < 10(-6)) and inter-rater (r = 0.92; p < 10(-6)) reliability. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: SIP-65, a short version of SIP-136, is feasible and clinically sound and must be recommended to assess health-related functional status of French aphasic people.

Intracellular xylitol-phosphate hydrolysis and efflux of xylitol in Streptococcus sobrinus.

The parental strain Streptococcus sobrinus (Streptococcus mutans ATCC 27352), which is known to transport, phosphorylate and accumulate xylitol intracellularly as nonmetabolizable xylitol-phosphate (xylitol-sensitive (XS) strain) and its xylitol-resistant (XR) spontaneous mutant were used to further investigate the inhibitory action of xylitol on oral streptococci. Fructose-grown XR cells did not accumulate xylitol-phosphate, indicating that the inducible fructose PTS is incapable of transporting the pentitol. The intracellularly accumulated pentitol-phosphate by the XS cells did not prevent the subsequent uptake and degradation of glucose or fructose, despite a drop in the PEP pool and a 50% inhibition of the glucose but not the fructose catabolism. Intracellular dephosphorylation of the pentitol-phosphate and release of xylitol in the extracellular medium resulted in a rapid decrease of the intracellular level of this nonmetabolizable product. A Mg(++)- or Mn(++)-independent sugar-phosphate hydrolysing activity capable of splitting xylitol-phosphate was demonstrated in both XS and XR strains. Preincubation in the presence of N1-ethylmaleimide (NEM) and xylitol or NEM and fructose resulted in the subsequent inhibition of both xylitol uptake and efflux. The efflux kinetic at various temperatures is compatible with a facilitated diffusion by the phosphotransferase system EIIfru without, however, excluding the existence of an additional exit route, but it excludes a simple diffusion exit process. The results are consistent with the existence of a xylitol futile cycle contributing to the growth inhibition of S. sobrinus by the pentitol without excluding a toxic effect of xylitol-phosphate. Discrepancies in the literature on the action of xylitol on S. mutans could be explained in the light of the evidence presented.

Preparation and Purification of Xylitol-5-Phosphate from a Cell Extract of Lactobacillus casei Cl-16.

A simple procedure which yields pure xylitol-5-phosphate is described. A cell extract of Lactobacillus casei Cl-16 from a 6-liter culture was used to synthesize up to 70 mg of xylitol-5-phosphate overnight from xylitol and phosphoenolpyruvate via a xylitol phosphoenolpyruvate:phosphotransferase system with a 53% yield. Centrifugation, filtration, precipitation as a barium salt, and ion-exchange batch chromatography permitted recovery of nearly 90% of the phosphorylated product synthesized. Thin-layer chromatography and enzymatic analysis indicated a purity level of more than 99%. The method was used to synthesize [U-C]xylitol-5-phosphate, and it is suitable for the synthesis of many other nonmetabolizable sugar phosphates.

Bacteriology of the oral cavity of BALB/c mice.

To be used as a model in dental research, an animal must fulfil experimental needs and information on the composition and variation of its oral flora must be available. Only limited data are available on the indigenous oral bacterial flora of BALB/c mice. In this work, a total of 671 isolates from different sites (saliva, tongue, teeth, and mucosa) of the oral cavity of BALB/c mice were identified. Only 18 different species were isolated, which indicates the relative simplicity of the flora. The predominant species of the total cultivable flora were "Lactobacillus murinus" (38%), Staphylococcus aureus (37%), Streptococcus faecalis (8%), Staphylococcus sciuri (4%), and Escherichia coli (3%). The other species each represent less than 2% of the flora. "Lactobacillus murinus" is found in greater proportion on mucosa than in the other sites, Staph. aureus predominates in saliva, and Strep. faecalis was found in greater proportion in tooth samples. Statistical analyses, using the minimum percentage of similarity, indicate that there is some variation among the microflora of different mice but that this difference is smaller for mice from the same lot. These results set the basis for the study of the variations of the indigenous oral microflora of BALB/c mice under different conditions.