Complete Genome Sequences of Nine Mycobacteriophages from New Zealand, Beatrix, Carthage, Daegal, Dulcie, Fancypants, Fenn, Inca, Naira, and Robyn.

Beatrix, Carthage, Daegal, Dulcie, Fancypants, Fenn, Inca, Naira, and Robyn are newly isolated bacteriophages capable of infecting Mycolicibacterium smegmatis mc2 155. We discovered, sequenced, and annotated these New Zealand bacteriophages. These phages illustrate that New Zealand harbors a selection of the highly diverse and distributed mycobacteriophage clusters found globally.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in a patient with human immunodeficiency virus.

A 38-year-old woman with human immunodeficiency virus who was recently diagnosed with gastric ulcer presented to the hospital with nausea and vomiting of 1 month's duration. Work-up of patient led to a diagnosis of diffuse, large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The patient underwent six cycles of chemotherapy, and repeated endoscopy and biopsy failed to reveal malignancy. She remains in remission 23 months posttreatment. Management of patients with human immunodeficiency virus and concurrent malignancy remains a challenge. The primary care physician plays a central role by collaborating with infectious disease and oncologist specialists to formulate a management plan.

Splenic hypofunction in systemic lupus erythematosus.

Systemic lupus erythematosus is a relatively common autoimmune disease in the United States. Hyposplenism is infrequently described in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. It is seen in up to 5% of patients and is thought to be caused by vasculitic changes within the spleen. The diagnosis of hyposplenism can be made easily by identifying Howell-Jolly bodies on a peripheral blood smear. The authors describe a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus associated with hyposplenism and discuss possible diagnostic and treatment implications.

Epidemiology of Hodgkin's disease.

Hodgkin's disease, although a relatively uncommon malignancy, is one that frequently affects adolescents and young adults. The cure rate is very high; however, treatment for advanced-stage disease with chemotherapy or radiation therapy (or both) can lead to significant immediate and long-term morbidity, and, while rare, increased mortality from the development of secondary malignancies. There have been numerous epidemiologic reports citing a number of factors associated with the increased risk for the development of Hodgkin's disease. Many of these factors are related to environmental, socioeconomic, and genetic conditions. This report describes the development of Hodgkin's disease in two brothers and discusses factors associated with the increased risk of development of Hodgkin's disease, particularly in these cases.

A new and simple method of measuring menstrual blood loss.

Although it is difficult for women to make reliable judgments about their menstrual blood loss, the direct measurement of such blood loss is useful in diagnosis and in evaluation of therapy. We developed a new and simple procedure for measuring blood on sanitary materials. The procedure is a modification of previous alkaline hematin methods but overcomes some of their major drawbacks. The method involves the separate extraction of blood using a detergent solution and color development of sample aliquots with sodium carbonate. The standard curves obtained for four products tested--regular maxi pads, thin maxi pads and two brands of tampons--were significantly linear over the range of 1-10 mL of blood. The extraction efficiency varied with the four products; tampons exhibited the highest extraction efficiency and thin maxi pads the lowest. Blood loss in normally menstruating women was estimated to be 41.8 +/- 3.9 mL, which correlates well with other estimates reported. Furthermore, the procedure can be used to measure both very low and very concentrated levels of blood on pads or tampons and thus can be used to assess both functional and dysfunctional uterine bleeding.