The stability of severe thought disorders and mature thinking.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether severe formal thought disorders and mature thinking are stable among adoptees (=187) drawn from the Finnish adoptive family study of schizophrenia. A group of 93 adoptees genetically at high risk (HR) and 94 at low risk (LR) for schizophrenia were assessed blindly and reliably using the Index of Primitive Thought (IPT) and the Index of Integration (IOI). Two assessments of the IPT and the IOI were performed with the mean interval of 11 years. Comparisons of the IPT and the IOI mean scores were conducted both at baseline and at follow-up between adoptees at low and high genetic risk, gender, and psychiatric status. The main result was that the IOI as well as the IPT of the adoptees at the initial assessment predicted the IOI and the IPT estimated at follow-up, thus indicating the stability of severe formal thought disorders and mature thinking over time. The stability of IOI or IPT was not related to genetic risk, gender or psychiatric status or their interactions.

Antibody response to 14-valent pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide vaccine in pre-school age children.

Antibody responses to 14-valent pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide vaccine were measured by Farr-type radioimmunoassay in children younger than 7 years of age. On the basis of immunogenicity in young children individual pneumococcal polysaccharides could be identified as uniformly good, strongly age-dependent or uniformly poor immunogens. Pneumococcal types 6A and 23F, which frequently cause pneumococcal infections in small children, were the poorest immunogens in this age group. The children younger than 2 years of age responded very poorly also to types 19F and 18C whereas older children had good antibody responses to these types. The results support the current view that present pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines are not beneficial in children younger than 2 years of age and stress the importance of attempts to improve their immunogenicity.

Postinitial remission in diabetic children--an analysis of 178 cases.

We studied 178 diabetic children and adolescents diagnosed during the period 1962-79 to find out the occurrence and duration of the postinitial remission, factors favoring a remission and the prognostic value of the remission. A postinitial remission occurred in 113 children (64%) being complete in only three boys (2%). The duration ranged from one month to 4.8 years, the mean being 8.4 months. The boys had a remission more often and of longer duration than the girls. The duration of diabetes was longer in the children without remission. The children with remission had lower blood glucose, milder hyperketonemia and ketonuria, higher pH and PCO2 at onset than those without remission. Hemoglobin A1 (HbA1) during 1979 were lower in the children with a positive remission history. The children with a remission lasting more than one year had a subsequently higher glucosuria index, lower HbA1 and higher C-peptide when compared to those without remission or to those with a short remission. The remission frequency increased from 1962 to 1979. Male sex and mild metabolic derangement at onset favor a postinitial remission, which results in a persisting residual beta-cell function and better metabolic control beyond the remission.

Natural killer cell function in trisomy-21 (Down's syndrome).

Natural killer (NK) activity and antibody-dependent cell mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) against a human myeloid target cell line (K 562) was measured in adult patients with trisomy-21 (Down's syndrome) and in chromosomally normal age and sex matched control subjects. The effect of human leucocyte interferon (IFN-alpha) on the NK activity was also estimated. Spontaneous NK activity was stronger in the adult patients with trisomy-21 than in the healthy controls, but the difference did not reach statistical significance. The augmentation of NK activity by IFN-alpha, measured using lymphocytes not depleted of monocytes as effector cells, was statistically significant in both the trisomic patients (P less than 0.004) and the healthy controls (P less than 0.0005). Using monocyte and macrophage depleted lymphocytes in the patients with trisomy-21 the NK activity proved stronger than in the healthy controls, but not significantly and IFN-alpha did not augment it as it did in the healthy controls (P = n.s., P less than 0.05), for augmentations respectively). These results support the view that monocytes and macrophages are connected with the NK cell system. ADCC correlated with NK activity in both groups. Since NK cells are important components of many immune processes, including tumour and virus and/or bacteria-infected cell elimination, and have regulatory functions in immune reactions, the deficient augmentation of trisomic NK cells shown in vitro with extrinsic human leucocyte interferon may, paradoxically be an explanation for the greater susceptibility of trisomic individuals to lymphatic leukaemia and virus and bacterial infections. In vivo, this could be explained by the more potent secondary suppression by the 'immune' interferon produced by the virus, bacteria and malignant cells. In other words, the potential of the 'fighting couple' of the immune system, NK cell/interferon, is perhaps disturbed genetically due to the chromosome 21.