Clinically, Hb H disease presents as alpha thalassaemia intermedia. The majority have a clinical course of well compensated chronic haemolytic anaemia with exacerbations caused by oxidant haemopoietic stress. Haematological and DNA studies have identified the common molecular defects associated with Hb H disease in West Malaysia. Patients were shown to have α0 - thalassaemia of the South-East Asian type (--/SEA) in association with α+ thalassaemia or with Hb Constant Spring. In a study of 32 patients with Hb H disease, 50% were shown to have α+ thalassaemia (-α 3.7, 87.5%; -α 4.2, 12.5%). Growth and development were normal in all patients, and cholelithiasis was seen in 50% of the patients with the non-deletional type of Hb H disease. Comparisons of the clinical parameters (the necessity of blood transfusion, thalassaemia facies), haemoglobin and bilirubin levels show that the non-deletional type of Hb H disease in West Malaysia is associated with a more severe clinical state than the deletional type.
The seeds in fruits consumed by primates may be chewed and digested, swallowed and defecated intact, or separated from the flesh and spat out. We show by a combination of close field observations and experiments with caged animals, that long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) have a remarkably low threshold of 3-4 mm for swallowing seeds and also that wild macaques rarely break them. The seeds of 69% of the ripe fruit species eaten are spat out intact or cleaned outside the mouth and dropped. Seed-spitting significantly reduces the swallowed food bulk and may lessen the risk of releasing seed toxins during mastication. However, it requires that even small fruits are processed in the mouth one or a few at a time. We suggest that fruit storage in the cheek pouches of cercopithecine monkeys allows them to spit seeds individually without excessively slowing fruit intake while feeding on patchily distributed fruit. In contrast, Apes and New World monkeys apparently swallow and defecate most ripe seeds in their diet and colobine monkeys break and digest them, detoxifying seed defenses by bacterial fermentation.
A wide variety of skin disorders in children are encountered by doctors practising in tropical countries. While some of them are common and pose little difficulty in their management, a few are uncommon, run a protracted course and cause errors in diagnosis. Two patients--one with cutaneous tuberculosis and the other with chromomycosis--are described and illustrate the importance of early and prompt detection of disease in children.
In a recent epidemiological study of 249 opiate addicts in the State of Penang, Malaysia, the use of benzodiazepines, its temporal relationship to opiate addiction and the reasons for use of benzodiazepines were examined. Just over a half of the opiate addicts indicated use of benzodiazepines in their lifetime. Use of 7 different benzodiazepines was reported, among them flunitrazepam most frequently. A substantial proportion had discontinued the use of benzodiazepines after initial experimentation. Just over a quarter had used them in the last 24 hours. Benzodiazepine use starts on average 3 to 6 years later than heroin use. The most common reason cited for benzodiazepine use was to enhance the feeling of 'high' from the opiates. These findings can be explained, at least partly, by economic factors. Reasons that could be qualified as attempts to autotherapy did not exceed 20%. None of the opiate addicts had reported isolated benzodiazepine use for fun and pleasure. From the time course of use as well as from the reasons given by the addicts, it is evident that benzodiazepines are not primary drugs of abuse. Comparing their figures from Malaysia with figures from Germany and England the authors cannot explain the preferred use of flunitrazepam by Malaysian addicts by the existence of special properties of this substance.
An extract prepared from the tentacle of Catostylus mosaicus was shown to lyse erythrocytes from rat, rabbit and human to a different extent; those from the rat being most susceptible followed by those from rabbit and human. The haemolytic activity was dependent on the concentration of crude extract protein exhibiting a sigmoidal curve. Only 60% of the haemolytic activity was retained after treament with heat and proteolytic enzyme. The extract was devoid of hydrolytic enzymes normally present in venoms except for phospholipase A activity, which resulted in the hydrolysis of membrane phospholipids with concomittant appearance of their lyso-derivatives.
1. Anaesthesia caused marked decreases in the plasma concentrations of triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) and in the body temperature of young fowl. 2. Exogenous T4 or a thyroid hormone secretagogue (somatostatin antiserum), increased endogenous T3 and T4 concentrations and body temperature in conscious birds and prevented the body temperature decline in anaesthetized fowl. 3. These results provide further evidence for a role of T3 and T4 in temperature regulation in birds, particularly during anaesthesia.