For the non-invasive evaluation of cardiac performance in hyperthyroidism, fractional systolic and diastolic time intervals were determined in 96 female patients with hyperthyroidism from the mechanocardiograms which included apexcardiograms together with electrocardiograms, phonocardiograms and carotid arterial pulse tracings. The observed values of the time intervals inversely related to heart rate, i.e., ejection period, mechanical systole, isovolumic relaxation time and active ventricular filling period, were significantly shortened in proportion to the severity of the disease in general, as determined by the rate of the radioactive iodine uptake of the thyroid glands. However, these values were not significantly different from those of the predicted for heart rate, except for one of mechanical systoles which is a time interval from the onset of the systolic upstroke in the apexcardiogram to the second aortic sound. This suggests that the shortening of these observed values is promarily due to tachycardia associated with hyperthyroidism. One the other hand, the observed values of the time intervals unrelated to heart rate, i.e., electromechanical delay, isovolumic contraction time together with one of its components, namely ventricular pressure elevation time, and rapid ventricular filling period, were significantly shorter than those in the controls, although the degree of the shortening was not related to the degree of the radioactive iodine uptake of the thyroid gland. It appears that the shortening of these time intervals is related to the altered cardiac function caused by hyperthyroidism and, in particular, that of the isovolumic contraction time and ventricular pressure elevation time reflects enhancemet by the thyrotoxic myocardial contractility.
Electrocardiography ; Female ; Hand ; Heart Rate ; Humans ; Hyperthyroidism* ; Iodine ; Relaxation ; Systole ; Tachycardia ; Thyroid Gland ; Ventricular Pressure

No abstract available.
Child* ; Cystitis* ; Eosinophils* ; Humans

Hepatitis G virus (HGV) is a single-strand RNA virus in the Flaviviridae family, it was recently identified from the plasma of a patient with chronic hepatitis. HOV infection may cause acute and chronic liver disease by blood transfusion, drug addicts, hemophilia, and multiple sexual partners. But clinical significance of infectious pathway is still unclear. In this report, we amplified HGV RNA by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) by primers within the highly conserved 5'-noncoding region (NCR) and used restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) method for the polymorphism analysis of amplified HGV gene. HGV was shown to be present in 7 of 78 (9.0%) from HCV RT-PCR positive serum samples and 5 of 58 (8.6%) from HCV RT-PCR negative serum samples. From the RFLP method HGV divided into four genotypes in 12 positive samples. Therefore, HGV genotype was distributed at least four different types in Korea.
Blood Transfusion ; Drug Users ; Flaviviridae ; GB virus C* ; Genotype ; Hemophilia A ; Hepatitis* ; Hepatitis, Chronic ; Humans ; Korea ; Liver Diseases ; Plasma ; Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length* ; RNA ; RNA Viruses ; Sexual Partners

PAS staining was used to assess the glycogen content of psoriatic epidermis, in 35 patients with active psoriasis, 25 patients with inactive psoriasis and 21 normal control subjects. The investigations were also carried out by the disease type, sex, duration of illness, site of biopsy and subjective syrrptom such as itching sensation. Being compared with the active, izractive and normal control groups,7 of R5 active cases and 4 of 25 inactive cases were resulted in strong PAS positive reactions. In 21 ornmal aontrol group, the most cases gave PAS negative reaction, except 2 cases of the week PAS positive reactions. Being compared with disease types, 11 of 5I psoriasis vulgaris cascs was resulted in strong PAS positive reactions and psoriasis guttata cases were resulted in slight PAS positive reaction. among half of their ca.ses. Being iompared with the FAS staining intensity in accordance with the itcbing eensation, R of 6 with severe itching and 4 of 29 cases without itching were resultel in strong PA3 posltive reactions. There were no significant differenees in the sex, age, duration of illness and biopsy site aspects.
Biopsy ; Epidermis ; Glycogen* ; Humans ; Pruritus ; Psoriasis* ; Sensation

In order to understand epidemiologic characteristics of dioxins related health impacts, 107 diox in-related literatures published up to May, 1993 were thoroughly reviewed. The results obtained are as follows: 1. Review studies on dioxins can be classified into two types : one is studies concentrated on one specific subject related to dioxins such as the effects on skin, birth outcomes, metabolic machanisms in the human body, major sources of exposure to the general population, immunotoxicity, association between dioxins and cancers, and research methods on effects of dioxins. The other is review studies dealing with overall aspects of dioxins, among which the report published by Academy of Science of United Stateds of America in 1993 is the most recent one. 2. Judging by consistency of results and biological plausibility, there were three groups of diseases ; diseases having causal relationship, having possibilities of causal relationship, and having no causal relationship for the time being. 1) The diseases showing causal relationship were lung cancer, Hodgkin 'disease, non-Hodgkin 'lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chlordane, and polyneuropathy 2) the diseases showing possibilities of causal relationship were stomach cancer, lymphatic and haematopoietic cancer, multiple myeloma, skin cancer, diseases of digestive system, and CNS deformity among children born to the people exposed. 3) The diseases showing no causal relationship were oral and laryngeat cancer, esophageal cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, brain and CNS cancer, diseases of circulatory and respiratory systems. There were numerous diseases of digestive system, which showed difficulty in establishing definite causal relationship owing to the lack of consistency among researchers. 3. Even though papers dealt with dioxinrelated mortality and morbidity studies showed high mortality rate from accident, biological plausibility explaining causal relationship between them should be sought further. 4. There was a high prevalence of hearing loss among Vietnam veterans, and it seemed rather related to the explosive noise in combat than dioxin itself. 5. The current TCDD levels of Vietnam veterans were almost the same as those of the general population.
Americas ; Brain Neoplasms ; Child ; Chlordan ; Citrus sinensis* ; Congenital Abnormalities ; Digestive System ; Dioxins ; Esophageal Neoplasms ; Hearing Loss ; Human Body ; Humans ; Kidney Neoplasms ; Lung Neoplasms ; Mortality ; Multiple Myeloma ; Noise ; Parturition ; Polyneuropathies ; Prevalence ; Prostatic Neoplasms ; Respiratory System ; Sarcoma ; Skin ; Skin Neoplasms ; Stomach Neoplasms ; Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin ; Urinary Bladder Neoplasms ; Veterans ; Vietnam

No abstract available.
Cystadenocarcinoma*

BACKGROUND: Transforming growth factor-beta(TGF-beta) has multiple regulatory effects on cells of the immune system, and it has been suggested that differentiation of lymphoid cells is influenced by low concentra tions of this cytokine. OBJECTIVES: The aim or this study was to investigate the role of TGF-beta in regulation of T cell growth and differentiation, and to compare this effect with that of other cell signals known to be important in T cell ontogeny. METHODS: We used the CTLL-2 cell line in the presence of IL-2. Surface phenotype expression was analysed to see whether these cells could be switched to the other subtype of cells. RESULT: Treatment of CTLL-2 cells with TGF-beta resulted in dose dependent growth inhibition and morphological changes. Curing routine passage, less than 5% of cells were CD8alpha positive, whereas 38% of cells expressed CD8alpha when treated with IL-2 plus TGF-beta. However, TPA plus calcium ionophore, IFN-gamma, or TNF-alpha caused no significant changes in the proportion of CD8 cells. CONCLUSION: Our results show that this experiment can be a useful model for investigating CD8 precursor potentials in populations of CD4-CD8-(double negative) cells, and such a model may offer a way to study the molecular regulation of CD8 gene expression.
Calcium ; Cell Line* ; Gene Expression ; Immune System ; Interleukin-2 ; Lymphocytes ; Phenotype ; Transforming Growth Factor beta ; Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging findings of cerebral venous angiomas, and to compare those findings with those of cerebral angiography. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed the findings of gadolinium-enhanced MR images of 11 cases with angiographically proved cerebral venous angiomas. We obtained Tl-and T2-weighted images with gadoliniumenhanced Tl-weighted images at a 0.5 T MR imager with a spin-echo technique. We analyzed the location and signal intensity of the lesion, pattern of contrast enhancement, the distribution of draining veins and medullary veins before and after contrast enhancement, and then compared with the findings of cerebral angiography. RESULTS: The characteristic central tubular signal void structure showed low signal intensity on Tl-weighted images and high signal intensity on T2-weighted images in all cases. After gadolinium enhancement, we could find a characteristic enhancement of all medullary and central veins in 7 cases. CONCLUSION: Gadolinium-enhanced MR image was useful in the diagnosis of venous angiomas especially in the detection of medullary veins. The invasive cerebral angiography could be replaced by this technique in this disease.
Central Nervous System Venous Angioma* ; Cerebral Angiography* ; Diagnosis ; Gadolinium ; Gadolinium DTPA* ; Hemangioma ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Veins

While there have been not a few reports on the seroepidemiological characteristics of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Korea, most of them, however, have had several limitations; operational definition of HBV infection, validity of detection methods of HBV serologic markers, size of the study population, and confirmation of the vaccination history against HBV, etc. In order to avoid such limitations, authors randomly selected 1,495 healthy adults among the 217,511 insured (target population) of Korean Medical Insurance Corporation, living in seoul, and tested HBV(HBsAg, anti-HBs and anti-HBc) of all the subjects were tested, 392(26.2%) of interview failure cases 742 nonvaccinee were excluded from the actual population. Finally, the serologic markers tested of 742 nonvaccinee (study population) only were analyzed for the seroepidemiologic observation of the natural infection of HBV. The seroepidemiological characteristics of HBV infection in Korea were as follows ; 1 Point prevalence of HBs antigenemia was 11.7(9.1-14.3)% in male, which was slightly higher than that of female, 9.5(3.7-15.3)%. This level was one of the highest among those of Asian-Pacific countries. Decreasing tendency of HBsAg prevalence after the age of 50 was observed, which seems to be due to selective attrition of HBV chronic carriers among the healthy adults and/or to the limited-lasting duration of the HBs antigenemia, in part. 2. Point prevalence of anti-HBc(78.8% in male, 50.9% in female) was higher than that of anti-HBs(65.2% in male, 46.6% in female), respectively. And both of them were higher in male than in female. Increasing tendency of the prevalence of both antibodies was observed by age, which seems to be largely due to recurrent infection in adults and to some cumulative effect, in part, of their relatively longer-lasting duration. 3. The level of HBV infection defined by positive for at least one of the 3 serologic markers of HBV by RIA method was 84.7(81.8-87.6)% in male and 61.2(51.9-70.5)% in female, which was also one of the highest among those of Asian-Pacific countries. The proportion of susceptible population to HBV infection among healthy adults was 15.3% in male and 38.8% in female. 4. The relative frequency of current or past infection and chronic carrier among HBV infected person was estimated. The currently or past infected was estimated 75.7% in male and 71.8% in female, and chronic carrier state, 13.8% in male and 14.1% in female. The analysis of the geometric mean of the antibody titer in anti-HBs positive sera indicated also to be compatible with the above findings, suggesting that active, even though inapparent, infection of HBV occur so frequently among healthy adults in Korea.
Adult* ; Antibodies ; Carrier State ; Female ; Hepatitis B Surface Antigens ; Hepatitis B virus* ; Hepatitis B* ; Hepatitis* ; Humans ; Insurance ; Korea ; Male ; Prevalence ; Radioimmunoassay ; Seoul* ; Vaccination

No abstract available.
Asthma*