Recent studies of twins suggest that human obesity and fatness are highly heritable.^{1 2 3 4 5} This suggestion would be greatly strengthened if it were confirmed by adoption studies, another method of assessing genetic influence in humans. Unfortunately, ...

IN 1980 Canessa et al. first described an association between elevated erythrocyte lithium–sodium countertransport in vitro and human essential hypertension.¹ The in vivo function of the lithium–sodium countertransporter has been envisioned as a ...

BOTH radiotherapy and alkylating agents — typically, busulfan — in standard dosages are valuable in the palliative management of chronic myeloid leukemia, but the possibility of curing the disease has not been seriously entertained until recently. However,...

Varicella–ZOSTER virus infections are common and sometimes severe in immunocompromised patients.¹ Disseminated disease, which results from either a primary infection (varicella) or a recurrent infection (herpes zoster), has been associated with a 6 to 17 ...

Ventricular resection guided by endocardial mapping is an important advance in the management of drug-refractory ventricular tachycardia.^{1 , 2} This technique and modifications of it are now carried out at a number of centers, with results that are ...

It is widely recognized that the use of resources in health maintenance organizations (HMOs), particularly group practice HMOs, differs from that in traditional fee-for-service medical care. Patients enrolled in HMOs have lower hospitalization rates, and ...

The idea that hypertension might be associated with alterations in the small intracellular pool of sodium can be traced back to 1952, when Tobian and Binion reported that the sodium content of renal arteries, as measured during postmortem examination, was ...

Presentation of Case

A 19-year-old man was admitted to the hospital because of painful ophthalmoplegia.

He was well until one month earlier, when his automobile skidded and collided with a tree, and his forehead struck the wheel. He did not lose ...

Obesity is known to run in families; however, the meaning of this phenomenon has long been a subject of debate among students of human biology. The problem, of course, has been to determine the relative importance of genetic and environmental influences ...

It is now a decade since Congress asked the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to examine "federal policies and existing medical practices to determine whether a reasonable amount of justification should be provided before costly new medical ...

DEATHS

Barbarisi — Constantine Barbarisi, M.D., formerly of Everett, died on July 14 at the age of 85.

Dr. Barbarisi graduated from Tufts College Medical School in 1925. He was a member of the American Medical Association, and a 50-year member of the ...

To the Editor: Propranolol reduces portal hypertension in cirrhosis¹ and has been evaluated for the prevention of rebleeding.^{2 , 3}

We report here preliminary results of a multicenter randomized clinical trial in patients with cirrhosis who had never ...

No extract is available for articles shorter than 400 words.

To the Editor: Syrup of ipecac, long a staple of the medicine chest in families with small children, has saved many lives through its ability to induce emesis. However, recent reports in both the scientific^{1 2 3 4 5} and popular press⁶ have described ...

To the Editor: Low-dose cytarabine is now recognized as an effective treatment in preleukemic syndromes¹ and in some cases of acute nonlymphocytic leukemia.² However, the mechanism of action is very controversial. Does it act, at least in part, through ...

To the Editor: Aplastic anemia, an often fatal disease characterized by diminished bone marrow function, is potentially curable with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. For those ineligible for transplantation, antithymocyte globulin, an ...

To the Editor: The natural history of chronic pancreatitis is often characterized by the development of radiopaque pancreatic stones a number of years after the clinical onset of the disease. Such stones are made of calcium carbonate. There is, in ...

No extract is available for articles shorter than 400 words.

To the Editor: In our conventional concept of our profession, we focus primarily on the needs of individual patients. This year's award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War challenges us to ...

No extract is available for articles shorter than 400 words.

There has been mounting pressure on the medical profession in recent years to stem the rise in national health care expenditures. One result of that pressure has been the popularization of the term "cost effective" in medicine. Examples of its use abound ...

These two books are a breath of clear, practical thinking in the fuzzy fog of nuclear-horror books that settled in during the past five years — horror books that carried no substantive message for either hope or action. The two books reviewed here will ...

Although chromosome breakage was once thought to be random in distribution, it is now evident that this is not the case. Site-specific breakage of human chromosomes has been a subject of increasing interest to geneticists and clinicians. These so-called ...

Every so often a book comes along that says just about all there is to say in a particular field, and still is only an inch thick. This new book does just that: it is crisp yet remarkably comprehensive. Its layout makes reading easy and fast moving, and ...

There have been several recent symposiums published on the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In contrast to most of them, this work has the advantage of containing a series of solicited summaries designed to cover this rapidly moving field ...

The proliferation of new knowledge regarding sexually transmitted diseases has been particularly rapid in recent years and has not been confined to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. Although this book was published in 1985, its major ...

This book offers a comprehensive and well-written review of the wide range of issues that pertain to obstetrical and gynecologic infections. It was written by two senior clinical investigators in this field. There are succinct reviews of the clinical ...

Although the first edition of this book has become the "gold standard" for textbooks on infectious disease, the editors and contributors refused to rest on their laurels. This edition, published six years after the first, is an improved product. It is ...

Biomedical Science

Actions of Progesterone on the Brain. (Current Topics in Neuroendocrinology. Vol. 5.) Edited by D. Ganten and D. Pfaff. 216 pp. New York, Springer-Verlag, 1985. $39.

Antibiotics in Laboratory Medicine. Second edition. Edited by Victor ...

ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME

A conference entitled "AIDS & Drug Abuse in the Workplace: Resolving the Thorny Legal-Medical Issues" will be held at the New York Helmsley Hotel on February 7. The fee is $395.

Contact Mary Kilroy, Law & Business, 855 ...