Full-thickness defects of articular cartilage in the knee may progress to osteoarthritis. In 1743 Hunter¹ stated, “From Hippocrates to the present age it is universally allowed that ulcerated cartilage is a troublesome thing and that, once destroyed, is ...

Approximately 65 percent of previously untreated adults with primary acute myeloid leukemia (AML) enter complete remission when treated with cytarabine and an anthracycline, with or without thioguanine¹–⁸. However, with conventional maintenance or ...

Dopamine-agonist drugs are the treatment of choice for most patients with hyperprolactinemia¹,². Bromocriptine has been the reference compound and effectively suppresses prolactin secretion, restores gonadal function, and shrinks prolactinomas³. It has a ...

Direct-current shocks¹–⁵ and radiofrequency energy⁶–¹² have been used to interrupt atrioventricular conduction in patients with atrial fibrillation associated with an uncontrolled ventricular rate refractory to drug therapy. However, a technique to slow ...

Common variable immunodeficiency is a primary immunodeficiency disease characterized by low serum concentrations of IgG, IgA, and usually IgM¹,². Although some patients appear to have only intrinsic B-cell defects, more than half also have abnormalities ...

Figure 1. Retinopathy in Leukemia.

A 43-year-old man presented with blurred vision that had persisted for several days. Funduscopic examination of the retina revealed leukemic infiltrates (arrowheads) and hemorrhages (arrows). Bone marrow aspiration and ...

The deletion of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 marked a dramatic reversal of the judgment that homosexuality is a behavioral disorder. In the practice of medicine, especially ...

Genetics is a language with rules of composition that give the tissues of the body their special traits. These rules govern the activation of particular subgroups of genes, which determine not only the unique characteristics of a cell type but also ...

Stage

A 23-year-old woman of Moroccan Jewish origin was admitted to the hospital with abdominal pain. She had had recurrent attacks of abdominal pain, sometimes with fever, for the previous three months. There were no other gastrointestinal or urinary ...

Hyaline articular cartilage constitutes the principal working component of the synovial joints, and in adults it contains neither blood vessels nor nerves¹. Cartilage provides diarthrodial joints with a remarkably resilient and long-lasting gliding ...

Chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has long been the prototype for the intensive chemotherapy now widely used in the treatment of many cancers. It has been more than 25 years since Ellison et al. first showed that cytarabine could prolong ...

Hyperprolactinemia is a frequent cause of amenorrhea, infertility, and galactorrhea in women and decreased libido and impotence in men. Most patients are young women, both because of the sensitivity of pituitary-gonadal function in women to inhibition by ...

Atrial fibrillation is the most common chronic tachycardia¹. Even in the absence of other cardiac abnormalities, the loss of effective atrial contraction and the inappropriately rapid ventricular rate during arrhythmia result in depressed cardiac function^...

To the Editor: In the Sounding Board section of the May 19th issue of the Journal,¹,² two sides of a well-rehearsed argument were presented. That the large departments of internal medicine lost control of some of the major organ specialties in the past ...

To the Editor: In their excellent review of acute pancreatitis (April 28 issue),¹ Steinberg and Tenner address, among other aspects of the disease, the pathophysiologic features of gallstone-induced pancreatitis. They suggest that the argument about ...

To the Editor: The Brief Report by Saffran et al.¹ and the companion editorial by Buckley² (May 26 issue) concern the effects of mutations in the gene for Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk)³,⁴ on the phenotypic expression of X-linked agammaglobulinemia. We ...

To the Editor: Cockcroft et al. (April 14 issue) report preserved endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in response to carbachol and acetylcholine in patients with essential hypertension¹. In repeated studies, however, my colleagues and I have ...

To the Editor: The cause of primary biliary cirrhosis is unknown but may be associated with an inherited abnormality of immune regulation¹,². It is not known whether abnormal genes alone will cause the disease or whether an additional triggering event is ...

To the Editor: The development of the convolutional pattern of the human brain is poorly understood¹. Using high-resolution in vivo magnetic resonance morphometry, we recently studied cerebral left-right asymmetry in 20 pairs of healthy monozygotic twins ...

To the Editor: The Image in Clinical Medicine entitled “Struck by Lightning” (May 26 issue)¹ was interesting and beautifully presented. However, unless there is a recognized method of distinguishing the entrance and exit wounds caused by lightning, we ...

No book has dealt comprehensively with the parathyroid glands since the 1948 classic by Fuller Albright and Edward C. Reifenstein, Jr., The Parathyroid Glands and Metabolic Bone Disease: Selected Studies (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins). In the past 20 ...

Within the past decade literally thousands of scientific papers have been published on insulin resistance and the mechanisms of insulin action. The past five years saw the publication of over 20,000 articles on insulin resistance in obesity, non-insulin-...

With the plethora of pages devoted to acid-base disorders in the major textbooks of medicine and the useful formulas and mnemonics given in handbooks, it is a tribute to Jerome Lowenstein that the pedagogy of acid and base disorders seems more complete ...

Using a combination of innovative book design and modern printing technology, the editors and authors of the revolutionary textbook Rheumatology guide us into an exciting new era of medical communication and education. They have combined excellence in ...

The Oxford Textbook of Rheumatology is a two-volume work of 1142 pages. The editors state that their goal was to incorporate into a new textbook the exciting advances in the molecular biology of the rheumatic diseases. The book is “designed to be ...