Vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for osteopenia and bone fractures.¹–⁵ In ambulatory elderly people whose average serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was slightly low, supplementation with 20 μg (800 IU) of vitamin D and with calcium ...

Endothelin-1 is a potent endothelium-derived vasoconstrictor peptide that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of hypertension and chronic heart failure.¹ Plasma levels of endothelin-1 have been found to be elevated in some but not all studies of ...

Prophylaxis against stress ulcers has traditionally been recommended for the prevention of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in critically ill patients.¹–³ Recent natural-history studies have documented a very low incidence of bleeding,⁴ however, suggesting ...

The Kell blood-group system is one of the major antigenic systems in human red cells. It consists of 23 known antigens that reside on one 93-kd transmembrane protein encoded by a single gene on chromosome 7 (7q33).¹,² The Kell antigen is expressed only by ...

Several lines of evidence suggest a link between chronic gastritis due to Helicobacter pylori and mucosa-associated lymphoid-tissue (MALT) lymphoma of the stomach.¹,² A close epidemiologic association has been reported.³–⁵ The microorganism can be found ...

Figure 1. A 67-year-old woman was evaluated for a one-week history of mild epigastric pain and black stools. On the day of admission she had two episodes of hematemesis. Physical examination revealed a pulse of 92 per minute, blood pressure of 120/67 mm ...

Exciting advances in anatomical imaging have greatly improved our capacity to detect pathologic processes in the nervous system, localize these processes precisely, and predict the type of disease more accurately than ever before (Table 1). These advances,...

Presentation of Case

A 38-year-old woman (gravida 5, para 1) was admitted to another hospital in spontaneous labor.

The patient's first pregnancy, six years earlier, had ended successfully at 36 weeks' gestation. A low transverse cesarean section was ...

Vitamin D is an essential precursor of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, the steroid hormone required not only for bone development and growth in children and maintenance of bone in adults, but also for the prevention of osteoporosis and fractures in the elderly. ...

The history of hemolytic disease of the newborn dates to the 1600s, when a French midwife described the birth of twins, one of whom had fatal hydrops fetalis and the other of whom was initially icteric and later died. Centuries have passed, yet morbidity ...

The ability of robotic analyzers to sequence long lengths of DNA automatically and the rapidity with which computers can scan gene data banks have spawned a new discipline in the biomedical sciences, genomics.¹ The controversial Human Genome Project is an ...

In response to the controversy over placebo-controlled trials in developing countries of treatments to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),¹ I would like to offer the perspective of someone who lives and works in ...

To the Editor: Lurie and Wolfe (Sept. 18 issue)¹ claim that ongoing placebo-controlled trials of antiretroviral agents to reduce perinatal transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in developing countries are unethical. As executive director ...

To the Editor: The first randomized trial demonstrating the efficacy of isoniazid (as compared with placebo) in preventing tuberculosis in Haitians with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and positive purified-protein-derivative (PPD) tests was ...

To the Editor: We agree with Dr. Phanuphak that investigators are obliged constantly to evaluate and elevate the ethical context of a study conducted in a clinical setting.¹ But Dr. Phanuphak criticizes our observational study, funded by the National ...

Information is power, and perhaps a seed of corruption. In Michael Millenson's paean to medicine in the information age, once corporations have confiscated power from clinicians it absolutely does not corrupt.

Millenson, a Chicago-based health reporter ...

Dissection of the human cadaver is the first rite of initiation into the medical profession for virtually every medical student. Whatever its obvious practical educational value, human anatomy lab carries enormous symbolic value as a sort of hazing ...

Physicians have made substantial contributions to the autobiographical literature, but not many have passed the test of soul-baring, Augustinian self-analysis required by confessional literature. William Carlos Williams is among the few. More recently, ...