Asbestos is a commercial group of strong, ductile, and fire-resistant mineral fibers. These properties, which differ among different mineralogic types of asbestos, strongly affect its in vivo persistence and toxicity.¹,² Chrysotile asbestos, which ...

Retinopathy of prematurity is a leading cause of childhood blindness. It is a disease of the developing retinal vasculature in premature infants. Mild forms regress with little or no loss of visual function; however, more severe forms can lead to retinal ...

Elevated plasma low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels are causally related to ischemic heart disease,¹,² and a reduction in these levels reduces the incidence of ischemic heart disease³–⁵ and the associated mortality rate.³,⁴ Elevated LDL ...

DNA sequences of human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) have been detected in all forms of Kaposi's sarcoma.¹–³ HHV-8 has also been detected in primary effusion lymphomas,⁴ Castleman's disease,⁵ and multiple myeloma⁶ and reported anecdotally in cases of ...

Figure 1. A 22-year-old woman with a family history of hypercholesterolemia had had a soft-tissue swelling on the back of her left ankle for several years. Examination revealed a fusiform swelling of the Achilles' tendon. The serum cholesterol ...

A marked accumulation of eosinophils occurs in several important disorders, such as allergic diseases, parasitic infections, and cancer.¹ The level of eosinophils in the body is normally tightly regulated. In normal subjects, eosinophils account for only ...

A number of common disorders of the peripheral nervous system, termed paraproteinemic neuropathies, are closely connected with the presence of excessive amounts of an abnormal immunoglobulin in the blood. These immunoglobulins can be detected by ...

Presentation of Case

A 53-year-old man was admitted to the hospital with left ventricular dysfunction four years after receiving a cardiac transplant.

The patient had been well until 5 1/2 years earlier, when he had a severe “viral” illness with marked ...

Asbestos is an important cause of human illness. Clinical and epidemiologic studies have established incontrovertibly that asbestos causes cancer of the lung, malignant mesothelioma of the pleura and peritoneum, cancer of the larynx, and certain ...

In 1942 Terry reported a retinal vasculopathy causing blindness in premature infants.¹ The condition was called retrolental fibroplasia, because a fibrovascular mass could be seen behind the crystalline lens. Hundreds of babies in the United States still ...

To the Editor: Hakim et al. (Jan. 8 issue)¹ reported an association between regular walking and lower overall long-term mortality in retired nonsmoking men. The observed reduction in mortality was significant for cancer deaths but not for cardiovascular ...

To the Editor: Winston Churchill's tribute to the Royal Air Force in the House of Commons (“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”) could be paraphrased to apply to the Lifestyle Heart Trial (“Rarely have so many ...

To the Editor: The study of polymorphism of the gene for cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP), reported by Kuivenhoven et al. (Jan. 8 issue),¹ has negative implications in the era of managed care and cost containment. The authors demonstrated that ...

To the Editor: Reports of the association of allelic variants with common diseases will soon accelerate, driven by the twin engines of genomic sequencing and the discovery of polymorphisms. Three reports in the Journal — by Hershey et al. (Dec. 11 issue),...

To the Editor: We respectfully disagree with Adrogué and Madias (Jan. 1 and Jan. 8 issues)¹ on a number of issues in their review of acid–base disturbances. The authors fail to emphasize that, except in specific circumstances, such as methanol or ...

To the Editor: Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the United States, became a nationally notifiable disease in 1991. From 1982 to 1996, a total of 89,169 cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).¹ In ...

To the Editor: Travelers to remote destinations may not have access to immediate medical care in case of an emergency. Contact-lens wearers, in particular, should take precautions, since they are susceptible to serious microbial keratitis.¹–⁴ We describe ...

The maturation of emergency medicine as a medical specialty has made us realize that it possesses unique characteristics. These characteristics have formed a new body of medical knowledge, which in turn has inspired an intimidating wave of textbooks on ...

The past decade has seen an explosion in our understanding of the allergic process. The immunologic pathways, cytokines, and inflammatory cells that participate in allergic diseases have all been subject to intense scrutiny. In parallel, an expanding ...

A generation ago, in the 1960s, many exciting developments were taking place in rheumatology. Clinical studies were greatly improving the classification of the systemic rheumatic diseases, basic research was elucidating the immune system and its central ...

Part 1 of this article suggested that without countervailing forces, market pressures to reduce costs in managed care may compel all health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to adopt practices that compromise medical ethics and patient care. Theoretically, ...