Search

In a double-blind short term cross-over study, designed to evaluate the analgesic efficacy of alclofenac, 500mg thrice daily against aspirin, 866mg thrice daily, fifty patients in a chronic stage of classical or definite rheumatoid arthritis (according to American Rheumatism Association (1959) criteria) were selected.The criteria of assessment included pain, function and morning stiffness. The patients' and physician's overall preferences and opinion on tolerance were also recorded. Forty-eight patients completed the study successfully.The study showed that both drugs were significantly effective in relieving pain but there was no difference between the two preparations and neither drug made any improvement to function or morning stiffness. The patients' and physician's preferences and opinion on the therapeutic efficacy were almost equally divided between the two drugs. However, the instances of side-effects were a little higher (44%) with aspirin than with alclofenac (34%).It appears from this study that in chronic rheumatoid arthritis the analgesic activity of 1·5g alclofenac is equivalent to 2·6g (approx.) of aspirin.

The rapid single intravenous injection of the cholecystokinin preparation Cecekin (Vitrum) was found to inhibit the responses of Heidenhain pouch dogs to stimulation by gastrin extract or synthetic gastrin-like penta-peptide at both submaximal and supramaximal dose rates, to histamine, to the stable cholinergic drug Amechol, and to feeding a meat meal. The pattern of inhibition suggested that the inhibitor effect was exerted in the region of the acid secreting cell.Pure cholecystokinin was capable of inhibiting the acid response of the Heidenhain pouch dogs to histamine. Although both pure secretin and pure cholecystokinin have now been demonstrated to be possible inhibitor agents arising from duodenal mucosa, it is likely that endogenous duodenal acidification releases a further as yet unidentified humoral inhibitor agent, or that secretin and/or cholecystokinin may act in collaboration with each other or a further inhibitor agent.In dogs with both a Heidenhain pouch and a simple fistula into the normally vagally innervated gastric remnant and in which antrectomy had been performed, a single rapid intravenous injection of the Cecekin had no effect on the Heidenhain pouch responses to the continuous intravenous infusion of histamine. The acid output from the main gastric remnant, however, was increased by the Cecekin injection. Several hypotheses to account for the difference in behaviour in the two preparations are discussed. The possibility is raised that Cecekin contains some gastrin-like activity.

Excessive vaginal bleeding after the insertion of intrauterine device continues to be an important problem. In a small number of patients bleeding can be attributed to local pathology in the genital tract, but in the majority no satisfactory cause has been found. Excessive uterine bleeding is also known to occur in patients with generalized bleeding tendency. In the present study, 39 women complaining of bleeding per vaginam after the insertion of IUD's were screened for a generalized bleeding tendency. No gross abnormality of coagulation and/or capillary fragility was detected by the tests performed even in patients in whom the device had to be removed because of intractable bleeding.

Gastric acid responses to meals were compared with those to histamine and pentagastrin in 3 dogs with Heidenhain pouches. Large single feeds resulted in acid outputs that were approximately equal to the maximal response to histamine. The maximal acid response to pentagastrin was less than 50% of that to the meal or to the maximal dose of histamine. It is suggested that combinations of endogenously released stimuli (in response to a meal) can produce a potentiated gastric response which exceeds that produced by pentagastrin (exogenous gastrin) alone.

A theoretical model for the friction coefficient indicates two critical speeds of sliding. The lower critical speed corresponds to a change-over from boundary to mixed lubrication conditions, the higher critical speed a transition to full fluid-film lubrication at angles of inclination less than 0.01 deg. The first critical speed appears to be associated with the “stick-slip” phenomenon.

A CENTRAL issue in the study of both metazoan differentiation and the control of cellular activity is the validity or otherwise of the hypothesis1,2that nonreplicating nuclei of a given higher organism contain a constant amount of DNA per haploid set of chromosomes. Differential elimination or increase of DNA has been demonstrated in dipteran polytene chromosomes3, and in the oocytes of Acheta and amphibia4, but apart from these possibly special cases the most studied apparent exception to the constancy rule is probably provided by mammalian leukocytes5–11. Most workers in this field have found the apparent DNA content of the relatively large nuclei of monocytes, as assessed by Feulgen cytophotometry, to be between 5% and 20% higher than that of the smaller, more darkly stained nuclei of lymphocytes and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. The consensus of opinion seems to be that the measured differences are probably due to nonstoichiometry of staining rather than to genuine differences in the amounts of DNA present. But work published to date has in general been performed without certain technical refinements which have recently become available, and we have now investigated the possibility that systematic cytophotometric errors may have been responsible for at least some of the reported differences between cell types.

TO THE EDITOR.— Cornu cutaneum or the cutaneous horn is a peculiar type of benign neoplasm showing horn-like projection on the skin. Although the cutaneous horn may develop over a normal skin, these more often develop over some preexisting skin conditions like warts, keratoses, nevi, trauma, burns, lupus vulgaris, and even on an epithelioma.1 In the normal process of keratinization, the dead keratin is being gradually cast off as dust. If this keratin continues to stick on, the result is a horn which represents marked cohesiveness of the keratin.2,3 Since the horn represents an erroneous epithelial growth, it may sometimes be complicated with malignancy. We came across an interesting case of penile horn supervening over an excised wart which is recorded below. REPORT OF A CASE A 55-year-old man reported to the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research Hospital, Pondicherry, India, with horn-like growth over the