Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Therapies in the Treatment of Meniere's Syndrome: Illness Narratives

Colonnade interior, glass wall, from above, depicting brise-soleil; The building today commonly referred to as the Old City Hall was the building that served as Ottawa's city hall from 1958 to 2000. Today it is officially known as 111 Sussex Drive and is owned by the Federal Government of Canada. The building is located on Green Island at the point where the Rideau River empties into the Ottawa. The International Style building was opened on August 2, 1958 by Princess Margaret as a member of the Canadian Royal Family. It is noted for the first building in Ottawa to be fully air conditioned. It was designed by John Bland of the firm of Rother, Bland and Trudeau and is considered one of the most important International Style buildings in Canada. Winning the Massey Medal for design in 1959, modifications were made by Moshe Safdie in 1992-1993. Today the building mainly houses foreign affairs employees. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 1/10/2008

Caveolin-1 is a risk factor for postsurgery metastasis in preclinical melanoma models

Melanomas are highly lethal skin tumours that are frequently treated by surgical resection. However, the efficacy of such procedures is often limited by tumour recurrence and metastasis. Caveolin-1 (CAV1) has been attributed roles as a tumour suppressor, although in late-stage tumours, its presence is associated with enhanced metastasis. The expression of this protein in human melanoma development and particularly how the presence of CAV1 affects metastasis after surgery has not been defined. CAV1 expression in human melanocytes and melanomas increases with disease progression and is highest in metastatic melanomas. The effect of increased CAV1 expression can then be evaluated using B16F10 murine melanoma cells injected into syngenic immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice or human A375 melanoma cells injected into immunodeficient B6Rag1−/− mice. Augmented CAV1 expression suppresses tumour formation upon a subcutaneous injection, but enhances lung metastasis of cells injected into the tail vein in both models. A procedure was initially developed using B16F10 melanoma cells in C57BL/6 mice to mimic better the situation in patients undergoing surgery. Subcutaneous tumours of a defined size were removed surgically and local tumour recurrence and lung metastasis were evaluated after another 14 days. In this postsurgery setting, CAV1 presence in B16F10 melanomas favoured metastasis to the lung, although tumour suppression at the initial site was still evident. Similar results were obtained when evaluating A375 cells in B6Rag1−/− mice. These results implicate CAV1 expression in melanomas as a marker of poor prognosis for patients undergoing surgery as CAV1 expression promotes experimental lung metastasis in two different preclinical models

HIV Drug Resistance Surveillance Using Pooled Pyrosequencing

BACKGROUND: Surveillance for HIV transmitted drug resistance (TDR) is performed using HIV genotype results from individual specimens. Pyrosequencing, through its massive parallel sequencing ability, can analyze large numbers of specimens simultaneously. Instead of using pyrosequencing conventionally, to sequence a population of viruses within an individual, we interrogated a single combined pool of surveillance specimens to demonstrate that it is possible to determine TDR rates in HIV protease from a population of individuals. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The protease region from 96 treatment naïve, HIV+ serum specimens was genotyped using standard Sanger sequencing method. The 462 bp protease amplicons from these specimens were pooled in equimolar concentrations and re-sequenced using the GS FLX Titanium system. The nucleotide (NT) and amino acid (AA) differences from the reference sequence, along with TDR mutations, detected by each method were compared. In the protease sequence, there were 212 nucleotide and 81 AA differences found using conventional sequencing and 345 nucleotide and 168 AA differences using pyrosequencing. All nucleotide and amino acid polymorphisms found at frequencies >/=5% in pyrosequencing were detected using both methods with the rates of variation highly correlated. Using Sanger sequencing, two TDR mutations, M46L and I84V, were each detected as mixtures at a frequency of 1.04% (1/96). These same TDR mutations were detected by pyrosequencing with a prevalence of 0.29% and 0.34% respectively. Phylogenetic analysis established that the detected low frequency mutations arose from the same single specimens that were found to contain TDR mutations by Sanger sequencing. Multiple clinical protease DR mutations present at higher frequencies were concordantly identified using both methods. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We show that pyrosequencing pooled surveillance specimens can cost-competitively detect protease TDR mutations when compared with conventional methods. With few modifications, the method described here can be used to determine population rates of TDR in both protease and reverse transcriptase. Furthermore, this pooled pyrosequencing technique may be generalizable to other infectious agents where a survey of DR rates is required

Mental health literacy of depression: gender differences and attitudinal antecedents in a representative British sample

Background Poor mental health literacy and negative attitudes toward individuals with mental health disorders may impede optimal help-seeking for symptoms of mental ill-health. The present study examined the ability to recognize cases of depression as a function of respondent and target gender, as well as individual psychological differences in attitudes toward persons with depression. Methods In a representative British general population survey, the ability to correctly recognize vignettes of depression was assessed among 1,218 adults. Respondents also rated the vignettes along a number of attitudinal dimensions and completed measures of attitudes toward seeking psychological help, psychiatric skepticism, and anti-scientific attitudes. Results There were significant differences in the ability to correctly identify cases of depression as a function of respondent and target gender. Respondents were more likely to indicate that a male vignette did not suffer from a mental health disorder compared to a female vignette, and women were more likely than men to indicate that the male vignette suffered from a mental health disorder. Attitudes toward persons with depression were associated with attitudes toward seeking psychological help, psychiatric skepticism, and anti-scientific attitudes. Conclusion Initiatives that consider the impact of gender stereotypes as well as individual differences may enhance mental health literacy, which in turn is associated with improved help-seeking behaviors for symptoms of mental ill-health

Validation and Use of 22Na Turnover to Measure Food Intake in Free-Ranging Lizards

As the food intake of free-ranging animals has proved to be difficult to measure by traditional means, the feasibility of using radioactive Na to measure food consumption in a small scincid lizard (Lampropholis guichenoti) was assessed. This technique has previously been used only for several species of mammal. A significant relationship between food intake and Na turnover was found in the laboratory, with Na turnover underestimating intake by 7.6%. The food intake of free-ranging members of a field population was estimated by 22Na turnover to be 9.55, 0.65, 9.39 and 13.75 mg dry weight (day)-1 during autumn, winter, spring and summer respectively. Estimates of assimilated and expended energy from these food intake values agree closely with data reported for other lizards using alternative techniques. This study also describes the technical innovations which were necessary to study lizards weighing less than 1 g; and it suggests that 22Na can provide an easy, reliable and inexpensive means of studying the energetics of many free-living animals

Evolutionary stasis and lability in thermal physiology in a group of tropical lizards

Understanding how quickly physiological traits evolve is a topic of great interest, particularly in the context of how organisms can adapt in response to climate warming. Adjustment to novel thermal habitats may occur either through behavioural adjustments, physiological adaptation, or both. Here we test whether rates of evolution differ among physiological traits in the cybotoids, a clade of tropical Anolis lizards distributed in markedly different thermal environments on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. We find that cold tolerance evolves considerably faster than heat tolerance, a difference that results because behavioural thermoregulation more effectively shields these organisms from selection on upper than lower temperature tolerances. Specifically, because lizards in very different environments behaviourally thermoregulate during the day to similar body temperatures, divergent selection on body temperature and heat tolerance is precluded, whereas night-time temperatures can only be partially buffered by behaviour, thereby exposing organisms to selection on cold tolerance. We discuss how exposure to selection on physiology influences divergence among tropical organisms and its implications for adaptive evolutionary response to climate warming