Paluel J. Flagg Correspondence

Entries include an envelope from the President of SPAD (Society for the Prevention of Asphyxial Death) with copies of academic newspaper biography clippings presenting courses and information on progress in the field with the photographic images of Flagg and his wife, a publisher advertisement, and typed letters on personal stationery

Higher establishment success in specialized parasitoids: support for the existence of trade-offs in the evolution of specialization

Most animals do not feed on all the resources available to them, but the mechanisms behind the evolution of dietary specialization are still debated. A central but unanswered question is whether specialists generally gain fitness advantages on their resource compared to generalists, experiencing a trade-off between the ability to use a broad range of resources and the fitness reached on each single one.Empirical tests so far suffered from difficulties in measuring fitness; they were restricted to few species, and results were equivocal. This lack of support for the importance of trade-offs gave rise to theories explaining the evolution of specialization without such trade-offs.Using a large dataset of intentional biological control introductions of 254 species of parasitoids from 15 families to locations outside their native range, we show that establishment success, a measure of total fitness, is higher in specialized species. This result holds when controlling for possible confounding factors such as the number of introduced individuals (propagule pressure).The outcome of this study provides robust evidence that dietary specialization implies fitness advantages in an entire species-rich taxon, indicating that trade-offs might be widely involved in the evolution of specialization

Neuropathological Findings In Chronic Relapsing Experimental Allergic Neuritis Induced In The Lewis Rat By Inoculation With Intradural Root Myelin And Treatment With Low Dose Cyclosporin A

Experimental allergic neuritis (EAN) was induced in Lewis rats by inoculation with bovine intradural root myelin and adjuvants. Rats treated with subcutaneous cyclosporin A (CsA) (4mg/kg on 3 days per week from the day of inoculation until day 29) developed a chronic relapsing course. Tissues from the spinal cord, nerve roots, dorsal root ganglia and sciatic nerve of CsA-treated rats sampled during relapses and remissions were studied during or after episodes of acute EAN. Both control and CsA-treated animals studied in the first episode of EAN had evidence of inflammation and primary demyelination of the nerve roots and dorsal root ganglia. In control and CsA-treated animals in the second episode there was severe inflammation and demyelination and remyelination in the spinal nerves and sciatic nerves and dorsal columns of the spinal cord, particularly in later stages of the disease. In later episodes there was less inflammation, but there was continuing demyelination and onion bulbs were present. In animals sampled after recovery from chronic relapsing EAN onion bulbs were present. Occasional small onion bulbs were also observed in control animals that were inoculated with higher doses of myelin. Plasma cells were present in the inflammatory lesions of later episodes. Mast cells were also observed at different stages of the disease. We conclude that the CsA form of chronic relapsing EAN has clinical and pathological similarities with the human disease, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy

Safety assessment of essential medicines for elderly people: a bibliographic survey

Certain medicines are considered potentially inappropriate (PIM) for elderly people as they increase the risk of adverse drug events (ADE) and because safer alternative therapies are available on the market. In this context, in order to identify the instruments that assess the quality of medical prescriptions for elderly and to determine which drugs are considered PIM, a bibliographic survey was conducted in PUBMED, LILACS and PAHO databases, in February and March/2010. The search strategy included the use of health descriptors and a manual search in the references cited by selected papers. During the period of data collection, 15 instruments were identified. In 2012, with the publication of the update of Beers criteria, this instrument was included in the study. We identified 163 PIM of 25 therapeutic classes, of which 125 (76.7%) are marketed in Brazil. Of these, 31 (24.8%) are essential medicines (RENAME 2012), of which 13 have safer therapeutic equivalents and 19 (15.2%) are over-the-counter drugs. Data suggest the need for inclusion of safer alternatives for the elderly in the national list of essential medicines and the pharmaceutical care for early detection of ADE in this age group, in order to contribute to the safe use of medicines

The mammalian gene function resource: The International Knockout Mouse Consortium

In 2007, the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) made the ambitious promise to generate mutations in virtually every protein-coding gene of the mouse genome in a concerted worldwide action. Now, 5 years later, the IKMC members have developed highthroughput gene trapping and, in particular, gene-targeting pipelines and generated more than 17,400 mutant murine embryonic stem (ES) cell clones and more than 1,700 mutant mouse strains, most of them conditional. A common IKMC web portal (www.knockoutmouse.org) has been established, allowing easy access to this unparalleled biological resource. The IKMC materials considerably enhance functional gene annotation of the mammalian genome and will have a major impact on future biomedical research