Vitamin D in health and disease: Current perspectives

Despite the numerous reports of the association of vitamin D with a spectrum of development, disease treatment and health maintenance, vitamin D deficiency is common. Originating in part from the diet but with a key source resulting from transformation by exposure to sunshine, a great deal of the population suffers from vitamin D deficiency especially during winter months. It is linked to the treatment and pathogenesis and/or progression of several disorders including cancer, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness and diabetes. This widespread deficiency of Vitamin D merits consideration of widespread policies including increasing awareness among the public and healthcare professionals

The University of Cambridge, academic expertise and the British empire, 1885–1962

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Environment and Planning A: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. The final published version will be available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15594802This paper examines how imperial travel of British academics shaped the production of knowledge and colonial policy from the 1880s to the 1960s. It employs an innovative, archive based methodology that examines the changing geographies of all recorded academic travel from the University of Cambridge in conjunction with the extensive overseas journeys of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, Drapers’ Professor of Agriculture from 1930 to 1957 and a key advisor to the Colonial Office on tropical agriculture. Drawing on recent work in geography and science studies, this study outlines how scientific expertise was increasingly sought by colonial governments at the eve of decolonisation due to a lack of scientific infrastructure and growing social upheavals in the colonies. The analysis discusses related geographical shifts in the engagement of British academics with the colonial world and identifies a profound deepening of the uneven integration of different areas of empire into academic networks after 1945. Based on Engledow’s contribution to the Moyne Commission on theWest Indies (1938–1939) and ensuing colonial reform, it is argued that he represented, like many other late colonial British academic experts, a distinctively post- Victorian imperialist, whose strong belief in Christian faith, racial differences, colonial networks, humanitarianism, science and planning created an ambivalent positionality that explains why his expertise both supported and undermined colonial rule

Non tumoral intracranial expansive processes: clinical-tomographic correlation

Presentation of clinical-tomographic correlation in 111 cases of non tumoral intracranial expansive processes seen between 1984-1988 in the Hospital Cayetano Heredia (Lima, Peru). Emphasis is given fundamentally to: (1) the importance of stablishing the or-ganicity of partial and late epilepsy; (2) the high incidence rate of inflammatory infectious processes with CNS compromise in underdeveloping countries; (3) the necessity of making public the importance of two parisitic diseases in the differential diagnosis of non tumoral intracranial expansive processes: free living amebiasis, and toxoplasmosis (especially in association with AIDS)

Inhibition of renin-angiotensin system (RAS) reduces ventricular tachycardia risk by altering connexin43

Renin-angiotensin system (RAS) activation is associated with arrhythmias. We investigated the effects of RAS inhibition in cardiac-specific angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) overexpression (ACE 8/8) mice, which exhibit proclivity to ventricular tachycardia (VT) and sudden death because of reduced connexin43 (Cx43). ACE 8/8 mice were treated with an ACE inhibitor (captopril) or an angiotensin receptor type-1 blocker (losartan). Subsequently, electrophysiological studies were performed, and the hearts were extracted for Cx43 quantification using immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, fluorescent dye spread method, and sodium current quantification using whole cell patch clamping. VT was induced in 12.5% of captopril-treated ACE 8/8 and in 28.6% of losartan-treated mice compared to 87.5% of untreated mice (P<0.01). Losartan and captopril treatment increased total Cx43 2.4-fold (P=0.01) and the Cx43 phosphorylation ratio 2.3-fold (P=0.005). Treatment was associated with a recovery of gap junctional conductance. Survival in treated mice improved to 0.78 at 10 weeks (95% confidence interval 0.64 to 0.92), compared to the expected survival of less than 0.50. In a model of RAS activation, arrhythmic risk was correlated with reduced Cx43 amount and phosphorylation. RAS inhibition resulted in increased total and phosphorylated Cx43, decreased VT inducibility, and improved survival