Characterization of four cell lines persistently infected with measles virus

Persistently infected cell lines were established by infecting Vero cells with four different strains of measles virus: Edmonston “wild type”, Schwarz vaccine strain passaged at high multiplicity of infection, Hallé SSPE strain, and a temperature sensitive mutant of Edmonston strain, designated ts 841. The four cell lines have continued to produce virus at a constant low level over a period of more than two years, although cytopathology and hemagglutinating ability have varied with cell passage. Only virus from cells originally infected with ts 841 appears to be temperature sensitive. In each of the cell lines a sizable population of low density, interfering virus particles was generated, indicating that this is an important mechanism for these four cell lines in maintenance of the measles virus persistent infection.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41690/1/705_2005_Article_BF01314863.pd

‘This In-Between’: How Families Talk about Death in Relation to Severe Brain Injury and Disorders of Consciousness

These comments encapsulate some common themes in how people describe having a severely brain-injured relative in a coma-like condition, medically known as a ‘disorder of consciousness’. In the past it was highly unusual for such individuals to survive very long after the initial trauma that caused their injury. However, the emergence of modern medical technologies, and how they are deployed, has led to the creation of new long-term conditions including the ‘vegetative state’ (in which the patient shows no awareness at all) and the ‘minimally conscious state’ (in which the the patient displays some intermittent and minimal awareness). These conditions are modern phenomena — the vegetative diagnostic category was first created in the early 1970s (Jennett and Plum, 1972) and the ‘minimally conscious state’ [MCS] was only defined in 2002 (Giacino et al., 2002). Patients with disorders of consciousness disrupt previous ways of understanding life. The family may experience their vegetative or minimally conscious relative as ‘present but absent’, ‘living, but dead’, making comments such as ‘this is no life’ and ‘my son is gone’ — and experiencing a sense of loss and grief that may be ‘like a death’, although not a death