Review of dietary therapy for rheumatoid arthritis.

There are now sufficient good scientific studies, from the UK and abroad, to suggest that, at least in some patients with RA, dietary therapy may influence at least the symptoms and possibly the progression of the disease. Since dietary treatment is safe and may reduce or avoid the need for drugs, it is appealing to patients, who are increasingly anxious about potential drug toxicity. It must, however, be medically supervised to avoid misinterpretation of results, to avoid patients taking diets to extremes, with resultant malnutrition, particularly in children, and to prevent patients from persisting with ineffective diets when they should be receiving drug treatment. Medical interest in dietary treatment also ensures that patients discuss their diets with orthodox practitioners rather than being driven by our scepticism into the hands of unqualified people who may exploit patients' interest in the subject.

Placebo-controlled, blind study of dietary manipulation therapy in rheumatoid arthritis.

In a blind, placebo-controlled study of dietary manipulation therapy in outpatients with rheumatoid arthritis there was significant objective improvement during periods of dietary therapy compared with periods of placebo treatment, particularly among "good responders". Possible explanations for improvement include reduced food intolerance, reduced gastrointestinal permeability, and benefit from weight loss and from altered intake of substrates for prostaglandin production. A proportion of the improvement was due to a placebo response, but this was not sufficient to explain the whole improvement.

A search for nonthermal effects of 434 MHz microwave radiation on whole human blood.

Whole human blood was subjected to a microwave environment at 434 MHz for 6 hr with external electric fields corresponding to free space power densities up to 598 mW cm-2 and the levels of hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium in the plasma were monitored. Under geometrical conditions in which the field strength within the samples was unknown, measurements indicated increased red cell membrane fragility following irradiation. It was not possible to exclude localized heating as an explanation of this effect. However, with a known and reasonably uniform electric field distribution within spherical specimens, increased membrane fragility was not observed. We are therefore unable to confirm previously reported results which indicate a nonthermal deleterious effect of microwave radiation on erythrocytes.

Facilities for radio-iodination.

A fume cabinet with a sloping front, fitted with a chemical absorbing filter and extractor fan, but without exhaust ducting, appears to possess considerable advantages for radio-iodination work compared with standard fume cupboards.

Radioactivity studies on 2 synovial specimens after radiation synovectomy with yttrium-90 silicate.

Synovial membranes surgically removed from the knees of 2 patients who had received radioactive yttrium-90 silicate have been examined. Autoradiographs showed that in both cases the activity was unevenly distributed over the synovium. One of the specimens, removed 7 weeks after administration of the isotope, was found to contain a slight degree of radioactivity, attributable in part to a long-lived radioactive contaminant.