Results of a national consensus workshop: therapeutic algorithm in patients with follicular lymphoma--role of radioimmunotherapy.

Radioimmunotherapy (RIT) was approved for the treatment of relapsed or refractory CD20-positive follicular lymphoma (FL), subsequent to rituximab containing primary therapy. However, an increasing number of clinical studies have suggested that RIT may be more efficacious in an earlier phase of the disease. Therefore, a consensus meeting was held in May 2005 to define the optimal setting of RIT in the therapeutic algorithm of patients with advanced stage of FL. RIT is an established therapeutic option in relapsed FL. According to the reviewed data, RIT should be preferably used as consolidation after initial tumor debulking. First-line RIT may be applied in patients not appropriate for chemotherapy induction. Current study concepts evaluate the role of RIT consolidation in combination with antibody maintenance to achieve a potentially curative approach even in patients with advanced stage disease.

Development and implementation of a perinatal education consortium.

The North Puget Sound Perinatal Education Consortium provides a collaborative framework for planning, implementing, and evaluating a basic orientation program for newly hired and cross-trained perinatal nurses. The program currently provides 9 days of prenatal, labor and delivery, mother-infant couplet, and neonatal didactic orientation at no cost to registrants from participating hospitals. Consortium hospitals supply instruction time and additional services to support this high-quality, regional, perinatal orientation program.

Mechanism and rate of the reaction CH3 + O--revisited.

The primary products and the rate of the reaction of methyl radicals with oxygen atoms in the gas phase at room temperature have been studied using three different experimental arrangements: (A) laser flash photolysis to produce CH3 and O from the precursors CH3I and SO2 (the educts and the products were detected by quantitative FTIR spectroscopy); (B) the coupling of a conventional discharge flow reactor via a molecular sampling system to a mass spectrometer with electron impact ionization, which allowed the determination of labile and stable species; (C) laser induced multiphoton ionization combined with a TOF mass spectrometer-molecular beam sampling-flow reactor, which was used for the specific and sensitive detection of the CH3, CD3, C2H5 and C2D5 radicals and the determination of rate coefficients. The branching ratio of the reaction channels was determined by the experimental arrangements (A) and (B) leading to CH3 + O --> HCHO + H (55 +/- 5)% --> CO + H2 + H (45 +/- 5)%. The rate coefficients of the normal and deuterated methyl and ethyl radicals with atomic oxygen showed no isotope effect: k(CD3 + O)/k(CH3 + O) = 0.99 +/- 0.12, k(C2D5 + O)/k(C2H5 + O) = 1.01 +/- 0.07 (statistical error, 95% confidence level). The absolute rate coefficient of the reaction CH3 + O was derived with reference to the reaction C2H5 + O (k = 1.04 x 10(14) cm3 mol(-1) s(-1)) leading to k(CH3 + O) = (7.6 +/- 1.4) x 10(13) cm3 mol(-1) s(-1).

The comparative importance of books: clinical psychology in the health sciences library.

Clinical psychology has received little attention as a subject in health sciences library collections. This study seeks to demonstrate the relative importance of the monographic literature to clinical psychology through the examination of citations in graduate student theses and dissertations at the Fordham Health Sciences Library, Wright State University. Dissertations and theses were sampled randomly; citations were classified by format, counted, and subjected to statistical analysis. Books and book chapters together account for 35% of the citations in clinical psychology dissertations, 25% in nursing theses, and 8% in biomedical sciences theses and dissertations. Analysis of variance indicates that the citations in dissertations and theses in the three areas differ significantly (F = 162.2 with 2 and 253 degrees of freedom, P = 0.0001). Dissertations and theses in biomedical sciences and nursing theses both cite significantly more journals per book than the dissertations in clinical psychology. These results support the hypothesis that users of clinical psychology literature rely more heavily on books than many other users of a health sciences library. Problems with using citation analyses in a single subject to determine a serials to monographs ratio for a health sciences library are pointed out.

Modulation of glucose transport in hamster adipocytes by insulin and by beta- and alpha 2-adrenoceptor agonists.

Glucose transport in hamster adipocytes and its modulation by insulin and isoprenaline was characterized with the aid of the non-metabolizable hexose 3-0-methylglucose. Insulin stimulated the initial uptake rates by an increase in Vmax of the transport without any detectable change in Km. The hormone concentration producing half maximal stimulation was identical to that required in rat adipocytes. However, hamster adipocytes were much less responsive to insulin (3-fold stimulation as compared to a 12-fold stimulation in rat fat cells), and maximal transport rates were 10-fold lower than that observed in rat adipocytes. Accordingly, the number of glucose transporters, as assessed by glucose-inhibitable cytochalasin-B binding, was considerably lower in plasma membranes of hamster adipocytes. Moreover, no transporters were detected in the low-density microsomes which in insulin-sensitive cell types represent the intracellular pool of recruitable glucose transporters. The relative insulin resistance of the hamster fat cells may therefore be due to a depleted pool of intracellular glucose transporters. In the presence of adenosine, the beta-adrenoceptor agonist isoprenaline produced a moderate stimulation of the basal transport rate which was antagonized by the alpha 2-agonist clonidine. If adenosine deaminase was added in order to remove endogenous adenosine, isoprenaline inhibited the insulin-stimulated transport by 50%. In contrast to the stimulatory effects of insulin and isoproterenol, the inhibitory effect of the catecholamine was reversed by cooling the cells to 22 degrees. Glucagon produced a comparable inhibition, suggesting that the inhibitory effect was mediated by adenylate cyclase or its regulatory subunits.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)