Serum corticosterone response to adrenocorticotropic hormone stimulation in Florida sandhill cranes.

Florida sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis pratensis) were conditioned to confinement in an enclosure for 7 days, 6 hr a day. On day 8, cranes were catheterized and then confined in an enclosure. Venous blood (2 ml) was collected through the catheter and an attached IV line immediately before (-60 min) and 60 min after (0 min) confinement. Using a randomization table and a restricted cross-over experimental design, cranes were injected intravenously with either saline (control) or adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH; cosyntropin, Cortrosyn; 0.25 mg). At 30, 60, 120, 180, 240 and 300 min after injection, blood samples were collected and assayed for corticosterone. The cranes receiving ACTH increased their serum corticosterone concentrations as much as fivefold above baseline concentrations. Serum corticosterone concentrations remained significantly elevated for approximately 60 min after ACTH stimulation. Physical restraint and catheterization caused an increase in serum corticosterone almost comparable to that induced by ACTH stimulation. In cranes injected with saline, serum corticosterone decreased within 1 hr after physical restraint and catheterization, and remained at lower levels throughout the remaining 5 hr of confinement.

Two decades of change: cot deaths and birth score items in Canterbury, New Zealand.

The individual items of two birth scores and the scores themselves were examined for a sample of 2065 mothers and infants pairs for any changes between 1968 and 1986. About 100 births were randomly sampled for each year. The scoring systems used were the Sheffield risk score and the Christchurch-Invercargill-Dunedin score. A total of eight items from these scores was examined. The purpose was to discover whether the increasing cot death rate in Canterbury could be attributed to an increasing proportion of vulnerable infants, as determined by the items in the risk scores. No such relationship was uniformly found.

Cot deaths in Canterbury (NZ): lack of association with respiratory virus patterns.

This study was done to see whether any association between SIDS and respiratory viruses might be more obvious in Canterbury where the cot death rate is so high (about seven per thousand live births). The numbers of common respiratory virus identifications for the eight year period July 1981 to June 1989 were analysed for associations with cot death. The identifications were from inpatients at the Christchurch Public Hospital and other community sources in Canterbury. Weak associations were found with respiratory syncytial virus (r = 0.3), influenza A (r = 0.3) and influenza B (r = 0.2). However, the associations are overwhelmed by the effect of the month of the year. A high rate of respiratory virus infection cannot be invoked as the explanation for our high SIDS rate.

Plunket contacts in the first year of life.

In New Zealand, routine infant health surveillance is carried out by the nurses of the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society. The full scheduled number of contacts for the first year of life was 15. The pattern of these nurse contacts was examined during the first year of life for babies born between 1979 to 1984. Data was available for 492 randomly selected infants. There was no record of any Plunket contact in 102 (20.7%). Of those infants who had some Plunket contact, only 71 (19.4%) had the full number of contacts or more, and 51 (13.9%) had only seven or fewer contacts. Infants with a high Christchurch-Invercargill-Dunedin (CID) birthscore were more likely not to have any contacts, and when contact was made these infants were seen less often than compared to the low risk group, during this period. More stringent efforts are needed to engage those infants who are at present not being seen, as they appear to be the infants who are most at risk.

Self-identified stressors in the role of nursing faculty.

A card-sort methodology was found to be a rapid and systematic approach for the identification of stressors for a baccalaureate nursing faculty. It would seem that multiple stressors exist within the role of nursing faculty. These may be categorized into four main sections: stressors related to Academia, Administration, Clinical and Classroom. The methodology provided assistance with prioritizing such stressors for problem solving by the faculty. An issue in conducting this type of research is confidentiality as demonstrated in faculty reluctance to reveal demographic data that might serve to connect responses with the source.