Saline extracts of ether-treated Dirofilaria immitis, Ascaris suum, and Ancylostoma spp. were used in indirect hemagglutination tests of serum from 164 patients with a diagnosis of eosinophilic lung and 114 persons with other diseases or no disease (blood donors). In the first group, positive reactions with one, two or all three antigens were obtained in 89 percent of cases and the titers, at medium or high levels in 77 percent, decreased after treatment with diethylcarbamazine. In the other group, antibodies were demonstrable in the serum of only 22 percent of cases and titers usually were low. These observations indicate the presence of several antigen-antibody systems, some of which appear to be specific. With extracts of Dirofilaria the indirect hemagglutination and the complement-fixation tests were similar in sensitivity and specificity, but the results from neither test appeared to indicate infection with a specific worm.
The first three patients with proven DDS-resistant leprosy infections were treated for one year with the riminophenazine
derivative B.663 (300 mgm. daily for six days a week). All of them showed satisfactory clinical, bacteriologic and histologic
improvement, which at the time of writing has been maintained for a total period of 28 months. The results show that
active leprosy resulting from resistance to one drug can still respond satisfactorily to a different type of drug, as is the case with drug resistance in other bacterial infections. In this limited study B.663 showed no toxicity, but the degree of skin discoloration was disconcerting to Chinese patients.
From an extensive search of one of the largest inpatient leprosaria in the world, at Sungei Buloh, Malaysia, nine patients with lepromatous leprosy were discovered who gave prima facie evidence of sulfone resistance. The evidence was based on a failure to show clinical improvement over at least five years despite treatment with sulfones and an absence of a satisfactory fall in the bacteriologic (BI) or the morphologic (MI) index. The selected patients were admitted to our Research Unit for (a) a further six month, rigorously controlled, trial period on DDS (as injectable sulfone, 300 mgm. twice weekly) and (b) DDS sensitivity tests, based on use of the foot pad infection in mice with bacilli obtained from skin biopsies. The response of the nine patients to the six month trial period on DDS was assessed clinically, bacteriologically and histologically, and revealed that only four of the patients failed to respond satisfactorily. Furthermore, the sensitivity tests in the mouse foot pad infection showed that only the strains of M. leprae from the four patients who failed to improve were insensitive to DDS. Thus there was a good correlation between the results of the clinical and experimental studies and for the first time direct proof for the existence of DDS resistant strain s of M. leprae. The MI proved to be the most sensitive of the assessments used to determine the response of the selected patients to a trial period on DDS. The histology of patients with drug resistance is essentially that of relapsing or very acute leprosy. Its features have much in common with those of "histoid" lesions, the latter being distinguished mainly by the absence of cytologic maturation. Classification is complicated by the presence of borderline features in otherwise lepromatous lesions.
Studies have recently been published of surveys of antibodies to common respiratory viruses in human sera from several parts of the world. The present article reports the findings of a survey of antibodies to two more viruses (adenovirus type 8 and coxsackievirus type A21) in human sera mainly collected from six widely separated geographical regions (Alaska, England, Marshall Islands, Sarawak, South-West Africa and Tunisia).A world-wide geographical distribution of infection with these two viruses was found. However, antibodies to individual viruses were not found with the same frequency in all countries; and, in marked contrast to the findings in the earlier surveys of antibodies to the common respiratory viruses, the frequency of antibodies was not the same for each virus in sera from the same country. It was not possible to draw any final conclusions as to the reasons for the observed differences.
During the past decade outbreaks of a severe haemorrhagic disease caused by dengue viruses of multiple types have been reported in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Viet-Nam and eastern India. In many of these outbreaks chikungunya virus, a group A arbovirus, was simultaneously the cause of similar but probably milder disease. Both these viruses appear to be able to be able to produce classical dengue fever in some individuals and disease with haemorrhagic manifestations in others. Because of the growing public health importance and the progressive spread of this disease a unified review of its clinical and epidemiological features has been needed. This paper presents the history and salient clinical features of mosquito-borne haemorrhagic fever and summarizes recent epidemiological studies and current diagnostic and control methods.
In view of the problems caused by the chloroquine-resistance of some strains of Plasmodium falciparum, the authors have investigated the effectiveness of diaphenylsulfone against two such resistant strains, from Malaya and Viet-Nam. They found that diaphenylsulfone given during acute attacks of malaria had a blood schizontocidal activity against the Malayan resistant strain but was not rapidly effective in terminating acute attacks in non-immune persons, and that, when the drug was given prophylactically in relatively small doses, it was substantially effective in preventing patency of mosquito-induced infection with the same strain. The protective effect of diaphenylsulfone is that of a clinical prophylactic or suppressive drug; it does not appear to be a true causal prophylactic. It was also found that the protective effect is vitiated by the concurrent administration of paraaminobenzoic acid.These studies indicate a need for further assessment of the antimalarial value of sulfones and sulfonamides, both alone and in combination with other drugs, for prevention and cure.
In each of four countries (Uruguay, Venezuela, Malaya and East Pakistan) where diets and other environmental factors differ greatly, the prevalence of diabetes as determined by impaired glucose tolerance was crudely estimated. Since all subjects received glucose loads, rates of prevalence are much higher than those obtainable by certain less sensitive standard methods. In the tested subjects over thirty years of age the prevalence of "diabetes" (two-hour venous blood glucose levels greater than 149 mg. per 100 ml.) was 6.9 per cent in Uruguay (6.8 per cent for males and 6.9 per cent for females). The prevalence of impaired tolerance in this age group in Venezuela was 7.3 per cent (4.5 per cent in males and 9.4 per cent in females), while in Malaya the rate was only 3.5 per cent (4.5 per cent in
males and 2.1 per cent in females). In East Pakistan impaired tolerance was present in only 1.5 per cent of this age group (1.2 per cent of males and 2.8 per cent of females). Comparable data are not available in the United States but with use of the technics employed abroad it was found that 17.2 per cent of volunteers in this age group in a Pennsylvania community had impaired tolerance. In East Pakistan, 83 per cent of calories were derived from carbohydrate. Comparable figures were 77 per cent for Malaya, 62 per cent for Venezuela and 53 per cent for Uruguay. In East Pakistan, only 7 per cent of the dietary calories were derived from fat; in Malaya, fat accounted for 21 per cent of dietary calories, in Venezuela, 24 per cent, and in Uruguay, 33 per cent. In East Pakistan only 29 per cent of dietary fat was animal fat. In Malaya, Venezuela, and Uruguay, comparable figures were 30, 35 and 62 per cent, respectively. In Uruguay, 34.4 per cent of the subjects were "obese" (30 per cent or more over "standard" weight), and in Venezuela 14.8 per cent were obese. In contrast none of the subjects from Malaya (566 persons), or East Pakistan (519 persons), was obese by these criteria. In Venezuela and Uruguay there was an association between the prevalence of diabetes and both parity and a history of large babies.