The porphyrias are a group of disorders resulting from defective haem biosynthesis. One form, variegate porphyria, is common in South Africa as a result of a founder effect. Over the past 50 years, the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences has built and maintained an international reputation for excellence in the field of porphyria. The porphyria group is respected for its research...

A little-known procedure for porphobilinogen screening, the Hoesch test, was examined for sensitivity, specificity, and utility as compared to the Watson-Schwartz test. The data demonstrate that its sensitivity is similar to that of the Watson-Schwartz test. The Hoesch test, however, is without false-positive reactions secondary to urobilinogen, and its simplicity makes it easier to use and mor...

A dinner for healthcare leaders at the 6th National Conference on Quality featured a conversation with Maureen Bisognano, Executive VP and COO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). IHI is a leading source of innovation in the improvement of healthcare. The conversation was facilitated by G. Ross Baker, professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the U...

As befits a hematologic class of disorders, the word “porphyria” derives from the Greek word porphuros, which means red or purple (1). The porphyrias (Table 1 and Table 2) are a group of rare metabolic disorders arising from reduced activity of any of the enzymes in the heme biosynthetic pathway. The disorders may be either acquired (for instance, through a toxin acting on one of the enzymes) o...

PURPOSE To compare the use of standardized patients (SPs) and volunteer patients (VPs) for physical therapy students' interviewing practice in terms of students' perception and overall costs. METHODS Students in the Master of Physical Therapy programme (n=80) at a Canadian university were divided into 20 groups of 4 and were randomly assigned to interview either an SP (10 groups) or a VP (10 ...

When both visual and proprioceptive information are available about the position of a part of the body, the brain weights and combines these sources to form a single estimate, often modeled by minimum variance integration. These weights are known to vary with different circumstances, but the type of information causing the brain to change weights (reweight) is unknown. Here we studied reweighti...