RATIONALE Scurvy is often diagnosed at the state of well-established signs as, for example, skin and visceral purpura, gums involvement, loss of healthy teeth, which derive mostly from disturbance of collagen metabolism. Little is known about the state of latent scurvy, which symptoms are nonspecific and may mimic more common conditions such as weakness, leg pain, and muscle aching. PATIENT C...

OBJECTIVE Routine delays in the diagnosis of primary adrenal insufficiency (PAI) are well known and conceivably attributable to the absence of cues, other than anti-adrenal autoantibodies, to pursue subclinical PAI. Subclinical PAI is latent unless the afflicted patient encounters stress such as an acute illness, surgery, psychosocial burden, etc. It remains to be demonstrated whether a history...

BACKGROUND Antipsychotic augmentation is an effective treatment intervention for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients resistant to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) agents. This pilot study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and tolerability of Aripiprazole for the augmentation of standard treatments in patients with resistant OCD. METHODS Twenty patients diagnos...

Although liver involvement is frequently seen in brucellosis, acute hepatitis is a rare clinical entity. In its progress, haematological findings are non-specific and vary in respect to severity. In this paper, we present a case of brucellosis with acute hepatitis and bicytopenia without anaemia. A 19-year-old man presented with a 2-week history of fever, sweating, low back and leg pain, lassit...

OBJECTIVE We investigated the association between serotonin- or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)-related gene polymorphisms and response to antidepressant treatment in a specific symptom cluster of major depression by using the three-factor model of the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), ie, dysphoria (items of sadness, pessimistic thoughts, and suicidal thoughts), retardation (items ...

In the past, the terms gluten sensitivity and coeliac disease have been used synonymously but this is not acceptable since gluten sensitivity can occur in subjects who do not have coeliac disease. The entity of non coeliac gluten intolerance has been regarded as a new diagnosis (1) but it is better to consider it an old diagnosis recently rediscovered and embellished. In the late 1970s brief ca...

Case Report The patient was a girl of 24 who had worked for six months in a factory " throwing " coils. This process consisted of calibrating coils containing mercury for use as pressure gauges. On an average, two or three coils a day burst during testing, so that the work bench was usually contaminated with metallic mercury. Despite warnings about the danger of ingesting mercury, she ate sweet...

Dinitrotoluenes (DNTs) are byproducts of the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT), and exist as a mixture of 2 to 6 isomers, with 2,4-DNT and 2,6-DNT being the most significant. The main route of human exposure at ammunition facilities is inhalation. The primary targets of DNTs toxicity are the hematopoietic system, cardiovascular system, nervous system and reproductive system. In factory workers, e...

T his study examined the acute effects of 40% oxygen supplementation in adults with cyanotic congenital heart disease (CCHD). These young patients have significant morbidity and premature mortality, relating in part to their cyanotic state. We have shown that systemic arterial oxygen saturation (SAOS) increases significantly when these patients are administered 40% oxygen, irrespective of their...

Human ascariasis produces a wide variety of symptoms : lassitude, fever, anorexia, dyspepsia, morbid appetite (geophagia), nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, abdominal pain, coughing, headache, disorder of consciousness, spasm, asthma, nasal pruritis, visual disturbance, pollakiuria, urticarial rash, etc., which affect nearly all the organs and tissues of the digestive, respiratory, cir...