Sonography was used to investigate the prevalence of symptomatic and silent biliary tract disease, in free living urban population in Kashmir. A randomly drawn sample of 1695 subjects aged 15 years or above was interviewed by a questionnaire. Twenty six had previous cholecystectomies, all for gall stones. Ultrasonography was carried out on 1104 (65.1%). The responder rates for ultrasonography i...

During the decade in which the medical dissolution of gall stones has become feasible several drugs have been introduced but only the two listed in the British National Formulary have been intensively evaluated and shown to be effective--chenodeoxycholic acid and the closely allied ursodeoxycholic acid. The dissolution of gall stones was last reviewed in the "BMF" in 1976, at which stage experi...

Endoscopic sphincterotomy with extraction of the stones is often the only treatment for stones in the bile duct in patients considered unfit for surgery. Most of these patients fare well even when they have stones in the gall bladder; cholecystectomy for biliary colic, acute cholecystitis, or jaundice was necessary in less than 15% followed up for up to seven years. 2 After the procedure patien...

Diseases of the gall-bladder such as cholecystitis or cholelithiasis are considered to be rare in childhood. In a hospital series of gall-stone cases, Linnemann (1938) found one child as against 3,600 adults. Since then improvements in the methods of investigation and in the diagnostic aids have made earlier diagnosis of gall-stone disease possible. Arnspiger, Martin and Krempin (1960) observed...

A striking property of the mutualism between figs and their pollinating wasps is that wasps consistently oviposit in the inner flowers of the fig syconium, which develop into galls that house developing larvae. Wasps typically do not use the outer ring of flowers, which develop into seeds. To better understand differences between gall and seed flowers, we used a metatranscriptomic approach to a...

The prevalence of gall stone disease in a stratified random sample of 1896 British adults (72.2% of those approached) was established using real time ultrasound. The prevalence rose with age, except in women of 40-49 years, so that at 60-69 years, 22.4% of women and 11.5% of men had gall stones or had undergone cholecystectomy. The cholecystectomy rate of people with gall stone disease was high...

Jasmonic acid (JA) is a plant-signaling hormone involved in defenses against insects and pathogens as well as the regulation of nutrient partitioning. Gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) induce the formation of galls on their host plants, which house immature wasps and provide them with nutrition and protection. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of JA application on gall dev...

Background: Gallstone disease or cholelithiasis, is one of the most common surgical problems worldwide. The assessment of gallbladder kinetics in patients with cholelithiasis as well as in patients with high risk for cholelithiasis could play a significant role in better management and is recommended as a routine workup of biliary system in these patients. Objectives: This study was carried out...

At least two species of aphid, Tamalia coweni and Tamalia dicksoni (Hemiptera: Aphididae) induce galls on the leaves of Arctostaphylos spp. shrubs (Ericaceae). These galls are frequently inhabited by at least one species of congeneric inquiline. The inquiline clade has branched off from the gall-inducing clade and appears to be radiating rapidly on different host-plants, in contrast to the gall...

It has been demonstrated that lysolecithin (lysophosphatidyl choline, LPC) produces experimental cholecystitis in cats mediated by arachidonic acid metabolites. LPC is a cytolytic agent that has been postulated as a contributing factor in the development of cholecystitis in humans. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effect of LPC on human gall-bladder mucosal cell phospholipase A(...