https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/14/1/92.4.full.pdf

Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease

Length of Life: A Study of the Life Table

Since the start of our work on cancer, we have aimed a t developing methods for the early detection of this disease in man. It was apparent that tissue diagnosis by the pathologist, the most reliable method available, is only applicable to late cases of the disease. This method is dependent on the physician diagnosing a tumor, on the surgeon removing it, and on the pathologist identifying it. The introduction of the Papanicolaou smear, with its emphasis on cell rather than tissue diagnosis, made possible a somewhat earlier microscopic diagnosis. It can only be applied when desquamated cells from certain organs are accessible for microscopic diagnosis; it is not as yet a purely objective approach; and cells clearly cannot be diagnosed early enough. If we hope to diagnose cancer early enough to treat it effectively, we need to detect it a t the submicroscopic and subcellular level with methods that are very sensitive and highly specific. Immunologic methods have been demonstrated to have great specificity and sensitivity in the detection of other diseases. It is not surprising, therefore, that immunologists have pinned their hopes on immunologic methods for detecting cancer. Unfortunately, the great majority of the serologic methods utilized in the past for this purpose have not proven to be of value. Because these methods and tests were not founded on a firm immunologic basis, they were later shown to be nonspecific for cancer. Immunologic specificity is greatly needed in this area. The crux of the problem becomes this: if there are tumor-specific antigens and antibodies, can we not detect with a high degree of accuracy, their presence in tumorous subjects and thereby obtain a method for detection of cancer in man? At the start, I wiqh to emphasize that I do not intend to use the words “antigen” and “antibody’-I mean, of course, in the old sense-in my presentation because I do not know what exactly they are supposed to mean. Instead, I intend to use these words in a simplified sense. If a substance can adsorb to the uterine muscle and is thereafter able to elicit a specific reaction in the Schultz-Dale test when in contact with another substance, this adsorbed substance is called “antibody,” and the substance that releases the reaction is called “antigen.” If both the adsorbing substance and the releasing substance happen to be in the m n e tissue hornogenate, I then call the adsorbing substance an “autoantibody” and the releasing d ) b t a n c e an “autoantigen;” both then can be referred 10 a> “uutoimmune units.” Before designating these reactive substances as antigens and antibodies, it should be possible to dcniowtrate with them the phenomenon of desensitiyation,

Determination of tumor antigens and antibodies by the schultz‐dale reaction and of cutaneous autohypersensitivity in subjects with tumors*

Recent literature has presented evidence that cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) play an important role on cognitive performance in elderly individuals, both those who are asymptomatic and those who suffer from symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders. Findings from studies applying neuroimaging methods have increasingly reinforced such notion. Studies addressing the impact of CVRF on brain anatomy changes have gained increasing importance, as recent papers have reported gray matter loss predominantly in regions traditionally affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia in the presence of a high degree of cardiovascular risk. In the present paper, we explore the association between CVRF and brain changes using pattern recognition techniques applied to structural MRI and the Framingham score (a composite measure of cardiovascular risk largely used in epidemiological studies) in a sample of healthy elderly individuals. We aim to answer the following questions: Is it possible to decode (i.e., to learn information regarding cardiovascular risk from structural brain images) enabling individual predictions? Among clinical measures comprising the Framingham score, are there particular risk factors that stand as more predictable from patterns of brain changes? Our main findings are threefold: i) we verified that structural changes in spatially distributed patterns in the brain enable statistically significant prediction of Framingham scores. This result is still significant when controlling for the presence of the APOE 4 allele (an important genetic risk factor for both AD and cardiovascular disease). ii) When considering each risk factor singly, we found different levels of correlation between real and predicted factors; however, single factors were not significantly predictable from brain images when considering APOE4 allele presence as covariate. iii) We found important gender differences, and the possible causes of that finding are discussed.

/pdf/framingham-coronary-heart-disease-risk-score-can-be-1q2c4hapuh.pdf

Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score Can be Predicted from Structural Brain Images in Elderly Subjects.

Severe hypertension in young personsa study of 50 cases

Cardiovascular diseases consistently cause approximately half of all deaths in the United States each year. Arteriosclerosis and hypertension together account for more than 90 per cent of all of these deaths (1). This paper is concerned primarily with arteriosclerosis and hypertension because of their importance and also because of the pronounced differences in the incidence of these diseases according to age and sex. In addition to a review of the literature, this paper contains data collected from the files of 3 general hospitals. These original data are added for the purpose of making some contribution to the understanding of the factors involved in the development of cardiovascular disease.

James D. Jett

Papers

Incidence of various types of cardiovascular diseases by age group in the male and in the female.