Cancer morbidity has been evaluated in a series of 513 patients with Crohn's disease under long-term review between 1944-76. In comparison with morbidity rates for cancer in the West Midlands Region (the geographical area from which these patients were drawn) the 31 tumours that occurred represented a relative risk of 1.7 (p < 001) of cancer at all sites. For tumours at sites within the digesti...

Duodenal ulcer continues to be a common disorder in Britain. It still shows a predominance in males, though there is a suggestion that the difference in incidence between the two sexes may not be as great as it was 20 years ago. Reliable data on the overall incidence of peptic ulceration is understandably difficult to acquire in view of the very variable severity and natural course of the disea...

1Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA 2Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2H7 3Department of General Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Huazhong Science & Technology University, Wuhan, Hubei 430030, China 4Department of Medicine, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40208, USA 5Departm...

The gastrointestinal mucosal surface is lined with epithelial cells representing an effective barrier made up with intercellular junctions that separate the inner and the outer environments, and block the passage of potentially harmful substances. However, epithelial cells are also responsible for the absorption of nutrients and electrolytes, hence a semipermeable barrier is required that selec...

A young Turkish girl presented with all the clinicopathological features of a digestive form of alpha chain disease. A gamma heavy chain disease protein, however, was found in her serum and also in the cells invading the intestinal mucosa and mesenteric lymph nodes.

Chagas disease began millions of years ago as an enzootic disease of wild animals and started to be transmitted to man accidentally in the form of an anthropozoonosis when man invaded wild ecotopes. Endemic Chagas disease became established as a zoonosis over the last 200-300 years through forest clearance for agriculture and livestock rearing and adaptation of triatomines to domestic environme...

A total of 2241 patients who had an operation for duodenal ulcer between 1947 and 1968 were followed up to determine the cause of death and to compare the observed number of deaths with the expected. Death certificates were traced for 1251 of 1387 known to have died. Observed deaths from all causes were significantly greater than expected (O/E 1.13) (95% CI 1.08 to 1.20). This was because of si...

The digestive form of Chagas disease, first individualized by JM Rezende (1959 Rev Goiana Med 5: 193), represents, together with the cardiac form, the most important manifestation of the chronic phase of Trypanosoma cruzi infection. The anatomopathologic basis of the digestive form of Chagas disease is denervation of the complex network of intramural neurons (M Amorin & A Correia Neto 1932 An F...

The last quarter-century has seen the introduction into clinical practice of large numbers of new and potent therapeutic agents. Many of them have unexpected effects on the liver, which sometimes have little clinical significance but which may be fatal (see Table). Many of the hepatic sequelae, and unfortunately most of the serious ones, cannot be predicted on the basis of previous tests of tox...