Five cases of visceral leishmaniasis are reported. The youngest patient was one year old and the eldest 8 years. All belonged to low-income families and their growth and development caracteristics were below standard. Diagnosis was confirmed in 4 cases through bone marrow aspiration and in one case by raised serum antibody titer prior to treatment and dramatic response to specific treatment. He...

Caterpillar defenses have been researched extensively, and, although most studies focus on visually communicated signals, little is known about the role that sounds play in defense. We report on whistling, a novel form of sound production for caterpillars and rare for insects in general. The North American walnut sphinx (Amorpha juglandis) produces whistle 'trains' ranging from 44 to 2060 ms in...

To cite: Casadesus D, Araguez-Ancares N, Cotorruelo-Martinez A, et al. BMJ Case Rep Published online: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/ bcr-2015-210656 DESCRIPTION A 74-year-old Hispanic woman was admitted to our institution, with swelling of the tongue and lips. She had arrived in the USA 1 week before admission. In her native country, she had been diagnosed with angio-oedema and tr...

Without regular monitoring a rare species may slip into extinction unnoticed. We report a possible case from the Galápagos archipelago. The warbler finch (Certhidea fusca) has not been recorded by scientists on Isla Floreana in recent years, and we have been concerned about its status. On a two-day visit to prime habitat in the breeding season of 2004 we used playback of warbler finch song and ...

The presence of avian pox in endemic birds in the Galápagos Islands has led to concern that the health of these birds may be threatened by avipoxvirus introduction by domestic birds. We describe here a simple polymerase chain reaction-based method for identification and discrimination of avipoxvirus strains similar to the fowlpox or canarypox viruses. This method, in conjunction with DNA sequen...

Acute leukemia is the most common malignancy in childhood, which mainly involves children less than 15 years of age. The growing skeleton is the main site of involvement in children. Leukemic cells proliferate within the massive red bone marrow in children. So besides the pallor, petechia, purpura and ecchymosis in the skin and mucosal surfaces, bone pain and other bony lesions are other manife...

Ecological traps arise when anthropogenic change creates habitat that appears suitable but when selected reduces the fitness of an individual. We evaluated whether riparian habitat within the drawdown zone of the Arrow Lakes Reservoir, British Columbia, creates an ecological trap for Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia (L., 1766)) by investigating habitat preferences and the fitness consequence...

From 2001 to 2003, tilapia (Oreochromis sp.) farms in Florida, California, and South Carolina experienced epizootics of a systemic disease causing mortality. The fish exhibited lethargy, occasional exophthalmia, and skin petechia. The gills were often necrotic, with a patchy white and red appearance. Grossly, the spleen and kidneys were granular with whitish irregular nodules throughout. Granul...