The term ‘heartsink patient’ is now part of the vocabulary of general practice. But what and where is the heartsink? How should the phenomenon be studied? What are the implications of differing interpretations for general practice? The heartsink patient presents personal, social, and soteriological (pertaining to salvation) problems in physical terms. This poses a fundamental challenge to the p...

A rational drug design approach involving transposition of functional groups from SRIF into a reduced size cyclohexapeptide template has led to the discovery of SOM230, a novel, stable cyclohexapeptide somatostatin mimic which exhibits unique high affinity binding to human somatostatin receptors (sst1-5). This unique receptor subtype binding profile, in particular the exceptional high affinity ...

b-Adrenergic receptor blockers (b-blockers) are commonly used to treat heart failure, but the biologic mechanisms governing their efficacy are still poorly understood. The complexity ofb-adrenergic signaling coupled with the influence of receptor polymorphisms makes it difficult to intuit the effect of b-blockers on cardiac physiology. While some studies indicate that b-blockers are efficacious...

Pharmacokinetics:The absolute bioavailability ofPREVICOX (firocoxib) is approximately 38% when administeredas a 5 mg/kg oral dose to fasted adultdogs. Firocoxib is rapidly cleared from the blood via hepatic metabolism and fecal excretion (CLsystemic = -0.4 Uhr/kg). Despite ahigh level of plasma protein binding (96%), firocoxib exhibits a large volume of distribution (Vd,_ of total drug = 4.6 L/...

A total of 719 wild rats were captured from four localities representing the west (Kuala Lumpur), east (Kuantan), north (Georgetown) and south (Malacca) to determine the diversity of blood protozoan from the urban wild rat population in peninsular Malaysia. Five rat species were recovered with Rattus rattus diardii being the most dominant species, followed by Rattus norvegicus, Rattus exulans, ...

In previous analyses of the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey (NMIHS) and the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we found that after differences in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics were taken into account, mothers who had intended to conceive were more likely than those who had not to recognize their pregnancy within the first six weeks and to initiate pren...

NATURE | VOL 410 | 8 MARCH 2001 | www.nature.com 227 12. DePace, A. H., Santoso, A., Hillner, P. & Weissman, J. S. A critical role for amino-terminal glutamine/ asparagine repeats in the formation and propagation of a yeast prion. Cell 93, 1241–1252 (1998). 13. Patino, M. M., Liu, J. J., Glover, J. R. & Lindquist, S. Support for the prion hypothesis for inheritance of a phenotypic trait in yeas...

We report a case of Hymenolepis diminuta infection in a 2-year-old Malaysian child. This case was initially reported as ‘normal’ after the examination of proglottids shed from the anus of the child at a private laboratory on two occasions. The putative proglottids shed was then referred to the Parasite Southeast Asia Diagnostic (Para:SEAD) Laboratory, Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medi...

Carfilzomib, an irreversible proteasome inhibitor, has a favorable safety profile and significant antitumor activity in patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma (MM). Here we summarize the clinical pharmacokinetics (PK), metabolism, and drug-drug interaction (DDI) profile of carfilzomib. The PK of carfilzomib, infused over 2–10 minutes, was evaluated in patients with solid tumors ...