Human leucocyte antigens in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis

The frequency of occurrence of 15 of the commoner human leucocyte antigens was determined in 18 patients with Crohn's disease and in 16 patients with ulcerative colitis, using an in-vitro lymphocyte cytotoxicity test (Harris, Wentzel, Cocking, Dodsworth, and Ukaejiofo, 1970). The overall results showed that, with the exception of human leucocyte antigen 3 in patients with Crohn's disease, in neither disease was there any major difference in any of the other antigen frequencies compared with a panel of 50 healthy controls. Nor was there an excess frequency of any particular antigen occurring in both Crohn's disease and colitis.

Endemic goitre in the Gilgit Agency, West Pakistan with an appendix on dermatoglyphics and taste-testing

A study has been made of an iodine-deficient population living in an extended village in the Karakoram Himalayas. There is evidence that the incidence of goitre increases towards the lowest part of the village, in accordance with the findings of McCarrison, who worked in the same region in the early years of the twentieth century. McCarrison ascribed the variation of goitre incidence to increasing pollution of drinking water as it travelled downstream, and postulated a bacteriological goitrogenic factor. However, the observations reported here show no correlation between goitre incidence and the bacterial concentration of drinking water, nor are there iodine-metabolizing micro-organisms present in the water. It may be that a differential iodine deficiency throughout the village can account for the variation in goitre incidence, since the soil can adsorb appreciable amounts of radio-iodine. The indices of thyroid function show that all the inhabitants are exceptionally iodine-deficient, although most of them are clinically euthyroid. As well as having a greatly enhanced mean thyroid iodide clearance the population has a mean renal iodide clearance which is lower than normal. Intra-muscular injections of iodized oil were acceptable to the villagers, and 477 injections were administered. Fingerprints and palm prints were collected from a sample of the population, yielding a pattern distribution comparable with other populations in the Indian subcontinent. The ratio of PTC tasters to non-tasters among the inhabitants is not significantly different from the ratio found in Europe.

An Electron-Microscope Study of the In Vitro Transformation of Human Leucocytes

Macrophages which develop in cultures of human peripheral blood have the typical ultrastructural features of macrophages occurring in other situations, in vivo and in vitro. The cultured cells usually have irregular nuclei and the cytoplasm possesses numerous digestion vacuoles containing debris; the cell outline is irregular with many filopodia. Other cells were laden with membrane-bounded granular bodies containing periodic-structured material of regular outline. Although it is concluded that no evidence about cell ancestry can be adduced from this morphological study, it seems likely from other work that many of these macrophages arise from lymphocytes.

An Electron-Microscope Study of the in vitro Transformation of Human Leucocytes

Electron-microscope studies of cultured small lymphocytes from human peripheral blood transforming into larger blastoid cells in the presence of phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) show that the transformed cell possesses the preliminary stages of development of a protein-synthesizing system. The transformed blastoid cell has abundant ribosomes, although, in contrast with in vivo protein-secreting cells, many of these occur as single particles with only a small proportion Linked in polysomal clusters. Endoplasmic reticulum membranes occur to a very limited extent and with a marked paucity of attached ribosomal particles; the few attached particles are usually located in groups. Some endoplasmic reticulum membranes revealed degenerative changes in otherwise normal cells. A moderately well-developed Golgi apparatus was a characteristic feature of the cells. Apart from the relatively low proportion of polysomes, in vitro PHA-transformed blastoid cells are identical in fine structure to in vivo blast cells (otherwise known as immunoblasts, haemocytoblasts, etc.) occurring in the immune response. It is suggested that messenger-RNA production in PHA-stimulated transformed cells may be reduced and that this could explain the limited number of polysomes and the restricted development of the endoplasmic reticulum.