A new HLA-A*31 null allele, A*3114N

A new HLA-A*31 null allele results from addition of an extra C near the beginning of exon 4 after a string of seven Cs.

HLA class I null alleles and new alleles affect unrelated bone marrow donor searches

Unrecognized HLA null alleles or new alleles may affect the outcome of bone marrow transplants using unrelated donors. Some reports suggest that null alleles occur in the range of 0.003-0.07% (1, 2), which has led some transplant programs to stop performing serologic typing. We describe nine cases involving expression variants or new alleles. Three cases involved expression variants, including two null alleles and A*24020102L. One of the null alleles was a new variant of A*02. Seven cases involved new alleles. In five cases, there where discrepancies between HLA typing by serology and PCR-SSP. These included the three expression variants, one new B40 allele that typed serologically as B41 and one new B*07 allele that typed serologically as B42. Eight of these cases were found in the course of typing bone marrow transplant patients or potential unrelated donors since May of 2001 (total tested, 710 patients, 1914 donors). Thus, the incidence of null alleles was two in 2,624 (0.08%). Sequence-based typing (SBT) was performed on 676 of these samples. The decision to perform SBT was influenced by finding a serologic typing discrepancy in two cases. In one of those cases, SBT would probably have been performed at a later time, prior to final selection of a donor. Thus, the incidence of new alleles was between 4 and 6 of 676 (0.59-0.89%). We conclude that new HLA alleles and null alleles are uncommon but not extremely rare, and they continue to affect a significant number of unrelated donor searches.

A Clinical Trial to Test the Feasibility of a Telehealth Psychoeducational Intervention for Persons With Schizophrenia and Their Families: Intervention and 3-Month Findings

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the feasibility of a telehealth psychoeducation intervention for persons with schizophrenia and their family members.

STUDY DESIGN

Randomized controlled trial.

PARTICIPANTS

30 persons with schizophrenia and 21 family members or other informal support persons.

INTERVENTIONS

Web-based psychoeducation program that provided online group therapy and education.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Measures for persons with schizophrenia included perceived stress and perceived social support; for family members, they included disease-related distress and perceived social support.

RESULTS

At 3 months, participants with schizophrenia in the intervention group reported lower perceived stress (p = .04) and showed a trend for a higher perceived level of social support (p = .06).

CONCLUSIONS

The findings demonstrate the feasibility and impact of providing telehealth-based psychosocial treatments, including online therapy groups, to persons with schizophrenia and their families.

Nondestructive interferometric measurement of the delta and alpha of clad optical fibers

It is shown that interferograms generated by passing light perpendicular to the axis of a fiber can be used to obtain the maximum refractive index difference and the index profile shape to better than +/-10% accuracy in regions of the core where alpha is constant. This technique avoids the time consuming sample preparation required for the slab method, the propagation problems associated with the near-field technique, and the surface quality problem associated with the reflection technique.