Cap formation on lymphocytes from patients with leukemic diseases induced by four different lectins.

When ficoll purified peripheral blood lymphocytes were treated with fluorescein conjugated lectins from lentils (LCH), castor beans (RCA) and phaseolus coccineus beans (L-and E-PHA) for 15 min and the percentages of the cap forming cells were examined, the values of leukemic lymphocytes were reduced compared to the values obtained with normal lymphocytes. The reduction was more than half in patients with acute and chronic myelogenous leukemia and immunoblastoma, it was only one quarter in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin's disease and lymphosarcoma. The lowest number of cap forming cells was found in lymphoblasts of established lymphoblastoid cell lines. The four different lectins showed nearly the same capacity in the induction of caps. After successive binding, the different lectins showed cocapping on the lymphocyte surface.     

Cardiovascular diseases in China.

Statistics from the National Population Census of China revealed a significant increase in the Chinese population, from 590 million in 1953 to 1.26 billion in 2000. The average life expectancy increased to 71.4 years in 2000 compared with the expectancy of 68.6 years a decade before. World Health Organization statistics on the death rate for total cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke in men and women aged 35-74 years revealed discrepancies between rural and urban parts of China. The China Multicenter Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular Epidemiology indicated that cardiovascular disease was the major cause of death for both men and women, with stroke accounting for over 40% of deaths. Ischemia was shown to be the most common subtype of stroke in both sexes. Smoking was an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization reported that the death rate attributable to tobacco was 6.0% worldwide and 9.2% in China in 1990. The latter is projected to reach 16.6% by 2020. In China, the prevalence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus, the two key risk factors of cardiovascular disease, have also increased significantly in the past 20 years. In addition, elevated blood pressure and plasma cholesterol were two important determinants of increased cardiovascular disease in eastern Asia. These studies indicate that an integrated management of comprehensive risk is urgently required to address China's increasing cardiovascular disease burden.     

Prion diseases.

There have been remarkably rapid advances in the understanding of prion diseases over the past year. The controversial notion that the transmissible agent may be an abnormal isoform of a host-encoded protein, the prion protein, is now gaining wide acceptance. The conundrum of how a disease can both be inherited as an autosomal dominant condition and also be experimentally transmissible by inoculation is beginning to make sense.