The New England journal of medicine
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In an examination of excretion patterns of Epstein-Barr virus in 104 throat washings from 20 patients with infectious mononucleosis we found that three persons regularly shed virus from the second week through the third month after onset; 15 demonstrated intermittent excretion over three months, and in two cases, no virus was detected. In oral secretions, the virus appeared to be located extracellularly. ⋯ In one patient, virus was regularly demonstrated in throat washings and saliva; swabs from Stensen's duct orifices yielded virus in three of four cases. Demonstration of virus in these oropharyngeal specimens explains increased transmissibility in age groups in which salivary exchange is high.
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Clinical Trial
Effect of psychoprophylaxis (Lamaze preparation) on labor and delivery in primiparas.
To investigate whether "prepared-childbirth" courses offer measurable physical advantages, we compared the labor and delivery characteristics of 129 primiparas who had completed ante-partum Lamaze-training psychoprophylaxis classes with an equal number of matched controls who had not. The former were given narcotics less frequently during labor (P less than 0.001), received conduction anesthesia less often (P less than 0.001), and had a higher frequency of spontaneous vaginal deliveries (P less than 0.001) than the control patients. However, these differences had no apparent effects on the length of labor, number or type of maternal complications, frequency of fetal distress, mean Apgar scored, or neonatal problems.