The American journal of medicine
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The therapeutic effect of aspirin and the other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs derives from the peripheral inhibition of prostaglandin synthetase. Aspirin produces irreversible inhibition, whereas the inhibition triggered by the other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is reversible. Despite proved analgesic efficacy, use of aspirin and the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs may be accompanied by a wide range of side effects of a potentially serious nature. ⋯ It has been used safely for years in children. Only a limited number of analgesic studies have been conducted in children. The results of analgesic studies carried out in adults are generally recognized as applicable to pain relief in children.
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A 35-year-old Ashkenazi woman with Gaucher's disease was evaluated for persistent thrombocytopenia. The diagnosis of Gaucher's disease was made by bone marrow aspiration and confirmed by the determination of glucocerebrosidase levels in leukocytes and cultured skin fibroblasts. ⋯ Total splenectomy resulted in a complete and prolonged remission. The clinical implications of Gaucher's disease and concurrent immune thrombocytopenic purpura are discussed.
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Symptoms and signs of severe hypothyroidism developed in a young woman at age 15. These symptoms progressed for a year; at age 16, she was found to have a firm goiter, thyroid autoantibodies, very low serum thyroxine and high thyrotropin values, indicating autoimmune thyroiditis with hypothyroidism. She received L-thyroxine, 0.20 mg per day, and was well until age 24 when she became pregnant. ⋯ She became pregnant again and, because of the continuing high titers of thyroid-stimulating antibody, received propylthiouracil, 100 mg daily, commencing in the third trimester of pregnancy, to avoid probable fetal hyperthyroidism due to the transplacental transfer of thyroid-stimulating antibody. In each of the last two pregnancies, when the infants were born, they seemed normal (because of the transplacental effect of propylthiouracil), but passive-transfer neonatal hyperthyroidism developed in each within 10 days after delivery, ultimately requiring treatment by conventional means. This case illustrates the following points: (1) Hyperthyroidism occasionally develops years after hypothyroidism. (2) In young women, high titers of thyroid-stimulating antibody may produce fetal and neonatal passive-transfer hyperthyroidism even at a time when the mother herself is no longer hyperthyroid; transplacental treatment of the fetus by maternal propylthiouracil ingestion may thus be necessary during the last trimester, but only when there is a high degree of probability that the fetus is at risk. (3) Because the infants had been protected in utero by the placental transfer of propylthiouracil, neonatal hyperthyroidism did not develop until several days after delivery.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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Case Reports
Oncogenous osteomalacia. Review of the world literature of 42 cases and report of two new cases.
The clinical and biochemical data in 42 reported cases of oncogenous osteomalacia are reviewed, and data in two previously unreported cases are recorded. It is likely that the syndrome is more common than suggested by the paucity of reports and may account for a substantial fraction of nonfamilial, adult-onset "idiopathic" osteomalacia. ⋯ The syndrome presumably represents an instance of humor-induced phosphaturia but supporting experimental data are scanty. Plasma levels of 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol are uniformly low, and treatment with this metabolite is generally very effective; however, abnormal vitamin D metabolism cannot by itself account for the syndrome.