DM2 is present in a large number of families of northern European ancestry. Clinically, DM2 resembles adult-onset DM1, with myotonia, muscular dystrophy, cataracts, diabetes, testicular failure, hypogammaglobulinemia, and cardiac conduction defects. An important distinction is the lack of a congenital form of DM2. The clinical and molecular parallels between DM1 and DM2 indicate that the multisystemic features common to both diseases are caused by CUG or CCUG expansions expressed at the RNA level.

Acute experiments were carried out in cats and rabbits in which a sample of cortical bone was taken prior to and at the conclusion of the experimental procedure. Thus each animal served as its own control. Hyponatremia caused a decrease in bone Na and hypernatremia an increase. The observed changes could be accounted for entirely by that portion of bone Na which is associated with bone water in equilibrium with extracellular fluid. In these and additional experiments in the rat, acidosis unassociated with hyponatremia did not mobilize Na from bone.

Bannister and Salmon (1966), in a repertory grid study, reported that 'thought-disordered schizophrenics lost significantly more reliability and social agreement when shifted from object to people construing than normal'. This conclusion is of doubtful validity, since the between-grids variable, people vs. objects, was confounded with at least five other variables of possible relevance, three of which have been found by subsequent workers (McPherson & Buckley, 1970; Williams, 1971; Heather, 1976) to affect performance on grids. The main aim of the present experiment was to determine the effects of as many as possible of these variables. The subsidiary aim was to replicate, or otherwise, the findings of Frith & Lillie (1972) and Haynes & Phillips (1973) that the effective discriminator between thought-disorder schizophrenics and other groups on repertory grid tests is not intensity of relationship between constructs but pure (element or internal) consistency. Six grids involving all feasible combinations of rating familiar and unfamiliar people and objects on psychological and physical constructs were administered to 10 thought-disordered schizophrenics, 10 non-thought-disordered schizophrenics and 10 normals. As regards the main aim of the experiment it was found that there was no significant grids x diagnoses interaction on pure consistency, but that there was one on intensity, even with pure consistency partialled out. Taking previous work into consideration, it appears that this effect is weak, inconsistent from experiment to experiment, and anomalous in the present study. As regards the subsidiary aim, the findings of the two previous experiments cited above were confirmed. The discrepant results of McPherson et al. (1973) are considered, and it is noted that they held only for a subsample of the schizophrenic group in that experiment, the results for the total sample of schizophrenics, manics and depressives not being inconsistent with those of other experiments. The theoretical and practical implications of these and previous finding are indicated.

No abstract

No abstract