Pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and nitric oxide (NO) are believed to play an important role in the severity of chronic disease. When evaluated in 71 patients who were seropositive for Trypanosoma cruzi and 50 apparently healthy controls, the mean (S.D.) serum concentrations of both TNF [7.65 (1.32) nu. 4.24 (1.53) ng/ml; P<0.001] and NO [114 (40) nu. 74 (21) microM; P<0.0001] were found to be significantly higher in the patients than in the controls. In addition, patients with chronic, symptomatic disease affecting their hearts--eight with dilated cardiomyopathy [8.82 (1.47) ng TNF/ml; 142 (45) microM NO] and 17 others with electrocardiographic alterations [8.37 (1.26) ng TNF/ml; 134 (53) microM NO]--had significantly higher serum concentrations of these cytokines than 34 patients who were in the asymptomatic, indeterminate phase of the disease [6.38 (1.35) ng TNF/ml; 99 (28) microM NO]. In those infected with T. cruzi, it therefore appears that serum concentrations of TNF and NO correlate with disease severity, indicating that these cytokines play some role in the pathogenesis of chronic Chagas disease.

No abstract

This article presents a study carried out on eight Spanish legal textbooks in order to draw up an inventory of educational resources available to support the development of law students’ communicative competence, taking into account the law degree curricula at Spanish universities (Ezeiza Ramos forthcoming a, forthcoming b). The analysis was carried out by using a sociopragmatic approach to teaching language with specific purposes (Bhatia 2002a, 2002b, 2004, 2008, 2010), which postulates that the acquisition of specialist communicative competence requires a tactical space in which obtaining discursive knowledge in its double (social and textual) dimension and learning about the subject itself are combined, thus taking into account the nature of relevant professional practice itself. Applied in the legal sciences area, this perspective takes the form of a pedagogical model based on three main axes (Candlin & Bhatia 1998, quoted in Bhatia et al. 2004): a) practice contexts; b) text genres; and c) strategic skills. From this starting point, I analysed: a) the learning and language use contexts offered in the textbooks studied; b) the text genres which educational materials are based on; and c) the dimensions of competence development (

Fedia de recepción: 29-Xn-96 152-51 RESUMEN Los edificios taurinos, tal como los hemos conocido, son el resultado de un largo proceso evolutivo, en el cual han existido momentos concretos de innovación y cambio. En España vivimos ahora el que, probablemente, deba ser uno de estos momentos.

No abstract