The English version of the CFQ appears to be a linguistically valid measure of quality of life for patients with CF. A national validation study is now under way to test the psychometric properties of the measure.

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The goal of the present study was to determine whether personality traits are related to return to heavy drinking or drug use following treatment for substance abuse. Personality characteristics of one hundred and eight patients residing on an inpatient substance abuse treatment program were assessed. Personality traits were examined using the 5-factor model of personality as measured by the NEO-Personality Inventory. These patients were then followed for 1 year after discharge from the treatment program. These substance abuse patients scored higher than the NEO-Personality Inventory normative sample on the personality domains of Neuroticism and Conscientiousness. A survival analysis showed that Neuroticism and Conscientiousness from the NEO-Personality Inventory were significant predictors of relapse. Odds ratios showed that the risk of relapsing was greatest for those patients who were both low in conscientiousness and high in neuroticism. The relevance of these two broad personality dimensions to the development and maintenance of addiction is discussed. Treatment implications for patients who possess these personality risk factors are outlined.

sample volume 20ml, concentration 25ng/ml). To answer the third point, the amount of each peptide spike in 10ml of control urine was 1.25mg; two-fifths of the reconstituted sample were then analyzed. In order to allow the profile to stay within the scale of the MS, only 40ml of the extract was injected onto the UV system. To provide the best chance of observing peptides, the remainder of the extract (560µl) was then injected into and analyzed by the MS. In this way, it was hoped that both the profile and mass information could be obtained for each sample. We disagree with Dr Shattock, in that absence of any peaks for these peptides in the MS analysis, which is both more sensitive and more selective than the UV method, supports our evidence that these peptides were not present in the urine of children studied.It is difficult to comment on the validity of the observation (attributed to personal communication cited in Shattock et al.) 3 that, the 25-30% of children shown by these research groups to have bovine casomorphin 1-7 in their urine, are different from our study group.Whilst Whiteley 4 does not study casein exclusion in his study, he comments in the abstract, introduction, and discussion on casein and gluten exclusion diets; thereby, suggesting that both food products are implicated. Pavone et al. 5 should have been cited at the end of the sentence, rather than midway, as their paper discusses the putative links between enteropathy and autism.

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Xanthomonas citri ssp. citri (X. citri), causal agent of citrus canker, uses transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs) as major pathogenicity factors. TALEs, which are delivered into plant cells through the type III secretion system (T3SS), interact with effector binding elements (EBEs) in host genomes to activate the expression of downstream susceptibility genes to promote disease. Predictably, TALEs bind EBEs in host promoters via known combinations of TALE amino acids to DNA bases, known as the TALE code. We introduced 14 EBEs, matching distinct X. citri TALEs, into the promoter of the pepper Bs3 gene (ProBs3 ), and fused this engineered promoter with multiple EBEs (ProBs3 ) to either the β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene or the coding sequence (cds) of the pepper gene, Bs3. TALE-induced expression of the Bs3 cds in citrus leaves resulted in no visible hypersensitive response (HR). Therefore, we utilized a different approach in which ProBs3 and ProBs3 were fused to the Xanthomonas gene, avrGf1, which encodes a bacterial effector that elicits an HR in grapefruit and sweet orange. We demonstrated, in transient assays, that activation of ProBs3 by X. citri TALEs is T3SS dependent, and that the expression of AvrGf1 triggers HR and correlates with reduced bacterial growth. We further demonstrated that all tested virulent X. citri strains from diverse geographical locations activate ProBs3 . TALEs are essential for the virulence of X. citri strains and, because the engineered promoter traps are activated by multiple TALEs, this concept has the potential to confer broad-spectrum, durable resistance to citrus canker in stably transformed plants.

It has been hypothesized that autism results from an‘opioid peptide excess'. The aims of this study were to (1) confirm the presence of opioid peptides in the urine of children with autism and (2) determine whether dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV/CD26) is defective in children with autism. Opioid peptides were not detected in either the urine of children with autism (10 children; nine males, one female; age range 2 years 6 months to 10 years 1 month) or their siblings (10 children; seven males, three females; age range 2 years 3 months to 12 years 7 months) using liquid chromatography‐ultraviolet‐mass spectrometric analysis (LC‐UV‐MS). Plasma from 11 normally developing adults (25 years 5 months to 55 years 5 months) was also tested. The amount and activity of DPPIV in the plasma were quantified by an ELISA and DPPIV enzyme assay respectively; DPPIV was not found to be defective. The percentage of mononuclear cells expressing DPPIV (as CD26) was determined by flow cytometry. Children with autism had a significantly lower percentage of cells expressing CD3 and CD26, suggesting that they had lower T‐cell numbers than their siblings. In conclusion, this study failed to replicate the findings of others and questions the validity of the opioid peptide excess theory for the cause of autism.