Pancreatitis in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Frequency and Associated Factors — A Review of the Hopkins Lupus Cohort

Objective.Pancreatitis is a rare but potentially life-threatening complication of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Vasculitis of the gastrointestinal tract is the most commonly proposed mechanism. We determined the frequency of SLE-related pancreatitis in the Hopkins Lupus Cohort.Methods.A large prospective cohort of 1811 patients with SLE was reviewed and clinical and laboratory measures of SLE patients who developed pancreatitis were compared to patients who did not develop pancreatitis.Results.Four percent of patients with SLE had pancreatitis due to SLE. The best multivariate model of clinical and laboratory associations included hypertriglyceridemia, psychosis, pleurisy, gastritis, and anemia.Conclusion.Hypertriglyceridemia appears to be a strong associate of pancreatitis in SLE, but antiphospholipid antibodies are not. SLE patients with psychosis and pleurisy are at increased risk for pancreatitis.

Faculty Perceptions Of Research Rewards

This study surveyed 320 faculty members from 10 business schools to examine the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that motivate faculty to conduct research. Of the thirteen rewards studied, receiving or having tenure is the most important reward, while getting a possible administrative position was the least important. There were significant differences in the importance of these rewards between tenured-untenured and between male-female faculty members. Faculty perceives a strong link between research productivity and the attainment of the rewards of tenure and of promotion. However, in the minds of the faculty, the link between publications and the reward of salary increases is not strong. Associate professors reported lesser importance than either full professors or assistant professors on nine of the thirteen rewards and perceived a weaker link between research productivity and achieving the reward. This implies that the associate professors are the least motivated faculty rank to perform research. There was no significant difference in the number of journal articles either published or accepted for publication within the past 24 months by tenure status, gender, or faculty rank.

Summation Priming and Coarse Semantic Coding in the Right Hemisphere

There are now numerous observations of subtle right hemisphere (RH) contributions to language comprehension. It has been suggested that these contributions reflect coarse semantic coding in the RH. That is, the RH weakly activates large semantic fields—including concepts distantly related to the input word—whereas the left hemisphere (LH) strongly activates small semantic fields—limited to concepts closely related to the input (Beeman, 1993a,b). This makes the RH less effective at interpreting single words, but more sensitive to semantic overlap of multiple words. To test this theory, subjects read target words preceded by either “Summation” primes (three words each weakly related to the target) or Unrelated primes (three unrelated words), and target exposure duration was manipulated so that subjects correctly named about half the target words in each hemifield. In Experiment 1, subjects benefited more from Summation primes when naming target words presented to the left visual field-RH (Ivf-RH) than when naming target words presented to the right visual field-LH (rvf-LH), suggesting a RH advantage in coarse semantic coding. In Experiment 2, with a low proportion of related prime-target trials, subjects benefited more from “Direct” primes (one strong associate flanked by two unrelated words) than from Summation primes for rvf-LH target words, indicating that the LH activates closely related information much more strongly than distantly related information. Subjects benefited equally from both prime types for Ivf-RH target words, indicating that the RH activates closely related information only slightly more strongly, at best, than distantly related information. This suggests that the RH processes words with relatively coarser coding than the LH, a conclusion consistent with a recent suggestion that the RH coarsely codes visual input (Kosslyn, Chabris, Mar-solek, & Koenig, 1992).