In Brief

For most people around the country, the winter holiday season starts that manic day in the malls right after Thanksgiving. But in Baltimore, there is no surer sign that the holidays are approaching than the arrival of the annual Carriage House Collection at Evergreen House. For the last 40 years, this unique bazaar has been put on by the Women's Board of The Johns Hopkins Hospital to benefit the hospital. For three days beginning Sunday, Nov. 10, more than 40 vendors from all over the country will display one-of-a-kind gifts including home accessories, food, clothes and art. And this year, with its special guest Tiffany & Co., the 1996 Carriage House Collection at Evergreen, Tiffany-style, promises to be the fund-raiser's most gorgeous yet.

One of the main attractions will be the dining room, where Tiffany designers and a local florist have replicated one of the settings in A Tiffany Christmas, a just-published treasury of photographic images and decorating ideas by John Loring. There will be a fly-fishing demonstration on Sunday, Nov. 10, at 2:30 p.m., and on Monday, Nov. 11, and Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 11 a.m., Evergreen's executive director Lili Ott will conduct tours of Evergreen's Tiffany collection. One of the event's most popular attractions--the silent auction--will this year feature antiques, china, silver, crystal and trip giveaways.

The Carriage House Collection at Evergreen, Tiffany-style, will kick off with a black tie gala Saturday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $100. Hours of the three-day event are Sunday, Nov. 10, from noon until 6 p.m.; Monday, Nov. 11, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Tuesday, Nov. 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. General admission is $8; tickets are available at the door. For more information, call the Women's Board at (410)955-9341. The historic Evergreen House is located at 4545 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

Student engineers hope to tangle on spaghetti bridge

The American Society of Civil Engineers student chapter at Johns Hopkins is once again sponsoring the Spaghetti Bridge Contest. This year's competition takes place at the Maryland Science Center on Sunday, Nov. 10. Team demonstrations are scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. on the center's second floor. The competition is scheduled between 3 to 5 p.m. All it takes is about a pound and a half of No. 9 spaghetti, some glue, a sprinkle of physics and a dash of bridge construction know-how. The bridge that can bear the greatest load wins. Come down to cheer on the Hopkins engineering team. There is an admission fee to the Science Center.

Medical News

Laboratory rabbits, inhaling low and high doses of tubercle bacilli and subsequently developing cavities in their lungs, have given scientists a unique look at how TB develops, matures and how dangerously virulent bacilli become airborne.

This, the first study to describe and analyze the pathogenesis of cavitary tuberculosis, contributes knowledge that may aid in the development of new agents to prevent or treat TB.

Published in the November issue of Infection and Immunity, Paul J. Converse, assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the School of Public Health and the study's lead author, described how virulent bovine-type tubercle bacilli created cavities in the lung tissue of both high- and low-dose animals. Their disease characteristics were similar to tuberculosis in humans as bacilli ascended into the bronchial tree where they were swallowed and, subsequently, created secondary tubercles at other sites. In the lungs, bacilli growing on a cavity wall liquified and became aerosolized by coughing. Aerosolization of TB bacilli has long been known to be the route of infection.

Researchers concluded that knowledge gained about TB disease process could be used to develop new agents for the prevention and treatment of cavitary tuberculosis. With multi-drug resistance TB on the rise, new prevention techniques and therapies are increasingly important.

Anti-blood clot drug may work better for angina

A new drug called integrelin is more effective than aspirin in reducing the threat of heart attack caused by blood clots, according to a multicenter study led by Hopkins scientists.

Results show integrelin significantly reduces ischemia (reduced blood flow to the heart) in people with unstable angina, which accounts for more than 570,000 hospital admissions each year in the United States and is a major risk factor for heart attack. The drug may especially help the 20 percent of the population with an inherited blood-clotting abnormality linked to coronary artery disease, the nation's leading killer, said Hopkins researchers. The study resulted in two papers, published in the Nov. 1 issue of Circulation and the November issue of Clinical Cardiology.

Results of the first study of 227 men and women aged 21 to 80 show that patients who received the high integrelin doses had significantly fewer and shorter ischemic episodes than those receiving aspirin. During the study, ischemia occurred in 10 percent of the high-dose drug group, 20 percent of the low-dose drug group and 21 percent of the aspirin group.

Although the results suggest that women benefit more from integrelin, the Hopkins researchers said a large, prospective, randomized trial is needed to address possible gender differences with the drug. Women receiving integrelin had eight times fewer angina attacks as well as shorter attacks (10 minutes versus 80 minutes on average) than women receiving aspirin. In the aspirin group, women had significantly more and longer attacks than men.

Among men, there was no significant difference in attacks between those receiving the high or low integrelin doses and aspirin.

Results reported by Steven P. Schulman, lead author of the first paper and an associate professor of medicine, show there was no increase in clotting after patients were taken off integrelin and that there were no differences in the amount of internal bleeding between the integrelin and aspirin groups. Also, in test tube analyses, increased doses of the drug prevented platelets from clumping together. All patients in the study received standard medical therapy, including heparin, a common blood thinner.

Results of the second study, which looked at the same 227 patients, suggested that integrelin provides women experiencing unstable angina with significantly more protection than aspirin against ischemia caused by platelet clots, said Pascal J. Goldschmidt-Clermont, lead author and an associate professor of medicine.