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Clinical Field (clinical + field)
Selected AbstractsFrom kidney to cardiovascular diseases: NGAL as a biomarker beyond the confines of nephrologyEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL INVESTIGATION, Issue 3 2010D. Bolignano Eur J Clin Invest 2010; 40 (3): 273,276 Abstract Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), a small 25 kDa stress-protein released from injured tubular cells after various damaging stimuli, is already known by nephrologists as one of the most promising biomarkers of incoming Acute Kidney Injury. Moreover, recent studies seem to suggest a potential involvement of this factor also in the genesis and progression of chronic kidney diseases. This brief review explores the new interesting involvement of NGAL in the experimental and clinical field of cardiovascular diseases, such as the pathogenesis and clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis, acute myocardial infarction and heart failure. It does not seem difficult that, in the next future, NGAL may become a new missing link between the kidney and the cardiovascular system. [source] Quantification of red blood cell fragmentation by the automated hematology analyzer XE-2100 in patients with living donor liver transplantationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LABORATORY HEMATOLOGY, Issue 5 2005S. BANNO Summary The fragmented red cell (FRC) is a useful index for diagnosing and determining the severity of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) and other similar conditions, as it is found in peripheral blood in patients with these diseases. The FRC expression rate has conventionally been determined by manual methods using smear samples. However, it is difficult to attain accurate quantification by such methods as they are time consuming and prone to a great margin of error. With cases of living donor liver transplantation, the current study examined the possibility of using a multi-parameter automated hematology analyzer, the XE-2100 (Sysmex Corporation) for FRC quantification. While there was a notable correlation between the manual and automated measurements, the manual measurement resulted in higher values. This suggested remarkable variations in judgment by individuals. The FRC values had a significant correlation with the reticulocyte count, red blood cell distribution width (RDW), fibrin/fibrinogen degradation products (P-FDP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) among the test parameters, and this finding was consistent with the clinical progression in patients. The automated method can offer precise measurements in a short time without inter-observer differences, meeting the requirement for standardization. The determination of FRC count (%) by the XE-2100 that enables early diagnoses and monitoring of TTP or TMA will be useful in the clinical field. [source] Formation of 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) in frozen mackerel (Scomber scombrus) in the presence and absence of green teaJOURNAL OF THE SCIENCE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, Issue 7 2008Rabia Alghazeer Abstract BACKGROUND: Aldehydes are secondary lipid oxidation products formed during processing and storage of food. 4-Hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) is a major toxic lipid peroxidation product which has been extensively investigated in the clinical field but less so in food products. The aim of the present study was to investigate the formation of aldehydes in stored frozen fish (Atlantic mackerel, Scomber scombrus) with and without antioxidant (green tea). RESULTS: The presence of 4-HNE in frozen fish was detected for the first time. 4-HNE was extracted from frozen fish and identified using high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The amount of 4-HNE increased throughout storage for 26 weeks at , 10 °C in the absence of antioxidant. A significant decrease was observed in fish samples stored at ,10 °C with green tea. Minimal amounts of 4-HNE were formed in fish stored at ,80 °C. A similar increase in 4-HNE was found for methyl linoleate and extracted fish oil exposed to UV irradiation. CONCLUSION: The toxic aldehyde 4-HNE can be formed in badly stored frozen mackerel and is an indicator of reduced texture quality and nutritional value of fish. Addition of instant whole green tea as an antioxidant can provide a cheap and effective way of enhancing safety, especially in developing countries. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry [source] A cell preparation of Enterococcus faecalis strain EC-12 stimulates the luminal immunoglobulin A secretion in juvenile calvesANIMAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009Takeshi TSURUTA ABSTRACT The immune system in juvenile calves is immature, so calves are susceptible to several diarrheal and respiratory diseases. Oral administration of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) is known to improve the growth performance and prevent diarrheal and respiratory diseases by stimulating the immune system in juvenile calves. Most of the immunostimulation by LAB is achieved by their cell wall components, and therefore we evaluated the immunostimulation of the cell preparation of Enterococcus faecalis strain EC-12 (EC-12) in juvenile calves in a clinical field. Twenty-nine 1-week old calves were used. Fourteen calves were administered 0.2% (w/w) of an EC-12 preparation that supplemented a milk replacer, and other calves were not supplemented. Feces and serum was collected at day 0, 7 and 49 after the administration to measure the IgA and IgG concentration. The fecal IgA concentration was increased by EC-12 administration at day 49, and the serum IgA concentration was also increased at day 7. These results suggested that oral administration of EC-12 in juvenile calves might have an immunostimulatory effect and provide earlier recovery of IgA levels in mucosal immunity. [source] Nutritional Effect of Dialysis TherapyARTIFICIAL ORGANS, Issue 3 2003Tsutomu Sanaka Abstract: The prognosis of patients with end-stage renal disease has been improved by the recent remarkable advances in medical and engineering technology. However, there are still many unsolved problems in the clinical field. One of the problems is an intractable malnutrition characterized by clinical manifestations including hypoproteinemia and decrease in muscular volume, which is associated with deterioration in the quality of the patient's life. Malnutrition in hemodialysis patients involves abnormal energy metabolism and aberrant amino acid metabolism. In the most malnourished patients, immunodefense mechanisms and homeostasis are disrupted, greatly influencing the prognosis. Moreover, when the performance of dialyzer used is too high, the dialysis treatment might remove a necessary nutrient for the patient. There is also a possibility that the protein catabolism is accelerated when the biocompatibility is inferior. On the other hand, in malnutri-tion, the circulating level of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) falls while the level of insulin-like growth factor binding protein-1 (IGFBP-1) is remarkably increased. It has been recognized that IGF-1 and IGFBP-1 are indicators reflecting the initiation of a malnutritional state in patients with chronic renal failure, although there are many indicators such as albumin, prealbumin, and anthropometric measurement for nutritional assessment. We have suggested that r-hGH and IGF-1 improve the malnutritional state by alleviating hypoproteinemia and abnormality of serum amino acid profile in uremic patients on hemodialysis. The serum IGF-1/IGFBP-1 ratio is useful not only as a nutritional parameter but also as a predicting index of responsiveness to r-hGH. It is necessary to examine the problem from various angles to improve malnutrition in the dialysis patient, while considering the above mentioned. [source] Determination of cholesterol in human hair using gas chromatography,mass spectrometryBIOMEDICAL CHROMATOGRAPHY, Issue 10 2006Hye Kyung Ryu Abstract This work describes a sensitive method for determining cholesterol in human hair using GC-MS. In this study, we used a very small amount of hair, only 1 mg, to quantify cholesterol. We also can achieve more effective purification and a good recovery over 92% with solid-phase extraction using an Oasis HLB cartridge. The intra-day and inter-day precision and accuracy values were less than 7.08%. Cholesterol was determined to be in the range of 355,1693 µg/g in healthy human hair. We tested the concentration correlation between the serum and hair to examine the feasibility of using the hair cholesterol level as an index of the serum cholesterol level. The correlation between the serum cholesterol was 0.86 (r -value) in patients with hypercholesterolemia. This finding indicates that, in the clinical field, hair could replace serum in cholesterol level measurement. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVE OF INTERVENTIONAL ENDOSCOPIC ULTRASOUND IN JAPANDIGESTIVE ENDOSCOPY, Issue 2009Mitsuhiro Kida Vilmann and Grimm made the first reports of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-fine needle aspiration (FNA), and since then EUS-FNA has become popular in the clinical fields, especially in Western countries. Furthermore interventional EUS such as pseudocyst drainage, EUS-guided biliary drainage, celiac plexus neurolysis, and dendritic cell injection, etc. have been introduced. We have investigated the current status and future perspectives of interventional EUS in Japan. Standardization of EUS-guided pseudocyst drainage has been achieved, but EUS-guided biliary dranage is still controversial, and EUS-fine needle injection (FNI) including EUS-celiac plexus neurolysis (CPN) and dendritic cell injection have been under investigation. In any case, EUS-FNA seems to be a promising future technique and new applications have to be invented. [source] The anti-inflammatory mechanism of 635 nm light-emitting-diode irradiation compared with existing COX inhibitorsLASERS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE, Issue 7 2007Wonbong Lim PhD Abstract Background and Objectives Inhibition of cyclooxygenase (COX) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) protects cells against cell injury in specific pathophysiological situations: inflammation and oxidative stress. Although the anti-inflammatory effects have been reported in clinical fields for specific wavelength irradiation during wound healing, the physiological mechanism has not been clarified yet. The aim of the present study is to investigate the anti-inflammatory mechanism of 635 nm light-emitting-diode (LED) irradiation compared with existing COX inhibitors. Study Design/Materials and Methods The present study investigated anti-inflammatory effects of 635 nm irradiation on PGE2 release, COX and phospholipase A2 (PLA2) expression, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) dissociation in arachidonic acid (AA)-treated human gingival fibroblast (hGF). These results were compared with their existing COX inhibitors: indomethacin and ibuprofen. The PGE2 release was measured by enzyme immunoassay, the COX expression was measured by western blot and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and ROS level was measured by flow cytometry, laser scanning confocal microscope and RT-PCR. Results Results showed that 635 nm irradiation and existing COX inhibitors inhibit expression of COX and PGE2 release. Unlike indomethacin and ibuprofen, 635 nm irradiation leads to a decrease of ROS levels and mRNA expression of cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2) and secretary phospholipase A2 (sPLA2). Conclusion Taken together, 635 nm irradiation, unlike indomethacin and ibuprofen, can directly dissociate the ROS. This inhibits cPLA2, sPLA2, and COX expression, and results in the inhibition of PGE2 release. Thus, we suggest that 635 nm irradiation inhibits PGE2 synthesis like COX inhibitor and appears to be useful as an anti-inflammatory tool. Lesers Surg. Med. 39:614,621, 2007. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] | |||||||||||||