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Laboratory Protocol (laboratory + protocol)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	40%

Selected Abstracts

Sex differences in the hemodynamic responses to mental stress: Effect of caffeine consumption

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 4 2006
Noha H. Farag
Abstract The effect of caffeine on stress responses was compared in 25 men and 22 women in a 2-week placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized crossover trial. On each week, participants abstained from all dietary sources of caffeine before undergoing a 6-h laboratory protocol under placebo or caffeine exposure followed by a 30-min mental stressor with blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular hemodynamic assessments. On the placebo session, men and women showed a significant BP increase to stress, although women had significant cardiac responses whereas men had vascular responses. Caffeine ingestion before stress caused both men and women to have enhanced hemodynamic responses to the stressor associated with an increase in cardiac index and a drop in the peripheral resistance index. Caffeine enhances the cardiovascular fight-or-flight response pattern to stress in men and women. [source]

Isolation of Fungi by Standard Laboratory Methods in Patients With Chronic Rhinosinusitis,

THE LARYNGOSCOPE, Issue 12 2002
Richard A. Lebowitz MD
Abstract Objectives/Hypothesis Allergic fungal sinusitis and the role of fungi in the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis are topics of interest and controversy in rhinology. The classification of chronic rhinosinusitis as either a bacterial infection or an allergic (eosinophilic) reaction to fungi has significant implications for treatment of this disease process. We designed a study to determine whether standard isolation techniques, as employed in a university hospital mycology laboratory, could isolate and identify fungi in the intraoperative specimens from patients undergoing functional endoscopic sinus surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis. Study Design Forty-five random patients with a diagnosis of chronic rhinosinusitis by clinical and computed tomography criteria underwent endoscopic sinus surgery during 2001, performed by two senior surgeons (j.b.j., r.a.l.). Specimens of mucin, sinus secretions, and/or tissue were obtained intraoperatively and sent to the New York University Medical Center (New York, NY) mycology laboratory for isolation and identification of fungi. Methods Specimens were treated with Sputolysin and chloramphenicol; plated on Sabouraud, ChromAgar/Candida, Mycosel, and Niger seed agar plates; and incubated at 30°C (or 37°C) for up to 1 month. Results We were able to demonstrate the presence of fungi in 56% of intraoperative specimens obtained from patients undergoing surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis. Conclusions Using a standard hospital mycology laboratory protocol, which is relatively inexpensive and readily available, fungus can be isolated from a majority of patients undergoing functional endoscopic sinus surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis. Educational statement: Discuss the possible role of fungus in chronic rhinosinusitis and evaluate the efficacy of documenting the presence of fungus in a routine fashion to encourage clinically relevant directed treatments.) [source]

Teaching gross anatomy using living tissue

CLINICAL ANATOMY, Issue 2 2002
D.S. Hubbell
Abstract Embalmed cadaver tissues and organs that are dissected in gross anatomy laboratories lack many characteristics of fresh or living tissues. The purpose of this study was to assess the educational value of allowing first-year medical students to experience first-hand the color, texture, delicacy and other qualities of living porcine tissues and organs that are similar to those of human tissues. Guided by a laboratory protocol, medical students palpated and inspected organs of the opened thorax, abdomen and pelvis of anesthetized pigs on pulmonary ventilators. The learning experience was rated highly by the students as well as by the participating faculty. A further review of the medical students' later experiences at autopsies and in surgical clerkships showed that the living-tissue experience in their gross anatomy course represented a large part of their medical school exposure to unembalmed tissues. Clin. Anat. 15:157,159, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction: A Novel Molecular Diagnostic Tool for Equine Infectious Diseases

JOURNAL OF VETERINARY INTERNAL MEDICINE, Issue 1 2006
N. Pusterla
The focus of rapid diagnosis of infectious disease of horses in the last decade has shifted from the conventional laboratory techniques of antigen detection, microscopy, and culture to molecular diagnosis of infectious agents. Equine practitioners must be able to interpret the use, limitations, and results of molecular diagnostic techniques, as they are increasingly integrated into routine microbiology laboratory protocols. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the best-known and most successfully implemented diagnostic molecular technology to date. It can detect slow-growing, difficult-to-cultivate, or uncultivatable microorganisms and can be used in situations in which clinical microbiology diagnostic procedures are inadequate, time-consuming, difficult, expensive, or hazardous to laboratory staff. Inherent technical limitations of PCR are present, but they are reduced in laboratories that use standardized protocols, conduct rigid validation protocols, and adhere to appropriate quality-control procedures. Improvements in PCR, especially probe-based real-time PCR, have broadened its diagnostic capabilities in clinical infectious diseases to complement and even surpass traditional methods in some situations. Furthermore, real-time PCR is capable of quantitation, allowing discrimination of clinically relevant infections characterized by pathogen replication and high pathogen loads from chronic latent infections. Automation of all components of PCR is now possible, which will decrease the risk of generating false-positive results due to contamination. The novel real-time PCR strategy and clinical applications in equine infectious diseases will be the subject of this review. [source]

Novel Process Windows , Gate to Maximizing Process Intensification via Flow Chemistry

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (CET), Issue 11 2009
V. Hessel
Abstract Driven by the economics of scale, the size of reaction vessels as the major processing apparatus of the chemical industry has became bigger and bigger [1, 2]. Consequently, the efforts for ensuring mixing and heat transfer have also increased, as these are scale dependent. This has brought vessel operation to (partly severe) technical limits, especially when controlling harsh conditions, e.g., due to large heat releases. Accordingly, processing at a very large scale has resulted in taming of the chemistry involved in order to slow it down to a technically controllable level. Therefore, reaction paths that already turned out too aggressive at the laboratory scale are automatically excluded for later scale-up, which constitutes a common everyday confinement in exploiting chemical transformations. Organic chemists are barely conscious that even the small-scale laboratory protocols in their textbooks contain many slow, disciplined chemical reactions. Operations such as adding a reactant drop by drop in a large diluted solvent volume have become second nature, but are not intrinsic to the good engineering of chemical reactions. These are intrinsic to the chemical apparatus used in the past. In contrast, today's process intensification [3,12] and the new flow-chemistry reactors on the micro- and milli-scale [13,39] allow such limitations to be overcome, and thus, enable a complete, ab-initio type rethinking of the processes themselves. In this way, space-time yields and the productivity of the reactor can be increased by orders of magnitude and other dramatic performance step changes can be achieved. A hand-in-hand design of the reactors and process re-thinking is required to enable chemistry rather than subduing chemistry around the reactor [40]. This often leads to making use of process conditions far from conventional practice, under harsh environments, a procedure named here as Novel Process Windows. [source]