High concentration and retained amidation of fecal bile acids in patients with active ulcerative colitis

Fecal bile acid profiles of 14 patients with ulcerative colitis in the active phase were analyzed to study the potential significance of bile acids in the pathophysiology of this disease, and the results were compared with those in 12 healthy controls. The excretion levels of total bile acids (mean +/- SD) in patients were higher than in controls, 445.1 +/- 392.1 vs 215.5 +/- 148.0 mumol/day, 3.1 +/- 1.7 vs 1.6 +/- 1.0 mumol/g wet feces (P less than 0.05), and 17.2 +/- 9.2 vs 12.4 +/- 13.3 mumol/g dry feces. Fecal profiles of individual bile acids showed higher levels of primary bile acids (52 +/- 27%) in patients compared to those (26 +/- 21%) in controls. Proportions of glycine and taurine conjugates in patients (26 +/- 24%) were higher than in controls (5 +/- 2%) (P less than 0.05), whereas proportions of unconjugates and sulfates were lower in patients than in controls. Accordingly the extent of deconjugation and dehydroxylation of bile acids was lower in patients than in controls. These trends were prominent in patients with more severe disease activity. A high concentration of bile acids in the intestine may have a significant role in the pathophysiology of ulcerative colitis at active phase.     

Burden and spectrum of infectious disease in Germany 2009–2014: a multicentre study from Berlin’s Municipal Hospitals

Purpose

This study aimed at assessing the burden and spectrum of infectious diseases (ID) in a Metropolitan population in Germany.

Methods

A discharge database using ICD-10 codes enabled the identification of hospitalizations with infection-related diagnoses. All hospital admissions between 2009 and 2014 were analysed from 9 municipal hospitals serving approximately one-third of an urban population of 3.5 million people.

Results

We identified 114,168 admissions with a primary (first-listed) ID diagnosis and 220,483 admissions with any-listed ID diagnosis, accounting for 8.9 % [95 % confidence interval (CI) 8.9–9.0 %] and 17.2 % (95 % CI 17.1–17.3) of all 1,284,559 admissions, respectively. Annually, 439,837 bed-days (range 413,707–488,520) were occupied by patients with an ID diagnosis, utilizing 22.8 % of total bed capacity. The median length of stay for patients with primary ID diagnosis and secondary ID diagnosis was 6 days (IQR 3–11) and 10 days (IQR 5–19), respectively. The most common diagnosis across all age groups was “pneumonia” (22.8 and 16.2 % of ID admissions as primary and secondary diagnosis, respectively). In-hospital mortality was 6.8 % (95 % CI 6.6–6.9) and 8.9 % (95 % CI 8.7–9.1) for ID as primary and secondary diagnosis, respectively.

Conclusion

Infectious diseases contribute significantly to the overall burden of disease in a health system caring for an urban German population. In view of the magnitude of ID’s contribution, establishing more specialists in ID medicine and adjusting the reimbursements for managing infection-related admissions should be made a public health priority in Germany.

     

Physiological variations of warm and cool sense with shift of environmental temperature

In order to obtain control data on the temperature sense (warm and cool threshold values) of fingertips, the relationships between room temperature and either skin temperature, warm threshold or cool threshold of the middle fingertips were investigated in healthy subjects (6 males), using our thermo-esthesiometer. The skin temperature changes in a sigmoidal response with the variation of room temperature. A point of inflection for this response was observed at the room temperature of 15 degrees C, at which the greatest standard deviation of skin temperature occurred. The warm and cool thresholds, on the other hand, were also affected by variations of room temperature. Warm threshold and skin temperature or cool threshold and skin temperature bore a linear relation to each other, and the correlation coefficient was 0.854 in the former, and 0.925 in the latter, respectively. The disorder of temperature sensitivity (warm and cool thresholds) must always be considered together with the room temperature or skin temperature. On the other hand, the width of the neutral zone between warm and cool thresholds was affected by neither the changes of room temperature nor the changes of skin temperature. Hence, the width of the neutral zone was approximately constant, especially, at the room temperatures in the vicinity of 15 degrees C to 25 degrees C.     

Response of neuropeptide Y-induced feeding to mu-, delta- and kappa-opioid receptor antagonists in the neonatal chick

It is known that opioid antagonists reduce the orexigenic effect of neropeptide Y (NPY) in mammals. We studied the effect of three opioid antagonists on NPY-induced feeding in male broiler chicks. Beta-funaltrexamine (beta-FNA), naloxonazine (NAL), ICI-174,864 (ICI) or nor-binaltorphimine (nor-BNI), antagonists of mu-, mu1-, delta- or kappa-receptors, and NPY were co-injected in chicks. Food intake was measured 30 min after treatment. Co-injection of beta-FNA or NAL was effective in reducing NPY-induced feeding, whereas ICI and nor-BNI had little effect on NPY-induced feeding. These data suggest that the mu-opioid receptor, especially the mu1-opioid has some relation to NPY-induced feeding, and implies that an endogenous ligand, such as beta-endorphin, participates in the orexigenic effect of NPY in neonatal chicks.     

Social perception of nursing professional assessed by different scales

The purpose of this experiment was to scale the social perception of nurses through the methods of magnitude estimation, category estimation and cross-modality matching (line lengths). The study participants were high school and undergraduate students, active and retired medicine, psychology, nursing and dentistry professionals. Results revealed that: (1) the characteristics neat, responsible, clean, careful and efficacious occupied the first positions in terms of nurses' social perceptions, while useless, shameful, dishonest, irresponsible and hateful occupied the last positions on all scales obtained by the different direct psychophysics methods; (2) the scale of nurses' social perception is valid, stable and consistent and (3) the rankings resulting from the three methods produce highly concordant positions of perception for the different adjectives.     

Target soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptors (t-SNAREs) differently regulate activation and inactivation gating of Kv2.2 and Kv2.1: Implications on pancreatic islet cell Kv channels

We have hypothesized that the plasma membrane protein components of the exocytotic soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein (SNAP) receptor (SNARE) complex, syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25, distinctly regulate different voltage-gated K+ (Kv) channels that are differentially distributed. Neuroendocrine islet cells (alpha, beta, delta) uniformly contain both syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25. However, using immunohistochemistry, we show that the different pancreatic islet cells contain distinct dominant Kv channels, including Kv2.1 in beta cells and Kv2.2 in alpha and delta cells, whose interactions with the SNARE proteins would, respectively regulate insulin, glucagon and somatostatin secretion. We therefore examined the regulation by syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25 of these two channels. We have shown that Kv2.1 interacts with syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25 and, based on studies in oocytes, suggested a model of two distinct modes of interaction of syntaxin 1A and the complex syntaxin 1A/SNAP-25 with the C terminus of the channel. Here, we characterized the interactions of syntaxin 1A and SNAP-25 with Kv2.2 which is highly homologous to Kv2.1, except for the C-terminus. Comparative two-electrode voltage clamp analysis in oocytes between Kv2.2 and Kv2.1 shows that Kv2.2 interacts only with syntaxin 1A and, in contrast to Kv2.1, it does not interact with the syntaxin 1A/SNAP-25 complex and hence is not sensitive to the assembly/disassembly state of the complex. The distinct regulation of these closely related channels by SNAREs may be attributed to differences in their C termini. Together with the differential distribution of these channels among islet cells, their distinct regulation suggests that the documented profound down-regulation of islet SNARE levels in diabetes could distort islet cell ion channels and secretory responses in different ways, ultimately contributing to the abnormal glucose homeostasis.