鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸强化营养对大鼠癌性恶病质的作用:切除肿瘤可以提高营养支持的作用

探讨鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸对负荷肝细胞瘤Morris7777大鼠的作用。大鼠分别接受等氮、热卡的含鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸或甘氨酸的饲料。鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸已用于其它一些分解代谢状态（如创伤、败血症）。肿瘤植入自然生长3周后达11g／（100g体重），此时可以引起进行性的厌食、负氮平衡以及机体和组织的消耗。与甘氨酸比较，鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸既没有影响肿瘤的生长也没有改变肿瘤引起的宿主分解代谢变化。认为本研究以及当肿瘤占宿主体重4％～30％的报告中，强化营养支持效果欠佳的原因是由于肿瘤夺取了宿主的氨基酸。本实验证明肿瘤植入3周后，肿瘤自身的蛋白积累和对氨基酸氧化分解占宿主每日摄入蛋白量的～70％。由于临床工作中肿瘤总是在较小时被诊断并行初次治疗的。本实验进一步研究了手术切除肿瘤以限制疾病阶段后强化营养的作用。大鼠术前3天和术后3天或6天分别接受鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸或甘氨酸的饲料。鸟氨酸α酮戊二酸强化营养的大鼠其氮平衡、肌肉谷氨酰胺和支链氨基酸浓度、小肠蛋白积累高于甘氨酸强化营养的大鼠（P＜0．05）。本实验证明不切除肿瘤仅行营养支持其效果欠佳，而且为进一步实验研究建立了恰当的动物模型。     

Effect of training on the aerobic power and anaerobic performance of prepubertal girls

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two, three times a week, 8-week training programmes on the aerobic power and anaerobic performance of 30 prepubescent girls, with a mean age of 9.6 y. Peak oxygen uptake assessed by an incremental discontinuous treadmill test, and peak power in 5 s and mean power over 30 s estimated from a Wingate anaerobic test were used as the criterion measures. Twelve girls trained using a continuous cycle ergometer programme, 11 girls followed a sprint running programme and the control group consisted of 7 girls. Both training groups significantly (p < 0.05) increased their peak oxygen uptake and peak power in 5 s. However, the increases reported here are lower than those generally observed in adolescents following training. The control group demonstrated no significant ( p > 0.05) change in either variable. No significant ( p > 0.05) changes in mean power over 30 s were observed in any group.     

Firing characteristics of deep layer neurons in prefrontal cortex in rats performing spatial working memory tasks

Single cells were recorded with 'tetrodes' in regions of the rat medial prefrontal cortex, including those which are targets of hippocampal afferents, while rats were performing three different behavioral tasks: (i) an eight-arm radial maze, spatial working memory task, (ii) a figure-eight track, delayed spatial alternation task, and (iii) a random food search task in a square chamber. Among 187 recorded units, very few exhibited any evidence of place-specific firing on any of the behavioral tasks, except to the extent that different spatial locations were related to distinct phases of the task. Furthermore, no prefrontal unit showed unambiguous spatially dependent delay activity that might mediate working memory for spatial locations. Rather, the cells exhibited diverse correlates that were generally associated with the behavioral requirements of performing the task. This included firing related to intertrial intervals, onset or end of trials, selection of specific arms on the eight-arm radial maze, delay periods, approach to or departure from goals, and selection of paths on the figure-eight track. Although a small number of cells showed similar behavioral correlates across tasks, the majority of cells showed no consistent correlate when recorded across multiple tasks. Furthermore, some units did not exhibit altered firing patterns in any of the three tasks, while others showed changes in firing that were not consistently related to specific behaviors or task components. These results are in agreement with previous lesion and behavioral studies in rats that suggest a prefrontal cortical role in encoding 'rules' (i.e. structural features) or behavioral sequences within a task but not in encoding allocentric spatial information. Given that the hippocampal projection to this cortical region is capable of undergoing LTP, our data lead to the hypothesis that the role of this projection is not to impose spatial representations upon prefrontal activity, but to provide a mechanism for learning the spatial context in which particular behaviors are appropriate.      

The Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy protein, emerin, is a nuclear membrane protein

A large fragment of emerin cDNA was prepared by PCR and expressed as a recombinant protein in Escherichia coli. Using this as immunogen, we prepared a panel of 12 monoclonal antibodies which recognise at least four different epitopes on emerin in order to ensure that emerin can be distinguished from non-specific cross-reacting proteins. All the mAbs recognised a 34 kDa protein in all tissues tested, though minor emerin- related bands were also detected in some tissues. Immunofluorescence microscopy showed that emerin is located at the nuclear rim in all tissues examined. A muscle biopsy from an Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EMDM) patient showed complete absence of emerin by both Western blotting and immunohistochemistry, suggesting a simple diagnostic antibody test for EDMD families. Biochemical fractionation of brain and liver tissues showed that emerin was present in nuclei purified by centrifugation through 65% sucrose and was absent from soluble fractions (post-100,000 g). From these results, together with sequence and structural homologies between emerin, thymopoietins and the nuclear lamina-associated protein, LAP2, we suggest that emerin will prove to be one member of a family of inner nuclear membrane proteins.      

MGA2 Disease Management in Hypertension: The Benefits of Meeting Guideline Goals for Blood Pressure

We demonstrate the use of a novel database approach to drive the process of quality improvement in patients admitted under DRG 209, major joint and limb reattachment procedures of lower extremity.
METHODS: (1) Using standardized mapping criteria contained in the Perspective Comparative Databasetm (PCD) provided by Premier, Inc., a peer group of 12 similar institutions were selected. (2) PCD provided standardized cost and usage comparative data, including resource consumption by ICD-9 at the departmental charge code level, attending physician mix by specialty, average charges, costs, length of stay age and gender ratios by ICD-9 code (all payer data including Medicare), readmission to DRG209 and to any DRG at 30,60, and 90 days, primary admitting and discharge mix. (3) A multidisciplinary CQI team was asked to focus improvement efforts on the departmental level costs and use the benchmark peer groups as a comparison.
RESULTS: Analysis of the ICD-9 group that impacted DRG 209 that included total knee replacements (ICD-9 81.54) and total hip replacement (ICD-9 81.51), which represented 80% of all evaluated patients. 70% of the patients were female, 70% were Medicare and 70% were between the ages of 60 and 89. The PCD comparative reports showed that nursing, physician, and resource utilization had dollar variances from 23% to 82%. This enables the team to analyze whether the higher costs were due to over-utilization of resources (test, doses, supplies, critical care nursing days, etc.) or to resources that were properly used but too expensive.
CONCLUSION: CQI processes driven by data produce rapid targeted improvement in clinical outcomes. This is only possible if the database provided is accepted by all participants.     

Comparison of HLA-A antigen typing by serology with two polymerase chain reaction based DNA typing methods: implications for proficiency testing

Serology has been routinely used for class I HLA typing for the selection of donors for allotransplantation. However, serology is not adequate for the assignment of all class I specificities especially when testing non-Caucasians subjects and it is necessary to adopt new strategies for routine testing. At the present time the extent of incorrect serologic HLA-A assignments in clinical testing is not known. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based techniques have become useful standard clinical typing methods of HLA class II alleles but most laboratories still use serology for class I typing. In this report we have compared two PCR based techniques, PCR amplification with sequencespecific primers (PCR-SSP) and PCR amplification and subsequent hybridization with sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes (PCR-SSOP), for the assignment of HLA-A specificities in 56 blood samples from patients and families serologically typed for HLA-A. This side-by-side comparison of PCR methods showed 100% correlation between them. However, serology showed 7.1% misassignments and, in an additional panel of 19 cells where serology produced equivocal results, the PCR-SSP and SSOP methods identified the correct HLA-A specificity. Our results emphasize the need to complement routine serologic testing of HLA specificities with a small number of primers designed to test HLA-A34, A36, A43, A66, A74 and A80, that are not detected with high precision by serology. We concluded that the PCR-SSP and -SSOP methods can be used in routine HLA-A typing of patients and donors for transplantation with a greater precision than serology.