豚鼠耳蜗外毛细胞凋亡时听力变化的实验观察

目的观察耳蜗外毛细胞发生凋亡时听力改变情况.方法对20只豚鼠药物造模,诱发耳蜗外毛细胞发凋亡.应用TUNEL技术观察凋亡表达,测试ABR阈值观察听力变化.结果应用丁胺卡那霉素1天即可诱发豚鼠耳蜗外毛细胞发生凋亡,连续应用3d,耳蜗外毛细胞凋亡呈强阳性表达,但ABR阈值无明显改变;随着用药时间延长,凋亡细胞数目增加,甚至出现部分毛细胞缺失现黎,此时ABR阈值明显升高.结论耳蜗外毛细胞发生凋亡早期对豚鼠听力无明显影响,随着耳毒性药物应用时间延长,豚鼠ABR阈值升高可能存在两种原因毛细胞凋亡或毛细胞坏死.     

人部分正常与肿瘤细胞株中neuritin表达的检测

目的:筛选neuritin高表达及低表达细胞株,为进一步探讨neuritin在不同组织细胞生长发育过程中的作用奠定基础.方法和结果:分别利用RT-PCR与免疫组化技术在mRNA水平及蛋白水平,检测了11种人类细胞株中neuritin的表达情况,发现不仅在多种正常细胞中有表达,而且在部分肿瘤细胞中也有表达.结论:成功筛选出了neuritin高表达及低表达细胞株.     

Effectiveness of a strategy to improve adherence to tuberculosis treatment in a resource-poor setting: a cluster randomized controlled trial

Context  Poor adherence to treatment remains a major obstacle to efficient tuberculosis (TB) control in developing countries. Innovative strategies to improve access and adherence to treatment are needed. Objectives  To assess the effectiveness of a contextualized intervention strategy aimed at improving patients' adherence to treatment and to evaluate its impact on TB control in a resource-poor country in Africa with prevalent TB infection. Design, Setting, and Patients  A cluster randomized controlled trial, conducted between June 2003 and January 2005, at 16 government district health centers in Senegal. Patients older than 15 years with newly diagnosed sputum smear–positive pulmonary TB were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Intervention  The intervention strategy included reinforced counseling through improved communication between health personnel and patients, decentralization of treatment, choice of directly observed therapy (DOT) supporter by the patient, and reinforcement of supervision activities. In the control group, the usual TB control program procedures remained unchanged. Main Outcome Measure  Proportion of patients successfully completing the 8-month course of treatment and the proportion of patients defaulting from treatment. Results  A total of 1522 patients were recruited into the study. Treatment was successful for 682 (88%) of 778 patients recruited in the intervention group, and for 563 (76%) of 744 patients recruited in the control group (adjusted risk ratio [RR], 1.18; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03-1.34). The proportion of patients defaulting was reduced in the intervention group to 5.5% (n = 43) compared with 16.8% (n = 125) in the control group (adjusted RR, 0.43; 95% CI, 0.21-0.89). Conclusion  The intervention package based on improved patients counseling and communication, decentralization of treatment, patient choice of DOT supporter, and reinforcement of supervision activities led to improvement in patient outcomes compared with the usual TB control procedures. This approach may be generalized in the context of TB control programs in resource-poor countries. Trial Registration  clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00412009      

Tacrolimus as an Effective and Durable Second-Line Treatment for Chronic Autoimmune Hepatitis: A Multicentric Study

Digestive Diseases and Sciences - Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic liver disease able to progress to acute liver failure, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. A significant proportion of patients...     

Evaluation of a new equation for LDL-c estimation and prediction of death by cardiovascular related events in a German population-based study cohort

A simple equation established by Cordova &; Cordova (LDL-COR) was developed to provide an improved estimation of LDL-cholesterol in a large Brazilian laboratory database. We evaluated this new equation in a general population cohort in Pomerania, north-eastern Germany (SHIP Study) compared to other existing formulas (Anandaraja, Teerakanchana, Chen, Hattori, Martin, Friedewald and Ahmadi), and its power in the prediction of death by atherosclerosis related events as the primary outcome. Analysis was conducted on a cohort of 4075 individuals considering age, gender, use of lipid lowering therapy and associated co-morbidities such as diabetes, hepatic, kidney and thyroid disease. LDL-COR values had a lower standard deviation compared to the previously published equations: 0.92 versus 1.02, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04, 1.09, 1.10 and 1.74?mmol/L, respectively. All of the factors known to affect the results obtained by the Friedewald’s equation (LDL-FW), except fibrate use, were associated with the difference between LDL-COR and LDL-FW (p?p?=?.06). LDL-COR determined a higher hazard ratio (1.23 versus 1.12, 1.19, 1.21, 1.19, 1.21 and 1.19) for cardiovascular disease related mortality, incident stroke or myocardial infarction compared to the other evaluated formulas, except for Ahmadi’s (1.24), and the same adjusted predictive power considering all confounding factors. The proposed simple equation was demonstrated to be suitable for a more precise LDL-c estimation in the studied population. Since LDL-c is a parameter frequently requested by medical laboratories in clinical routine, and will probably remain so, precise methods for its estimation are needed when direct measurement is not available.