Are Alcohol Anti-relapsing and Alcohol Withdrawal Drugs Useful in Cannabinoid Users?

Cannabinoids are still classified as illegal psychoactive drugs despite their broad and increasingly acknowledged therapeutic potential. These substances are most famous for their wide recreational use, particularly among young adults to either alter the state of consciousness, intensify pleasure induced by other psychoactive substances or as an alternative to the previously abused drugs. It is important to emphasize that cannabinoids are often taken together with a variety of medications intended for the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD) or alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS). These medications include disulfiram, acamprosate, and naltrexone. In this paper, we summarize recent advances in the knowledge of possible beneficial effects and interactions between cannabinoids and drugs commonly used for treatment of AUD and AWS either comorbid or existing as a separate disorder.     

Prevalence of Cryptosporidium,Blastocystis, and other opportunistic infections in patients with primary and acquired immunodeficiency

Parasitology Research - Intestinal opportunistic infections are often caused by unicellular parasites. Individuals with decreased immunity are particularly susceptible to infection by said...     

Gait and Balance Impairment after Acute Methanol Poisoning

Neurological sequelae including gait impairment were reported in survivors after methanol intoxication; however, no systematic study has been published so far. We aimed to analyse gait and balance impairment in a group of Czech methanol poisoning survivors. We examined 43 patients (age 46 ± 13 years) 2–8 months after methanol poisoning and 43 healthy controls. Investigations contained a shortened version of Falls Efficacy Scale (FES), clinical tests of gait and balance including Timed Up and Go test (TUG) and gait analysis using GaitRite^® system, neurological and neuropsychological examination, brain imaging, EMG and tests of alcohol consumption. Nineteen patients admitted balance and gait impairment according to FES. Mild to moderate parkinsonian signs showed seven patients. Patients were slower (8.8 versus 5.7 s, p < 0.001) and performed more steps (11.1 versus 7.9, p < 0.001) in TUG compared with the controls. Gait analysis revealed shorter step length (76.5 versus 88.7 cm, p < 0.001), increased double support phase (18.8 versus 15.5%, p < 0.001) and wider base of support (11.3 versus 9.6 cm, p = 0.006) in patients. Eleven patients had deficit of executive function and performed higher cadence compared to the patients with normal execution (122.7 versus 115.0 step/min., p = 0.025). Lower limb polyneuropathy was verified in nine patients, without relation with gait or balance parameters. Neuroimaging revealed lesions mainly in the basal ganglia. Methanol poisoning survivors presented slower wide‐based gait with shortened steps corresponding with frontal gait disorder. Higher stepping cadence associated with executive deficit supported the evidence of frontal lobe dysfunction related to impairment of basal ganglia and connections in frontal cortico‐basal ganglia loops.     

Extraordinary level of hormone and number of ghrelin cells in the stomach and duodenum of an obese woman

Obesity is a major metabolic disorder, in which ghrelin plays a significant role. The objective of this study was to characterize the morphology of ghrelin cells in the stomach and duodenum and the levels of ghrelin and leptin in the serum of a 52-year-old obese woman. Material for the study was obtained from the stomachs and duodenum, of obese and control women. Each subject had been treated at the Intensive Care Unit of the Clinical University Hospital in Bia?ystok, due to brain damage, due to primary cardiac arrest. After brain death was diagnosed and individual death was confirmed by doctors, stomach and duodenum samples were collected from each body. Paraffin sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin and processed for immunolocalization of ghrelin. The density of ghrelin cells in each part of the gastrointestinal tract was estimated under a light microscope with a digital camera. Ghrelin-IR cells were also analyzed in terms of morphometric features such as length, width and area. The ghrelin and leptin concentrations in each blood sample were measured by ELISA.     

Scopolamine impairs the response-to-change following observation of the environment but not after its exploration by the rat

The tendency to select the T-maze arm that has been changed in brightness between two successive trials (response-to-change) was investigated in rats injected with scopolamine (Sc) or saline (NaCl) 20 min before the test. In the "passive" version of the test, when in trial 1 rats could inspect the white-black arms through clear partitions blocking the entrance to the arms, a dose of when in trial 1 rats could inspect the white-black arms through clear partitions blocking the entrance to the arms, a dose of 1.0 mg/kg Sc decreased significantly the number of changed arm choices in trial 2, as compared to saline controls. A lower dose of Sc (0.5 mg/kg) was ineffective. In the "active" test version, when in trial 1 the rats were allowed to explore the white-black arms, doses of 1.0 and 2.0 mg/kg Sc did not affect the preference for the changed arm in trial 2. NaCl rats showed a significant preference for the changed arm choices in both tests. The scopolamine effects on response-to-change, i.e., impairment of performance in the passive but not in the active version, were essentially the same as those found by us previously in hippocampal rats.     

Cloning and mutagenesis of a herpesvirus genome as an infectious bacterial artificial chromosome

A strategy for cloning and mutagenesis of an infectious herpesvirus genome is described. The mouse cytomegalovirus genome was cloned and maintained as a 230 kb bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) in E. coli. Transfection of the BAC plasmid into eukaryotic cells led to a productive virus infection. The feasibility to introduce targeted mutations into the BAC cloned virus genome was shown by mutation of the immediate-early 1 gene and generation of a mutant virus. Thus, the complete construction of a mutant herpesvirus genome can now be carried out in a controlled manner prior to the reconstitution of infectious progeny. The described approach should be generally applicable to the mutagenesis of genomes of other large DNA viruses.     

Women in the early days of cytology: A personal recollection

The fight for the acceptance of the validity of cytopathology has been fought by a group of individuals associated with George N. Papanicolaou. The common effort to convince the skeptics that Papanicolaou's method of diagnosing cancer was the best way to detect its presence at an early stage became a bond linking all of us. When we taught cytology, we felt more like preaching a gospel than like teaching a subject. Those of us who became involved in original research experienced an additional excitement from expanding the frontiers of our new specialty. This uniquely stimulating experience has been shared by women and men in most of the early cytology teaching centers throughout the world. This was diffrent from the enthusiasm with which people enter the field of cytopathology today. All of us had to constantly prove the validity of what we were doing, whereas now the value of cytologic diagnosis is fully recognized and taken for granted. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.