Wandering spleen presenting as duodenal obstruction after repair of congenital diaphragmatic hernia

The most common presentation of the wandering spleen in children is torsion with infarction. Duodenal obstruction by the spleen has not been reported previously. Wandering spleen can accompany congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) because of its loss of retroperitoneal fixation. If absence of normal splenic fixation is found during repair of CDH, splenopexy should be performed to eliminate the risk of torsion, infarction, or, as described here, duodenal obstruction.     

Reactivity of fluoride-containing calcium aluminosilicate glasses used in dental glass-ionomer cements

The glass component critically determines the properties of glass-ionomer cements (GIC). However, the exact relationship between the composition of the glass and these properties is not yet fully understood. To investigate this relationship, we studied the reactivity of glasses used in commercial GIC in acetic acid solutions, using a pH-stat method. Qualitative differences in the leaching behavior of these glasses can be explained by different pre-treatments. Acid-washing and silanization modify the surfaces of the glass particles, thus inducing a delay of the leaching process, whereas untreated glasses exhibit a fast initial leaching, but their acid reactivity slows very soon. Quantitative differences in acid reactivity can be correlated with the mean chemical composition of the glasses. In this respect, the leaching tends to increase with an increasing ratio of network-dwelling cations to Al3+ ions. These results provide a fundamental basis for the explanation, prediction, and control of cement properties as a function of glass characteristics.     

Improvements are needed in the existing packaging of medicated oils containing methyl salicylate

At present, the most efficacious and used immunostimulant agent in the superficial bladder cancer immunotherapy field, is the BCG, even if its mechanism of action is still partly unknown. The therapeutic effects of BCG don't seem to depend exclusively on local immune response, so that according to this assertion, this immunohistochemical study had been conducted on 14 patients affected by superficial bladder cancer (pTa-pT1) which aimed to value both the apoptosis and proliferation indexes and the expression of the genetic product p53 and EGFR before and after the exposition of the vesical mucosa to the BCG. The BCG treatment can reduce the proliferation index of the normal urothelial cells in a statistically significant way whereas it would exclude a cytostatic effect mediate by negative modulation of EGFR from the cytokinins induced by BCG itself. The index of apoptosis of the urothelium does not increase after BCG and decreased expression of p53 associated after the treatment, although statistically not significant, it would seem to bear, the prophylactic efficacy of BCG according to the follow up of the patients included in the study.     

Theoretical analysis of the Ca2+ spark amplitude distribution

A difficulty of using confocal microscopy to study Ca2+ sparks is the uncertainty of the linescan position with respect to the source of Ca2+ release. Random placement of the linescan is expected to result in a broad distribution of measured Ca2+ spark amplitudes (a) even if all Ca2+ sparks were generated identically. Thus variations in Ca2+ spark amplitude due to positional differences between confocal linescans and Ca2+ release site are intertwined with variations due to intrinsic differences in Ca2+ release properties. To separate these two sources of variations on the Ca2+ spark amplitude, we determined the effect changes of channel current or channel open time--collectively called the source strength, alpha--had on the measured Ca2+ spark amplitude histogram, N(a). This was done by 1) simulating Ca2+ release, Ca2+ and fluo-3 diffusion, and Ca2+ binding reactions; 2) simulation of image formation of the Ca2+ spark by a confocal microscope; and 3) using a novel automatic Ca2+ spark detector. From these results we derived an integral equation relating the probability density function of source strengths, f alpha (alpha), to N(a), which takes into account random positional variations between the source and linescan. In the special, but important, case that the spatial distribution of Ca(2+)-bound fluo-3 is Gaussian, we show the following: 1) variations of Ca2+ spark amplitude due to positional or intrinsic differences can be separated, and 2) f alpha (alpha) can, in principle, be calculated from the Ca2+ spark amplitude histogram since N(a) is the sum of shifted hyperbolas, where the magnitudes of the shifts and weights depend on f alpha (alpha). In particular, if all Ca2+ sparks were generated identically, then the plot of 1/N(a) against a will be a straight line. Multiple populations of channels carrying distinct currents are revealed by discontinuities in the 1/N(a) plot. 3) Although the inverse relationship between Ca2+ spark amplitude and decay time might be used to distinguish Ca2+ sparks from different channel populations, noise can render the measured decay times meaningless for small amplitude Ca2+ sparks.