Primary pulmonary hypertension

Justification of early treatment of nocturnal enuresis is founded in the negative psychological impact on the child. In fact nocturnal enuresis delays early autonomy and socialisation by decreasing in self-esteem and self-confidence. Nocturnal enuresis classification is the preliminary step to correct therapy. Enuresis must be classified as primary (never acquired nocturnal control) or secondary (at least 6 months of dry nights). A child is also classified as having monosymptomatic enuresis if she/he experienced only night wetting and symptomatic enuresis if she/he experienced night wetting associated with diurnal voiding symptoms (urinated > or = 7 times a day, urgency, damp pants, squatting, holding the perineum, sitting on one heel). Monosymptomatic patients must be treated with desmopressin nasal spray at the daily dose of 20 micrograms at bed time. If the reduction of at least the 50% of the basal number of the wet nights is not achieved, the dosage must be increased until 40 micrograms. For patients affected by rhinitis or asthma, desmopressin is now available in tablets. In symptomatic patients desmopressin therapy must be associated to oxybutinin (5 mg x 2). Therapy interruption must be gradual with desmopressin reduction of 10 micrograms every 30 days. In symptomatic patients oxybutinin must be introduced only at bed time. The efficacy of the drugs depends on the therapy length. The highest percentage of success is obtained if the treatment is protracted for at least six months. Antidepressants are also used for nocturnal enuresis especially imipramine. The dosage varies between 0.5-1.5 mg/ kg/daily. As plasmatic levels are achieved only in 30% of treated patients, a 3-5 fold increase in suggested. Nevertheless these levels result in near toxic threshold concentration. Sporadic treatment purposes include amytriptiline, diclofenac sodicum, viloxsazine and methilphenidate if giggle incontinence is present. Non responders may be treated with alarm. If after 16 weeks of treatment no success is obtained alarm use must be interrupted.     

Chiral recognition ability of oligopeptide derivatives consisting of glutamyl residues

The effect of the constituting amino acid residue [Glu(OBzl)] number on the chiral recognition ability was investigated. Chiral recognition sites were prepared from oligopeptide derivatives (constituting amino acid residue number = three–five) by adopting alternative molecular imprinting. It was made clear that with a constituting amino acid residue number of four, the tetrapeptide derivative of Glu(OBzl) is the best candidate material to generate a chiral recognition site among eight types of oligopeptide derivatives in the study. The affinity constant between Ac‐L ‐Trp and a chiral recognition site ranged from 3.4 × 10³ to 1.08 × 10⁴ mol^?1 dm³, depending on the number of Glu(OBzl) residues in an oligopeptide derivative. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 95: 1302–1309, 2005     

Cognitive deficits in docosahexaenoic acid-deficient rats.

This study investigated the influence of brain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) deficiency on simple and complex olfactory-based learning and memory in 2nd generation (F2) adult male rats. Rats raised and maintained on either an n-3-adequate or an n-3-deficient diet were tested for acquisition of an olfactory learning set and an olfactory memory task, and for motivation to obtain a water reward. Despite a 76% decrease in brain DHA, n-3-deficient rats were able to acquire most simple 2-odor discrimination tasks but were deficient in the acquisition of a 20-problem olfactory learning set. This deficit could not be attributed to changes in sensory capacity but, instead, appeared to represent a deficit in higher order learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Update on the biologic effects of macrophage colony-stimulating factor

OBJECTIVE: The aims of this investigation were to measure corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), corticotropin (ACTH) and cortisol before, during and after delivery searching for an endocrine intercorrelation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and to correlate these findings with obstetrical variables. METHODS: Blood was sampled from 50 women with singleton pregnancies at term without uterine contractions, during delivery (after full cervical dilatation) and on the 4th postnatal day. Hormones were measured by radioimmunoassay (RIA). The correlation between obstetric variables, sociodemographic and endocrine data were evaluated using the Spearman rank coefficient. Group comparisons for continuous variables were calculated using the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: Maternal plasma ACTH and cortisol increased significantly during labor, declining toward the 4th postnatal day (p < 0.001) and showing a significant intercorrelation (p < 0.01). Compared to women without uterine contractions CRH rose during labor (p < 0.05) and decreased rapidly to the 4th postnatal day (p < 0.001). No correlations between CRH and ACTH or cortisol were observed. None of the obstetrical variables (parity, newborn's weight, duration of delivery) revealed any significant correlation with ACTH. Analgetic medication (pethidine hydrochloride) was not able to influence the endocrine response to labor stress. CONCLUSIONS: Stressful experience during childbirth has an impact on endocrine response. However, this is not fully evident along the HPA axis in a simple biological model with monocausal dependencies. This 'biological stress model' is not sensitive enough to detect different childbirth conditions and the hormones in the maternal compartment have partially fetal (placental) origin.