Serial lactate and admission SOFA scores in trauma: an analysis of predictive value in 724 patients with and without traumatic brain injury

Objective: Arterial lactate, base excess (BE), lactate clearance, and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score have been shown to correlate with outcome in severely injured patients. The goal of the present study was to separately assess their predictive value in patients suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI) as opposed to patients suffering from injuries not related to the brain. Materials and methods: A total of 724 adult trauma patients with an Injury Severity Score (ISS)≥16 were grouped into patients without TBI (non-TBI), patients with isolated TBI (isolated TBI), and patients with a combination of TBI and non-TBI injuries (combined injuries). The predictive value of the above parameters was then analyzed using both uni- and multivariate analyses. Results: The mean age of the patients was 39years (77% males), with a mean ISS of 32 (range 16-75). Mortality ranged from 14% (non-TBI) to 24% (combined injuries). Admission and serial lactate/BE values were higher in non-survivors of all groups (all p<0.01), but not in patients with isolated TBI. Admission SOFA scores were highest in non-survivors of all groups (p=0.023); subsequently septic patients also showed elevated SOFA scores (p<0.01), except those with isolated TBI. In this group, SOFA score was the only parameter which showed significant differences between survivors and non-survivors. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis revealed lactate to be the best overall predictor for increased mortality and further septic complications, irrespective of the leading injury. Conclusion: Lactate showed the best performance in predicting sepsis or death in all trauma patients except those with isolated TBI, and the differences were greatest in patients with substantial bleeding. Following isolated TBI, SOFA score was the only parameter which could differentiate survivors from non-survivors on admission, although the SOFA score, too, was not an independent predictor of death following multivariate analysi

The 2+1 flavor topological susceptibility from the asqtad action at 0.06 fm

We report new data for the topological susceptibility computed on 2+1 flavor dynamical configurations with lattice spacing 0.06 fm, generated with the asqtad action. The topological susceptibility is computed by HYP smearing and compared with rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory as the pion mass goes to zero. At 0.06 fm, the raw data is already quite close to the continuum extrapolated values obtained from coarser lattices. These results provide a further test of the asqtad action with rooted staggered flavors.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, talk presented at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 30 - August 4, 2007, Regensburg, German

Potential for Tick-borne Bartonelloses

Although possible, tick transmission to a vertebrate host has not been proven

Ponazuril Inhibits the Development of Eimeria Vermiformis in Experimentally Infected Outbred Swiss Mice

We evaluated a 15% paste formulation of ponazuril in outbred Swiss mice that were experimentally infected with Eimeria vermiformis. Thirty, 8-week-old female mice (approximately 20 g) were placed in one group of 10 mice and one group of 20 mice. Mice in both groups were gavaged with approximately 5,000 sporulated oocysts of E. vermiformis on day 0. Mice in group 2 (n=10) were treated orally on days 3 and 4 with ponazuril (suspended in 30% propylene glycol) at the rate of 20 mg/kg. Mice in group 1 (n=20) were gavaged with a similar volume of 30% propylene glycol. Rates of oocyst passage (oocysts/g feces) were determined on day 10 (peak patency) for treated and nontreated mice using a fecal aliquot oocyst counting technique. Oocysts were not observed in the feces of treated mice using the aliquot technique. Control mice passaged oocysts at a geometric mean rate of \u3e104,000 oocysts/g feces. Control mice also produced significantly less feces on day 10. These results indicate that ponazuril is effective against E. vermiformis under the conditions utilized in this study, and that the E. vermiformis mouse model could be useful in predicting the efficacy of new anticoccidial drugs. © Springer-Verlag 2004

Topological susceptibility with the asqtad action

Chiral perturbation theory predicts that in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), light dynamical quarks suppress the gauge-field topological susceptibility of the vacuum. The degree of suppression depends on quark multiplicity and masses. It provides a strong consistency test for fermion formulations in lattice QCD. Such tests are especially important for staggered fermion formulations that lack a full chiral symmetry and use the "fourth-root" procedure to achieve the desired number of sea quarks. Over the past few years we have measured the topological susceptibility on a large database of 18 gauge field ensembles, generated in the presence of 2+1 flavors of dynamical asqtad quarks with up and down quark masses ranging from 0.05 to 1 in units of the strange quark mass and lattice spacings ranging from 0.045 fm to 0.12 fm. Our study also includes three quenched ensembles with lattice spacings ranging from 0.06 to 0.12 fm. We construct the topological susceptibility from the integrated point-to-point correlator of the discretized topological charge density F-Fdual. To reduce its variance, we model the asymptotic tail of the correlator. The continuum extrapolation of our results for the topological susceptibility agrees nicely at small quark mass with the predictions of lowest-order SU(3) chiral perturbation theory, thus lending support to the validity of the fourth-root procedure.Comment: 28 pp, 6 figs. Version 2 corrects some discussion, some numbers, and some figures and adds some reference

Drag on particles in a nematic suspension by a moving nematic-isotropic interface

We report the first clear demonstration of drag on colloidal particles by a moving nematic-isotropic interface. The balance of forces explains our observation of periodic, strip-like structures that are produced by the movement of these particles

Transient transcriptional events in human skeletal muscle at the outset of concentric resistance exercise training

We sought to ascertain the time course of transcriptional events that occur in human skeletal muscle at the outset of resistance exercise (RE) training in RE naive individuals and determine whether the magnitude of response was associated with exercise-induced muscle damage. Sixteen RE naive men were recruited; eight underwent two sessions of 5 × 30 maximum isokinetic knee extensions (180°/s) separated by 48 h. Muscle biopsies of the vastus lateralis, obtained from different sites, were taken at baseline and 24 h after each exercise bout. Eight individuals acted as nonexercise controls with biopsies obtained at the same time intervals. Transcriptional changes were assessed by microarray and protein levels of heat shock protein (HSP) 27 and αB-crystallin in muscle cross sections by immunohistochemistry as a proxy measure of muscle damage. In control subjects, no probe sets were significantly altered (false discovery rate < 0.05), and HSP27 and αB-crystallin protein remained unchanged throughout the study. In exercised subjects, significant intersubject variability following the initial RE bout was observed in the muscle transcriptome, with greatest changes occurring in subjects with elevated HSP27 and αB-crystallin protein. Following the second bout, the transcriptome response was more consistent, revealing a cohort of probe sets associated with immune activation, the suppression of oxidative metabolism, and ubiquitination, as differentially regulated. The results reveal that the initial transcriptional response to RE is variable in RE naive volunteers, potentially associated with muscle damage and unlikely to reflect longer term adaptations to RE training. These results highlight the importance of considering multiple time points when determining the transcriptional response to RE and associated physiological adaptation

A Smooth Interface Method for Simulating Liquid Crystal Colloid Dispersions

A new method is presented for mesoscopic simulations of particle dispersions in liquid crystal solvents. It allows efficient first-principle simulations of the dispersions involving many particles with many-body interactions mediated by the solvents. Demonstrations have been performed for the aggregation of colloid dispersions in two-dimensional nematic and smectic-C* solvents neglecting hydrodynamic effects, which will be taken into account in the near future.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Simulating Particle Dispersions in Nematic Liquid-Crystal Solvents

A new method is presented for mesoscopic simulations of particle dispersions in nematic liquid crystal solvents. It allows efficient first-principle simulations of the dispersions involving many particles with many-body interactions mediated by the solvents. A simple demonstration is shown for the aggregation process of a two dimentional dispersion.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure