Innovations in Traumatic Hemorrhage

Traumatic hemorrhagic injuries present a great problem to humanity and a challenge to medicine in the modern world. Current methods of treating these injuries in the field are ineffective and often extremely overkill or injurious. These methods are particularly inadequate when applied to the continuous high pressure bleeding that occurs from arterial wounds. Our project focuses on lowering the barriers to entry to innovation in the field of bleeding treatment by creating a low cost model of the human circulatory system. This model can function as a low-cost testing platform for novel bleeding treatments developed by companies and individuals that do not have the resources to regularly purchase extremely expensive cardiovascular simulators. To this end we designed a tripartite model which included a heart-simulating pump, vessel-simulating vasculature, and blood-mimicking fluid. In order to ensure our device functioned as a testing platform, we performed some preliminary solution candidate tests on it which had the ancillary benefit of identifying one effective but biologically unsafe solution that could be translated into a safe and efficacious future solution. Ultimately we found that our system functioned well as a testing platform for traumatic injury treatments and that standard silicone sealant administered by injection into the vessels had the greatest efficacy in stopping bleeding

Scavenging of H\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e and Production of Oxygen by Horseradish Peroxidas

Peroxidases catalyze many reactions, the most common being the utilization of H2O2 to oxidize numerous substrates (peroxidative mode). Peroxidases have also been proposed to produce H2O2 via utilization of NAD(P)H, thus providing oxidant either for the first step of lignification or for the oxidative burst associated with plant-pathogen interactions. The current study with horseradish peroxidase characterizes a third type of peroxidase activity that mimics the action of catalase; molecular oxygen is produced at the expense of H2O2 in the absence of other reactants. The oxygen production and H2O2-scavenging activities had temperature coefficients, Q10, of nearly 3 and 2, which is consistent with enzymatic reactions. Both activities were inhibited by autoclaving the enzyme and both activities had fairly broad pH optima in the neutral-to-alkaline region. The apparent Km values for the oxygen production and H2O2- scavenging reactions were near 1.0 mM H2O2. Irreversible inactivation of horseradish peroxidase by exposure to high concentrations of H2O2 coincided with the formation of an absorbance peak at 670 nm. Addition of superoxide dismutase (SOD) to reaction mixtures accelerated the reaction, suggesting that superoxide intermediates were involved. It appears that horseradish peroxidase is capable of using H2O2 both as an oxidant and as a reductant. A model is proposed and the relevance of the mechanism in plant-bacterial systems is discussed

Wiedza na temat cukrzycy typu 2 wśród uczestników akcji społecznej „Zdrowie pod kontrolą” przeprowadzonej w dwóch dużych miastach Górnego Śląska

Wstęp. Cukrzyca typu 2 jest schorzeniem określanym jako niezakaźna epidemia XXI wieku, wobec której istotne znaczenie mają zarówno profilaktyka, jak i wczesne wykrycie oraz skuteczne leczenie, zapobiegające występowaniu choroby i powikłaniom. Celem przeprowadzonego badania była ocena wiedzy na temat cukrzycy wśród osób odwiedzających dwa centra handlowe na terenie Górnego Śląska w czasie akcji społecznej organizowanej przez studentów medycyny Śląskiego Uniwersytetu Medycznego (SUM) współpracujących z Międzynarodowym Stowarzyszeniem Studentów Medycyny IFMSA-Poland pod nadzorem lekarzy z Oddziału Chorób Wewnętrznych, Diabetologii i Nefrologii w Zabrzu. Materiał i metody. Przechodnie byli zapraszani przez studentów do wypełnienia kwestionariusza wiedzy na temat cukrzycy, a także poddania się pomiarom masy ciała i wzrostu oraz oznaczenia stężenia glukozy we krwi przy użyciu glukometru. Autorski kwestionariusz składał się z 12 pytań dotyczących podstawowej wiedzy na temat cukrzycy (m.in. objawów hiperglikemii, czynników ryzyka rozwoju choroby, późnych powikłań oraz metod leczenia cukrzycy). Wyniki. W badaniu udział wzięło 401 z 1,5 tys. zaproszonych osób (27%), a średni wynik poprawnych odpowiedzi w kwestionariuszu wiedzy o cukrzycy wynosił 54,7 ± 18,7%. Wykazano obecność istotnego związku uzyskanego wyniku w teście wiedzy z wiekiem i płcią osoby badanej: osoby młodsze i kobiety cechowały się większą wiedzą na temat cukrzycy. Wnioski. Wprowadzenie szeroko dostępnych szkoleń z zakresu czynników ryzyka wystąpienia cukrzycy i jej powikłań mogłoby przyczynić się do zapobiegania chorobie lub jej wcześniejszego rozpoznania oraz skutecznego leczenia

Stabilized low-n amyloid-ß oligomers induce robust novel object recognition deficits associated with inflammatory, synaptic, and GABAergic dysfunction in the rat

YesBackground:With current treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) only providing temporary symptomatic benefits, disease modifying drugs are urgently required. This approach relies on improved understanding of the early pathophysiology of AD. A new hypothesis has emerged, in which early memory loss is considered a synapse failure caused by soluble amyloid-β oligomers (Aβo). These small soluble Aβo, which precede the formation of larger fibrillar assemblies, may be the main cause of early AD pathologies. Objective:The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of acute administration of stabilized low-n amyloid-β1-42 oligomers (Aβo1-42) on cognitive, inflammatory, synaptic, and neuronal markers in the rat. Methods:Female and male Lister Hooded rats received acute intracerebroventricular (ICV) administration of either vehicle or 5 nmol of Aβo1-42 (10μL). Cognition was assessed in the novel object recognition (NOR) paradigm at different time points. Levels of inflammatory (IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α), synaptic (PSD-95, SNAP-25), and neuronal (n-acetylaspartate, parvalbumin-positive cells) markers were investigated in different brain regions (prefrontal and frontal cortex, striatum, dorsal and ventral hippocampus). Results:Acute ICV administration of Aβo1-42 induced robust and enduring NOR deficits. These deficits were reversed by acute administration of donepezil and rolipram but not risperidone. Postmortem analysis revealed an increase in inflammatory markers, a decrease in synaptic markers and parvalbumin containing interneurons in the frontal cortex, with no evidence of widespread neuronal loss. Conclusion:Taken together the results suggest that acute administration of soluble low-n Aβo may be a useful model to study the early mechanisms involved in AD and provide us with a platform for testing novel therapeutic approaches that target the early underlying synaptic pathology