Protective head-cooling during cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation: the original animal studies

Prolonged standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) does not reliably sustain brain viability during cardiac arrest. Pre-hospital adjuncts to standard CPR are needed in order to improve outcomes. A preliminary dog study demonstrated that surface cooling of the head during arrest and CPR can achieve protective levels of brain hypothermia (30°C) within 10 minutes. We hypothesized that protective head-cooling during cardiac arrest and CPR improves neurological outcomes. Twelve dogs under light ketamine-halothane-nitrous oxide anesthesia were arrested by transthoracic fibrillation. The treated group consisted of six dogs whose shaven heads were moistened with saline and packed in ice immediately after confirmation of ventricular fibrillation. Six control dogs remained at room temperature. All 12 dogs were subjected to four minutes of ventricular fibrillation and 20 minutes of standard CPR. Spontaneous circulation was restored with drugs and countershocks. Intensive care was provided for five hours post-arrest and the animals were observed for 24 hours. In both groups, five of the six dogs had spontaneous circulation restored. After three hours, mean neurological deficit was significantly lower in the treated group (P=0.016, with head-cooled dogs averaging 37% and the normothermic dogs 62%). Two of the six head-cooled dogs survived 24 hours with neurological deficits of 9% and 0%, respectively. None of the control group dogs survived 24 hours. We concluded that head-cooling attenuates brain injury during cardiac arrest with prolonged CPR. We review the literature related to the use of hypothermia following cardiac arrest and discuss some promising approaches for the pre-hospital setting

Authentic Borna disease virus transcripts are spliced less efficiently than cDNA-derived viral RNAs

Borna disease virus (BDV) is a non-segmented, negative-strand RNA virus that replicates and transcribes its genome in the nucleus of infected cells. It uses the cellular splicing machinery to generate a set of alternatively spliced mRNAs from the 2.8 and 7.1 kb primary transcripts, each harbouring two introns. To determine whether splicing of these transcripts is regulated by viral factors, the extent of splicing was studied in infected cells and COS-7 cells transiently transfected with plasmids encoding the 2.8 kb RNA of BDV. Unspliced RNA was found to be the most abundant RNA species in infected cells, whereas viral transcripts lacking both introns were only found in minute amounts. In sharp contrast, plasmid-derived 2.8 kb RNA was predominantly intron 1-spliced and double-spliced. Co-expression of the BDV proteins P, N and X did not influence splicing of plasmid-expressed 2.8 kb RNA. Furthermore, the splicing pattern did not change when the 2.8 kb RNA was expressed in BDV-infected cells. Based on these results we speculate that splicing of authentic BDV transcripts is tightly linked to transcription by the viral polymerase

Legalbewährung nach strafrechtlichen Sanktionen. Eine kommentierte Rückfallstatistik

Rückfallverhinderung ist eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben des Strafrechts. In welchem Maße dies gelingt, ist in Deutschland indes weithin unbekannt. Mit der hier vorgelegten Rückfallstatistik wird erstmals für Deutschland die Forderung nach einer alle strafrechtlich Sanktionierten einbeziehenden Rückfallstatistik erfüllt. Dazu werden alle in einem Basisjahr (hier: 1994) strafrechtlich Sanktionierten oder aus der Haft Entlassenen (insg. knapp 1 Mio. Personen) während eines vierjährigen Rückfallzeitraums (hier: bis 1998) weiterverfolgt, um zu erkennen, ob sie wieder straffällig werden. Datenbasis hierfür sind die personenbezogenen Eintragungen im Zentral- und Erziehungsregister, die in der Regel mindestens fünf Jahre erhalten bleiben

Acute Renal Failure on Immune Reconstitution in an HIV-Positive Patient with Miliary Tuberculosis

Immune reconstitution syndrome following HAART in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients is characterized by inflammatory worsening of organ functions despite improvement in HIV surrogate markers of HIV infection. We describe a patient with miliary tuberculosis and urinary shedding of acid fast bacilli who developed acute renal failure 8 weeks after initiation of antituberculosis therapy and 6 weeks after initiation of HAART. The diagnostic workup and further course of disease implicated immune reconstitution syndrome as the cause of acute renal failur

Robust excitation of C-band quantum dots for quantum communication

Building a quantum internet requires efficient and reliable quantum hardware, from photonic sources to quantum repeaters and detectors, ideally operating at telecommunication wavelengths. Thanks to their high brightness and single-photon purity, quantum dot (QD) sources hold the promise to achieve high communication rates for quantum-secured network applications. Furthermore, it was recently shown that excitation schemes, such as longitudinal acoustic phonon-assisted (LA) pumping, provide security benefits by scrambling the coherence between the emitted photon-number states. In this work, we investigate further advantages of LA-pumped quantum dots with emission in the telecom C-band as a core hardware component of the quantum internet. We experimentally demonstrate how varying the pump energy and spectral detuning with respect to the excitonic transition can improve quantum-secured communication rates and provide stable emission statistics regardless of network-environment fluctuations. These findings have significant implications for general implementations of QD single-photon sources in practical quantum communication networks

ATP-binding cassette transporter A7 enhances phagocytosis of apoptotic cells and associated ERK signaling in macrophages

The mammalian ATP-binding cassette transporters A1 and A7 (ABCA1 and -A7) show sequence similarity to CED-7, a Caenorhabditis elegans gene that mediates the clearance of apoptotic cells. Using RNA interference or gene targeting, we show that knock down of macrophage ABCA7 but not -A1 results in defective engulfment of apoptotic cells. In response to apoptotic cells, ABCA7 moves to the macrophage cell surface and colocalizes with the low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1 (LRP1) in phagocytic cups. The cell surface localization of ABCA7 and LRP1 is defective in ABCA7-deficient cells. C1q is an opsonin of apoptotic cells that acts via phagocyte LRP1 to induce extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) signaling. We show that ERK signaling is required for phagocytosis of apoptotic cells and that ERK phosphorylation in response to apoptotic cells or C1q is defective in ABCA7-deficient cells. These studies reveal a major role of ABCA7 and not -A1 in the clearance of apoptotic cells and therefore suggest that ABCA7 is an authentic orthologue of CED-7

Effect of a supplement rich in alkaline minerals on acid-base balance in humans

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