Effect of Cyclooxygenase(COX)-1 and COX-2 inhibition on furosemide-induced renal responses and isoform immunolocalization in the healthy cat kidney

BACKGROUND: The role of cyclooxygenase(COX)-1 and COX-2 in the saluretic and renin-angiotensin responses to loop diuretics in the cat is unknown. We propose in vivo characterisation of isoform roles in a furosemide model by administering non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) with differing selectivity profiles: robenacoxib (COX-2 selective) and ketoprofen (COX-1 selective). RESULTS: In this four period crossover study, we compared the effect of four treatments: placebo, robenacoxib once or twice daily and ketoprofen once daily concomitantly with furosemide in seven healthy cats. For each period, urine and blood samples were collected at baseline and within 48 h of treatment starting. Plasma renin activity (PRA), plasma and urinary aldosterone concentrations, glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and 24 h urinary volumes, electrolytes and eicosanoids (PGE(2), 6-keto-PGF1(α,) TxB(2)), renal injury biomarker excretions [N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) and Gamma-Glutamyltransferase] were measured. Urine volume (24 h) and urinary sodium, chloride and calcium excretions increased from baseline with all treatments. Plasma creatinine increased with all treatments except placebo, whereas GFR was significantly decreased from baseline only with ketoprofen. PRA increased significantly with placebo and once daily robenacoxib and the increase was significantly higher with placebo compared to ketoprofen (10.5 ± 4.4 vs 4.9 ± 5.0 ng ml(−1) h(−1)). Urinary aldosterone excretion increased with all treatments but this increase was inhibited by 75 % with ketoprofen and 65 % with once daily robenacoxib compared to placebo. Urinary PGE(2) excretion decreased with all treatments and excretion was significantly lower with ketoprofen compared to placebo. Urinary TxB(2) excretion was significantly increased from baseline only with placebo. NAG increased from baseline with all treatments. Immunohistochemistry on post-mortem renal specimens, obtained from a different group of cats that died naturally of non-renal causes, suggested constitutive COX-1 and COX-2 co-localization in many renal structures including the macula densa (MD). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that both COX-1 and COX-2 could generate the signal from the MD to the renin secreting cells in cats exposed to furosemide. Co-localization of COX isoenzymes in MD cells supports the functional data reported here. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0598-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Introduction: Toward an Engaged Feminist Heritage Praxis

We advocate a feminist approach to archaeological heritage work in order to transform heritage practice and the production of archaeological knowledge. We use an engaged feminist standpoint and situate intersubjectivity and intersectionality as critical components of this practice. An engaged feminist approach to heritage work allows the discipline to consider women’s, men’s, and gender non-conforming persons’ positions in the field, to reveal their contributions, to develop critical pedagogical approaches, and to rethink forms of representation. Throughout, we emphasize the intellectual labor of women of color, queer and gender non-conforming persons, and early white feminists in archaeology

An Alternative Ethics? Justice and Care as Guiding Principles for Qualitative Research

The dominant conception of social research ethics is centred on deontological and consequentialist principles. In place of this, some qualitative researchers have proposed a very different approach. This appeals to a range of commitments that transform the goal of research as well as framing how it is pursued. This new ethics demands a participatory form of inquiry, one in which the relationship between researchers and researched is equalized. In this paper we examine this alternative approach, focusing in particular on two of the principles that are central to it: justice and care. We argue that there are some significant defects and dangers associated with this new conception of research ethics

Full Spectrum Archaeology

Full Spectrum Archaeology (FSA) is an aspiration stemming from the convergence of archaeology’s fundamental principles with international heritage policies and community preferences. FSA encompasses study and stewardship of the full range of heritage resources in accord with the full range of associated values and through the application of treatments selected from the full range of appropriate options. Late modern states, including British Columbia, Canada, nominally embrace de jure heritage policies consonant with international standards yet also resist de facto heritage management practice grounded in professional ethics and local values and preferences. In response, inheritor communities and their allies in archaeology are demonstrating the benefits of FSA and reclaiming control over cultural heritage. Archaeology and heritage management driven by altruistic articulation of communal, educational, scientific and other values further expose shortcomings and vulnerabilities of late modern states as well as public goods in and from FSA

Reading the Entanglements of Nature-culture Conservation and Development in Contemporary India

In this article we argue for greater attention to the practice of (nature-culture) conservation as a specific form of intervention with implications for development. Outlining the dominant frameworks through which the often vexed relationship between conservation and development has been understood, the article offers an alternative analytical framework that is grounded in ethnographic attention to everyday practice. Applying this framework, the three papers in this special section examine conservation-development dilemmas at diverse conservation sites in India—Rushikulya, Orissa, a globally significant site for the conservation of marine turtles; Nagarahole, in southern Karnataka, one of India’s most successful tiger reserves; and the Hampi region, northern Karnataka, where the archaeological remains of the medieval Vijayanagara Empire have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). The papers reveal a relationship between conservation and development that is paradoxically both more structurally imbricated and more contingent and variable than a focus on official frameworks, discourses and plans would suggest. They lead us to argue that, rather than focusing on the stated objectives of the formal conservation plan alone, attention to its ambivalent adoptions and unintended outcomes, as well as to negotiations between diverse actors and forms of knowledge, can contribute to both a more balanced theorization of conservation’s relation to development as well as to more effective conservation practices

QUALITIES OF HUMANNESS Material Aspects of Greek Neolithic Anthropomorphic Imagery

This article considers the materialization of human representations in Neolithic northern Greece and particularly the materials used in their production. Contending that materialization is contingent upon but not reducible to the materials used, an attempt is made to understand the implications of using different materials to represent humans, especially clay and stone. Thus, it is suggested that in the earlier Neolithic, clay and stone were reserved for different classes of artefacts. Human figures in this period show an interest in action, whereas in the later Neolithic, changes occur that suggest a preoccupation with the substance of the figures. It is suggested that these changes point to the emergence of different subjectivities during the later Neolithic