Comparison of the effects of TENS stimulation and water immersion on relieving labour pain suffered byprimiparas

Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare pain suffered by primiparas when delivering a child in a traditional way with deliveries where either TENS stimulation or water immersion was used.Material and methods: Primiparas were divided into 3 groups. In group 1 there were 45 women for whom TENS stimulation was applied during delivery. Group 2 consisted of 38 women who remained in the water during the actual birth of the baby. Group 3 served as the control group and was composed of 32 women. The intensity of pain during delivery was assessed by means of a numerical scale. During the first delivery period, pain was assessed three times at cervical dilation of 2, 3 and 4 fingers.Results: The analysis of pain suffered by primiparas at 2-finger widening showed no statistically significant differences between the groups. However, the analysis of pain experienced at 3-finger opening showed significant differences between the group of women using TENS stimulation in comparison with the control group. When comparing pain at 4-finger opening, statistically significant differences were found between the group of women who delivered in water in comparison to both the control group and the group using TENS stimulation.Conclusions: TENS stimulation and water immersion are good methods to relieve labour pain; particularly helpful in the first period of labour. They are also safe, alternative, non-pharmacological methods of reducing labour pain

Bisphenol A-glycidyl methacrylate induces a broad spectrum of DNA damage in human lymphocytes

Bisphenol A-glycidyl methacrylate (BisGMA) is monomer of dental filling composites, which can be released from these materials and cause adverse biologic effects in human cells. In the present work, we investigated genotoxic effect of BisGMA on human lymphocytes and human acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line (CCRF-CEM) cells. Our results indicate that BisGMA is genotoxic for human lymphocytes. The compound induced DNA damage evaluated by the alkaline, neutral, and pH 12.1 version of the comet assay. This damage included oxidative modifications of the DNA bases, as checked by DNA repair enzymes EndoIII and Fpg, alkali-labile sites and DNA double-strand breaks. BisGMA induced DNA-strand breaks in the isolated plasmid. Lymphocytes incubated with BisGMA at 1 mM were able to remove about 50% of DNA damage during 120-min repair incubation. The monomer at 1 mM evoked a delay of the cell cycle in the S phase in CCRF-CEM cells. The experiment with spin trap—DMPO demonstrated that BisGMA induced reactive oxygen species, which were able to damage DNA. BisGMA is able to induce a broad spectrum of DNA damage including severe DNA double-strand breaks, which can be responsible for a delay of the cell cycle in the S phase

Search for the critical point by the NA61/SHINE experiment

NA61/SHINE is a fixed target experiment operating at CERN SPS. Its main goals are to search for the critical point of stronglyinteractingmatterandtostudytheonsetofdeconfinement. Forthesegoalsascanofthetwodimensionalphase diagram (T-μB) is being performed at the SPS by measurements of hadron production in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interactions as a function of collision energy. In this paper the status of the search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter by the NA61/SHINE Collaboration is presented including recent results on proton intermittency, strongly intensive fluctuation observables of multiplicity and transverse momentum fluctuations. These measurements are expected to be sensitive to the correlation length and, therefore, have the ability to reveal the existence of the critical point via possible non-monotonic behavior. The new NA61/SHINE results are compared to the model predictions